Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
It has been less than twenty-four hours since he took me, and I know I cannot allow myself to give in this quickly. He won’t believe it. Or maybe he will. Maybe he knows how magnetic he is, how he seduces more than the body, but infiltrates the mind.
Angelo excuses himself from the kitchen after we eat, and I am left alone in Bobby’s custody. Ostensibly, Bobby is supposed to be doing the dishes, but of course he has no interest in them.
He has me on his own, and it is immediately obvious that he plans to torture me as far as he dares. He has forgotten that we already have a score to settle from when he jabbed the hat box into my nose in the car. I haven’t forgotten that casual cruelty, even if he has.
“Don’t get comfortable,” he says. “He’s playing with you, but he will get tired of you soon, and when he does, you’re going to be meat. Just like that eggplant.”
I don’t know what’s more stupid, the fact that he thinks eggplant is meat, or the fact that he thinks he is telling me something I don’t know about my delicate position here.
I am standing in front of the kitchen island now, and Bobby comes around to loom over me. He gets right into my face, bending down with a malevolent gaze.
“When he gets tired of you,” he growls, “he’ll give you to me. And I will do to you what we should have done to VanDinn today. I’ll turn you into a hundred different side-dishes, and…
The rest of his words are cut off in a surprised gurgle as I open the knife I’ve had stashed in my pocket since this morning and stab him in the fucking neck.
I’m aiming for jugular, but my height and his quick jerk backward as he sees my arm move mean that I catch the meat where neck meets shoulder, and miss all the delicate and important structures I first intended to sever.
The look of shock in Bobby Vitali’s eyes is worth the pain I know I am bringing on myself. I’m just a fraction of an inch away from his jugular. I know, because if I was on target, there would be an arterial spurt of blood that would cover everything.
Bobby is a kill target.
Bobby made me bleed my own blood.
Bobby is going to die.
I plan to pull the knife and stab again, but before I can a large hand wraps around my neck, yanking me back at just the moment I decide to press the advantage. Bobby grips at his throat, one hand going to the craft knife, the other going to his neck. He sinks down, stabilizing his wound by himself with a surprisingly practiced grip.
Angelo tuts, as if he has caught a pup gnawing on something she shouldn’t. He pulls me out of Bobby’s reach and yanks both of my wrists behind me hard, putting me into a position of immediate submission. It hurts, but I don’t care. I don’t cry out. And I don’t feel the pain. Everything in me was focused on hurting Bobby, and now I no longer care what happens to me.
I draw a deep breath and close my eyes. I expect Angelo to kill me outright. Everybody knows how protective he is of his little psychopath.
“You are a bad little thing,” Angelo murmurs in my ear while Bobby slumps against the kitchen island, holding the knife in his throat. It’s pretty clear that this is not the first time Bobby has been stabbed somewhere potentially lethal. He’s not panicking. He’s not doing anything but staring at me with those hollow, shark-like eyes.
Slow realization is setting in. I haven’t killed him. And that means he will be coming for me. I just made the first move in a very lethal game with Bobby Vitali.
Angelo marches me back through the house to the room in which I was first imprisoned. He turns me loose inside it, but not before unleashing a hard slap to my ass, hard enough to make me rise off my feet and skip a step inside.
The door is closed and locked before I can turn around and look at his face.
I am stuck now until he comes to get me. Trapped with nothing but my own thoughts. I regret nothing except missing my target. Bobby Vitali deserves to die, and Angelo deserves to be captured. All these attempts to make me break are doomed to fail, because I know those two facts without the slightest shadow of a doubt.
7
The hours pass and for the duration of each and every one of them I am tormented by the promise of punishment to come. How will Angelo kill me? Will he do it fast? Will he do it slow? Will he let Bobby take his vengeance first?