Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 107661 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107661 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Deep breath.
“Ready?” She positioned her stance beside the record player, turning her body just right as she opened her arms.
He stepped into her space, pervading her senses with the gruesome echoes of a dark sewer room.
His hand clasped her hip. His other reached for her fingers.
“I’ll start the song.” She angled toward the turntable and twisted her ankle just right to make it look clumsy.
Her tripping step distracted him away from her hand as he caught her fall. In that blur of a moment, she bypassed the needle on the player and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the knife.
Her pulse exploded as she swung.
She’d sat in the prison yard for two years, listening to inmates talk about the most lethal ways to kill a man. She would’ve never considered the armpit as a target. Evidently, neither did Hector.
He saw the knife coming and shielded his core. She put all her strength behind the thrust as she stabbed upward into his armpit. With the blade still pointed up, she yanked it back toward her, making sure she severed the main artery there.
Blood spurted instantly, but instead of falling, he attacked.
His hand caught her throat, and she shoved him off with a surge of ferocity. The blood loss made him weaker, and his injured arm didn’t work.
As he shuffled to stay upright, she stabbed him again in the same spot. And again. She must’ve hit cartilage or bone the second time because the knife stuck, slipping from her fingers as he stumbled backward.
He stared at the protruding weapon in his shoulder, his eyes wide with shock. “Why?”
“You’re pure evil. You don’t belong here. Not in this world. Not among children.”
His hip bumped into the table, knocking it aside, and he dropped to the floor.
The vicious pounding in her chest overpowered her relief. She needed answers.
Kneeling beside him, she squeezed his throat and held him immobile. “I know what you do in the middle of the night.”
His eyes blinked rapidly, and he slapped an uncoordinated hand at the knife in his shoulder. Half of his shirt was red, and the puddle beneath him was growing. The artery in the armpit supplied blood to his extremities and sat close enough to the heart to drain him quickly. He didn’t have much time.
“Give me the locations of the commanders involved in the smuggling of those kids.”
“I sent you to the gringos as a test.” The cords in his neck strained beneath her hand, and his English grew sloppy with his pain. “I didn’t care about them. I needed to know who you were.” He switched to Spanish. “I challenged your loyalty to see who you would pick. Them or me.” His eyes watered with tears. “I thought you chose me.”
“You sick son of a bitch,” she seethed. “If you wanted to test me, all you had to do was tell me you were raping and killing children. You would’ve found out real quick where my loyalties lie.”
He held still, staring up at her, eyes locked. A twitch skipped along his clenched jaw that had nothing to do with the knife in his shoulder. He was disappointed with her. Furious. Flames roared in his gaze, ready to ignite everything around him.
Well, fuck him, because her rage blazed hotter. The inferno inside her wasn’t explosive or out of control, but it burned mighty and strong at the end of a two-year wick.
The acidity of her wrath resided in her stomach, waiting to be spat from her mouth in a string of venomous words. But she wasn’t going to say them. She was going to stab all her hurt and disgust into his dying body.
She slapped a hand over his mouth and yanked the blade from his shoulder. His jaw worked beneath her palm, roaring without sound. His back bowed and spasmed, and more blood flowed from his wounds.
With the knife secure in her fist, she let her fury flood out all at once. The blade came down, fast and relentless, over and over into the lower quadrants of his abdomen.
Though he was screaming, her hand trapped the noise as her other jabbed and twisted the blade, gouging countless holes, goring and mangling. To draw out his death, she avoided the liver, spleen, and big veins that were higher up.
He probably only had seconds left, but she wanted to make fucking sure he felt every single one of them while staring into her eyes.
Her arm moved like a disembodied appendage, separated from her soul. What she felt wasn’t human. It wasn’t her. The mindless need to kill brutally and ruthlessly… It warped her mind and laced her veins in fire. She was intoxicated with it. And terrified.
She dropped the knife and stared down at the mutilated remains of his lower abdomen. The bloodbath sickened her and thrilled her.