Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
I had read The Godfather. This was nothing like that. This man was young, and he was a boss? I shook my head, trying to make sense of all this. Why was I thinking about a stupid fictional book? This was my life. This was real. I had to focus.
King had lied to me.
From the very beginning, he had been lying.
I pressed a hand to my chest. The gnawing horror that everything with him had been a lie was worse than the deceit.
I knew he didn’t love me, but I had thought…he felt something. He cared.
He wasn’t my savior. He never had been. I had been a job to him. Something this beautiful, intimidating blond man had told him to do.
And Maeme…she was in on this? She had known? But then Blaise had said she had wanted me. She wasn’t acting. Could I stay for her? With King so close? Was what we had over now that I knew? Was he just going to go back to the women he beat and fucked?
“I’ve given you a lot to digest,” Blaise said. “Sebastian will take you back to the stables, and you can take your time. I need to leave here in an hour—my son has a soccer game this evening. If you haven’t made up your mind by then, the plane can be sent for you at any time. Just let…whoever you want to know that you would like to come to Ocala.”
He hadn’t said King. Was that his way of telling me my time with King was done? Why hadn’t King come for this? He had known what I was about to hear, and he had sent Sebastian to bring me. What was he doing that was so important that he didn’t care that I was going to learn he had been lying to me all this time?
Because he didn’t care. I had been a job. That was it. I’d been a job for him. Nothing more. If I had meant anything to him, he’d be by my side right now. Asking me to stay with him. Telling me that he had developed feelings for me.
“I’ll go,” I said, the words surprising myself as I heard them fall from my mouth.
But I couldn’t stay here. Not now. I’d miss Maeme. I’d miss Birdie. My heart wouldn’t recover for a long time, and seeing King would rebreak it over and over. I had to go. There was no other choice.
Blaise nodded and dropped his hands to his sides. “Very well. Go get your things packed up. You’ll be picked up in forty-five minutes out in front of the stables. We have to head to the airstrip.” He shifted his gaze to Sebastian. “Go with her.”
Sebastian stood. “Yes, sir.”
I glanced up at him, and I saw the pity in his eyes. The concern for me. He was truly worried about my feelings. I could see it there. Maybe someone other than Maeme had cared for me more than just being a job.
“Let’s go,” he said gently.
I followed behind him and kept my head down, not wanting to make eye contact with any of the others. They would all see too much. I’d been broken many times before, but never had someone wielded the power to crush my soul. Until King.
• forty •
“How much abuse could a heart take before it stopped?”
Rumor
I heard the screams well before we reached the hallway. A sick knot formed in my stomach, and I felt bile rise up in my throat. I couldn’t keep walking. Not that way. Not in that direction.
“Fuck,” Sebastian muttered under his breath, hearing the female cries of pleasure and pain that were coming from the tack room.
I shook my head, backing up as a wall of bricks sat heavily on my chest. Just when I’d thought I couldn’t be hurt anymore, when I’d believed the agony couldn’t get any worse, I was slapped in the face with yet another truth.
“I can’t,” I rasped. It hurt to speak. My throat was constricted.
“I’m sorry, Rumor. I’m so fucking sorry,” Sebastian said as his hand closed over mine. “We’ll go another way. Come with me.”
Unable to do anything else, I let him lead me back out the door and around the buildings until we reached a door on the far side of the main structure. How much abuse could a heart take before it stopped? Shattered? Was that possible?
I much preferred broken ribs. Those I could heal from. Those I understood. This…I was afraid this had ruined me. Completely. How could I ever recover? I couldn’t even hate him. I wanted to. I wanted to hate him for all he’d done. For making me love him. For letting me believe he cared. But I couldn’t. I knew what hate was. I had hated Hill. I had wished he were dead. If King were dead, I wouldn’t be able to survive it. Even after all this.