Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 48087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Fuck them.
I saw red for a long time, until someone pulled me back, and I was staring at the mutilated and sliced up body of Logan, barely hanging from the rafter, a huge puddle of blood below both men and spreading.
“Shit,” Milo said as he came closer and eyed the corpses before whistling low. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with the bodies?” Milo pushed at Logan’s chest with one finger, causing his body to swing from the ropes.
“Take them to the outskirts of town to the abandoned industrial district. There’s twenty acres. I’m sure you can find some place for them,” I said in a deep voice.
“You sure no one will come looking for them?” Milo pushed at Logan again, chuckling low when a squirt of blood came out of the gash in the side of his neck.
“Who the fuck cares if anyone comes looking?” I snapped, baring my teeth. “You do as you’re fucking told. Understand?”
Milo snapped his head up and looked at me, his throat working as he swallowed. He gave a sharp nod and stepped back, looking at the floor in a subservient gesture.
Motherfucker.
The sound of a lighter swishing open filled my ears, and I watched Luca light the end of a cigarette.
“What?” Luca said from around his cigarette, shrugging.
“Those things will kill you,” Milo chimed in, and we both looked at him, a moment of silence filling the room before Milo cleared his throat and focused on the floor again.
I walked over to the sink and washed my hands, watching the blood run down the brown-colored drain. “Get these fuckers in the ground. I have shit to do tonight.”
And with that, I dried off my hands, grabbed the duffle Luca brought that had a change of clothes for me, and left Butcher and Sons.
What I’d done tonight solidified Liliana’s fate.
It meant she was mine.
Chapter 3
Liliana
TWO DAYS LATER
I don't know what woke me up, but I stared at the ceiling, my heart racing, and this sense of dread settling deep within me. I laid there for a moment, listening, trying to calm this sudden fear.
When I heard nothing but my body refused to calm down, I pushed myself up on the bed and looked around. My breathing increased, my heart kept racing, and sleep wasn’t going to happen. After scrubbing a hand over my eyes, I stared out my bedroom window. The glass was old and foggy, with a crack in the corner that I’d had to repair with a strip of duct tape.
I figured my father and brother had broken in… again. Although I saw them infrequently anymore unless they had nowhere else to go… or hide from the problems chasing them. If they weren’t drunk as skunks or higher than kites and stumbling in, they were hiding from someone they owed money to.
Changing the locks or trying to keep my home mine wasn’t fixing my problems or keeping them away.
Once again, irritability consumed me for trying to help my father and Logan.
My thoughts became even more annoyed when I realized how foolish I’d been to go see Matteo. He could’ve killed me, or worse. He could’ve done anything he wanted to me, and I would have been at the mercy of whatever twisted desires he had.
But he let me go.
And for days, I’d been thinking about the why of it all. I sat here for hours on end contemplating all my life’s decisions where my father and brother were concerned… where Matteo was concerned.
And it was in the middle of the night that I realized I had to make a change for myself. I couldn’t stay in this shitty city any longer. I couldn’t risk being brought down even further.
I wanted to swim to the surface. I wanted to see the light for the first time in my life.
So with that plan in mind, I knew I had to leave Desolation. And I had to do it soon.
I finally said fuck them.
I was going to pack up my shit, take the meager amount of money I’d saved, and was going to leave.
So here I was, heading into the kitchen in the middle of the night with a smile on my face because I finally felt good for once in my life. I finally felt like I was doing what I was supposed to do.
I didn’t know when I’d leave, didn’t know how the outcome would play out. I just knew I would leave, and I’d do it as soon as humanly possible.
Drug addicts, pushers and dealers, and crime lords riddled this shitty town. And if you weren’t selling yourself on the street corner just to survive, you worked until your fingers bled and your eyes crossed.
If you weren’t lucky enough to get out, the other option to leave Desolation was to be buried, more than likely in a shallow grave on the outskirts of town because you fucked with the wrong person.