Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 106292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
A hand flies through the bars and grips my chin, and I look up to find Dalton, his stare filled with nothing but undeniable hurt. “You ran,” he mutters as I shuffle in closer to him, desperate to feel his hands on mine, even if it’s through the bars.
I scoff, my chest aching with his betrayal. I fix him with a hard stare, not capable of sitting back and allowing him to try and guilt me over my decision to leave Zade’s penthouse. “Can you blame me?” I question, gripping the weathered note and holding it up to his face. “I know what you assholes really want with me. How you’re holding me hostage in that big fucking apartment just so you can all get off while Bossman tears my heart out of my chest for some sick ritual. Anyone in their right mind would have run, Dalton. Hell, if you were in my shoes, you would have tried to run too. So don’t look at me like I’ve offended you in some horrendous way. I’m the one who’s been wronged here.”
Dalton swallows hard, and I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down, regret shining so brightly in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Firefly,” he murmurs. “It wasn’t my place to say anything. This is bigger than me.”
I scoff again and tear my chin out of his grip as Zade and Easton work on the bars, their muscles bulging as they try to bend them just enough for me to slip through. “You really want to start feeding me that shit?” I question, more than ready to put these assholes in their place. “You told me you were going to protect me, but you’ve done nothing but lie to me since the second I met you. Up on that roof, setting me up to be kidnapped by your asshole friends, and now this. That’s two strikes, Dalton. You don’t want to learn what happens at three.”
“Really?” Zade grunts, pausing his efforts for just a moment to fix me with a hard stare, and I can’t help but take note of how much worse he looks now that the bruising has started to really come out. “Right now? You want to start this shit right now?”
I meet his callous, cruel stare and a chill sweeps through my body. “The fucking audacity!” I say. “You haven’t got a leg to stand on, Zade. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“You fucking ran,” he spits. “That’s on you.”
“Really?” I scoff. “You want to put this on me? Why don’t you look in the mirror? You promised me protection, yet somehow I was able to be lured out of your apartment right under your fucking nose, which tells me the great Zade DeVil failed. You allowed me to slip away. You lost me, and that’s on you.”
Zade clenches his jaw. He knows I’m right, yet he’s too fucking stubborn to admit it.
The bars start to bend, and Zade looks away, focusing on what he needs to do as Sawyer returns to Easton’s side and grips the weird tool, lending his strength.
My heart races, the anticipation of getting out of here burning through my veins. Something flashes in my periphery, and just as my gaze snaps around, Harrison’s face comes into view. His arm whips out, a gun held tightly in his hand. My eyes widen with fear as I see Harrison’s gaze locked on the back of Dalton’s head. “WATCH OUT!”
I drop to the ground just as Dalton whips around, his foot already striking out. He kicks Harrison in the gut and he flies back against my father’s cell as his shot goes wide, the bullet ricocheting off the bar in front of my face.
A scream tears from my throat, but before the sound echoes down the corridors of the prison, my father’s arms dive through the bars of his cell and lock around Harrison’s throat. He keeps him pinned against the door of his cell as Zade steps up in front of him.
Harrison fights against my father’s hold as Easton, Dalton, and Sawyer work their asses off to keep bending the bars, certain that more guards are going to hear the commotion. My gaze flicks between the boys and Zade, my heart racing.
“I . . . I have a family,” Harrison says, clawing at my father’s arms. Despite not getting a chance to know my father over the past twelve years, I know without a doubt that he will endure any kind of pain Harrison deals if it means I will be free of this prison.
Zade scoffs while curiously glancing at my father, probably wondering why this strange man is helping him. Hopefully he puts it down to wanting revenge on his captor. “And I have Empire to claim,” Zade tells Harrison as he snaps his fist out, and Harrison goes down like a sack of shit.