Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 104919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 525(@200wpm)___ 420(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 525(@200wpm)___ 420(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
He was not what I imagined a murderer to look like. He looked like he was doing his fucking taxes in front of a dead body.
He looked far too...normal.
Coleson Kitsch.
I was attending a charity event wearing couture, he’d leaned forward to kiss my cheeks in greeting. I’d pegged him as just another billionaire in a nice suit. Men at those things never had one exact job title. They were “businessmen,” which meant they had friends in high places and tax havens all over the world. His lips had been on my fucking skin. He’d made an impact because he’d reminded me of Kieran, in a bad way. His gaze was intense. Probing. There was something slightly off about him. Which of course, attracted me to him. I didn’t like the nice guys. The straight edges. Kind eyes. Too weak. Too easy for me to walk all over.
The ones with cruelty in their gaze, those were the ones that intrigued me. Even in our brief interaction, I’d seen that in Coleson.
Good thing I was whisked off by Andre before I could engage in some not so subtle flirting. Andre had muttered something about not mixing myself up with Kitsch and I’d dismissed it as him trying yet again to pair me with someone in the industry.
He glanced up and my stomach jumped into my throat. He was looking right at me. There was no way he could miss me.
And I was frozen.
I didn’t get up or try and run, didn’t look for a weapon on my own so I could act like the heroine I so often played these days. No, I was completely and utterly predictable. The weak woman, unable to move, awaiting her death.
I saw it all with stark lucidity. Heard it all. His shoes clicking on the marble floor as he approached me. The urine trailing down my leg. Another muted shot and maybe a flash of pain then nothing at all.
Saw all of this in less than a moment and yet I still didn’t fucking move. Wasn’t it meant to be fight or flight? Not cower behind a fucking bookcase, seconds away from releasing your bladder.
But it didn’t happen. The releasing of the bladder or the murder. His blue eyes flickered away, he glanced down at the body once more before walking away.
His shoes clicked on the floor.
And then there was nothing but silence.
That terrible, dead silence that would ring on the insides of my skull for the rest of my life.
2
It was not my idea to pull into the underground parking lot of Greenstone Security at midnight.
So not my idea.
It was my publicist’s idea.
Because he was the first person I’d called when I was sure that Coleson was not coming back to murder me. I was that useless. My life was so managed, so organized for me, my first instinct was to call the man who took care of most of my problems for me. Not, you know, the police or anything else.
To Andre’s credit, his pause after I told him I’d just witnessed a murder was less than a second before he started shouting orders at me.
I’d listened, because I was afraid, uncertain and too fucking weak to do anything else.
The police arrived at the mansion within minutes, only half an hour before Andre himself, which was impressive considering the LA traffic.
He’d been by my side the entire time, or as often as he could be while the police questioned me. First it was the uniforms, but as they recognized who I was—immediately—they made calls and a detective in a bad suit took over questioning.
Luckily, they didn’t seem to think I had anything to do with the shooting, since they’d arrived so soon after I’d made the call. They’d swabbed my hands for gunshot residue “to rule me out as a suspect.” Briefly, I wondered what would’ve happened if they’d found it. Or, if no one believed my story and they pinned the murder on me. The trial would be big. A circus. Huge news. The killer movie star. The spectacle of it all.
Likely, my high-paid defense attorneys would get me off. Probation. House arrest. That’s just what happened when you had enough money and fame. The right status.
But no, of course they didn’t take it further. They took my word for what it was, the truth. Maybe because they couldn’t imagine the woman they’d all likely jerked off to doing this, but more likely because my all white outfit didn’t have a speck of blood on it.
Things changed drastically when I finally managed to say the name of the man I’d recognized doing the killing. I’d been off to the side with the detective at that point, the scene already buzzing with uniforms. Such a quick and effective response was only reserved for the rich.