Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 64727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“Fine, then,” I growled. Taking a step toward her, I gripped her by the hips, picked her up, and threw her over my shoulder.
“Put me the fuck down,” was her first response. Though I ignored her foul mouth, I couldn’t ignore the pounding and scratches on my back. I knew she wanted me to react, but if she thought she was going to get a rise out of me, she was wrong. If anything, it made me want to nail her ass against a tree.
“You’re going to get us killed with your fucking screaming, yelling, and nonsense thinking,” I said continuing down the driveway. I could hear her huffs, anger radiating out of her like an overheated furnace.
“Getting us killed? Are you fucking crazy? No, wait. You are! You just killed my dad at point blank range. My dad…” Her voice cut off, and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. Maybe she didn’t want to think her dad was capable of such venomous acts or she didn’t want to face the music—either way, she had to know it would come down to this.
“Yeah. You will get us killed if you keep your fucking yap open. While I know I just killed your father, shut your fucking mouth. Mourn it later. Learn to deal with it. I never said I was a good man, Bree. I told you I was out for vengeance. Love wasn’t going to stop me from seeking it. Be mad, hate me, cuss me out, and never want to see me again, but know you can never run from me.”
Silence settled over us as her chest heaved against my shoulders. For the first time in my life, I had met someone who I didn’t want to hurt, who I had wanted to take the pain from. Even though I wanted all those things, I was bred to kill, to hate, and to make those suffer who had made me suffer. A death for a death made us even. Bree would have to learn the hard way, though my love for her was deep, my need for vengeance was the same.
Bree
My chest heaved as I held in the tears I desperately wanted to release. Zerro had ripped the last living person from my life. He had shot and killed him in cold blood. It didn’t matter if I had loved him—nothing mattered because he had killed my father.
He placed me on the cold leather seat of the SUV and shut the door, not saying a word. I should open the door, I should run though I knew it would be useless. He would just hunt me down and haul me back here. As I sunk further into the seat, my mind sunk further into the abyss. How could he do something so cruel? How could he kill someone and feel no remorse? John was my father—it didn’t matter to me what he had done. None of it did. What mattered was he was dead, and I had no one. Nothing. I was just like him. Just like Alzerro King.
“You’ll move on,” he whispered to no one. It had to be no one because I wasn’t listening to a fucking word he said. The second I got the chance, I would leave. I would run. I would escape his hold. There was now no doubt in my mind he was a living, breathing monster—far worse than the ones you heard about in fairytales.
“I hate you.” I spat the words at him, hoping they would hit him with the intensity of my fist.
“Get in fucking line,” he spat back at me without remorse in his words.
“He was everything to me. He was my father. My fucking father. You killed the last living member of my family—for revenge? Do you feel better? Does hurting me make your heart red again?” I screamed these words across the center console, tears streaming down my face so heavily I couldn’t see anything. There was a fist-sized hole punched through my chest by the very man I loved.
Eventually the car settled into silence, but I refused to shut up. I refused to be anything but angry and sad. I was hurting. I was breaking and it was his fault. All his fucking fault.
Wiping away the tears so I could see the face of the monster, I stared into a pair of warm honey-colored eyes. “When I look at you, I see a small boy out on a mission to bring the world to its knees. To take anyone and everything out—anything undeserving of your attention. But maybe, just fucking maybe, it’s you who’s undeserving of the rest of us. Maybe it’s you who needs to take a look around and realize the world owes you nothing. And killing people like my father gets you nothing. It doesn’t make you feel better. It causes you to lose the most important person in the world to you—me.”
I watched as his knuckles gripped the steering wheel with strength I had never seen before. Was he going to kill me next, too? Would it even matter? I wasn’t sure I would care at this point.
“This is the life of the Mafia, Bree. This is what happens when someone betrays someone. You knew I was on the hunt for someone. You knew if I found him, I would kill him. It just so happened to be bad luck it turned out to be your father.”
My eyes felt as if they were about to roll out of my head as I listened to him. He wasn’t even sorry. It sounded more like a I’m-sorry-I-Killed-Your-Dad-But-It-Had-To-Happen thing.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Do you?” he screamed back, his face growing red with anger.
“Let me go.”
“Fuck you, Bree,” he growled, ignoring my comment as he turned the car on, threw it into reverse, and pulled out of my driveway. We hadn’t even talked about what had happened to him, to me. Hours ago, I would’ve been glad to know he was alive and wanted to save me, but now—now I wanted to be the one to put the bullet in his head and bury him six feet under.