Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 98(@200wpm)___ 78(@250wpm)___ 65(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 98(@200wpm)___ 78(@250wpm)___ 65(@300wpm)
The hood is lifted from my face, and I blink to clear my vision and find myself staring into the hate-filled eyes of Janice Baxter. She raises an eyebrow and twists her lips at me, and I suddenly feel like a bug or something else equally lowly and disgusting.
“Well, hello there, bitch.” I’m already on edge, but the tone of her voice takes my anxiety to a whole new level. Her eyes narrow like a snake’s. “I see you’re up to your old tricks again. Couldn’t fuck your way into my husband’s pocketbook so you found yourself a new mark, isn’t that right?”
I try to speak, but the gag in my mouth simply won’t let me. All that comes out are muffled sounds that seem to give Janice delight. She giggles and begins to circle around me like a wolf stalking its prey.
“I like that story you tried to tell before we fired you,” she says, speaking slowly. “That my husband came on to you. Do you have any idea how many women he fends off daily? How many gorgeous women? Models! Actresses! All of them want him, but he never gave in to temptation, and you expect me to believe he would break our marital vows for a maid!?”
I can’t tell if Janice is laughing or crying as she circles back in front of me, looking down her nose at me like I’m a thousand miles beneath her. I twist my wrists against the bindings, but whatever cord her accomplice used feels as though it has a metal core. The harder I pull, the more it bites into my flesh.
“I thought I’d seen the end of you,” she says. “But you know what? Now Harold says to me that he feels bad about what happened. He says we shouldn’t have let you go and that your job was the only thing keeping you afloat. He says we need to hire you back so you don’t lose your apartment.”
Yeah, I bet that’s his motive…
Janice shakes her head and lets out a painful laugh.
“You see what a kind man my husband is? Even after what you did, he still cares about your well-being.”
If I wasn’t so terrified right now, I might actually feel bad for Janice. She’s so blinded by her husband’s true nature that she’s convinced herself that the reason he wants me back at the house is because he feels bad about me losing my job.
If only I had our encounter on camera. But even then, would she believe it? Or would she then say I’d edited the footage or something? When I look into her eyes now, all I see is rage, sorrow, and something else…
Something dark swimming at the edges of her eyes. Something unhinged that has me fearing for my life.
“He told me to reach out to you,” Janice continues. “To give you your job back. And you know what? I know he won’t be satisfied until I do that. Until you’re back at our house playing your little games again, trying your best to seduce my husband. And I simply will not allow that to happen.”
Janice reaches a hand into her pocket. There’s a flash of light as she withdraws her husband’s straight razor, the one I’ve picked up and cleaned countless times.
“So…that leaves me only one choice…” Now she is crying, but I get the sense it has nothing to do with me. She’s not thinking about me right now; she’s thinking about her husband. “I have to make you disappear…forever.”
Janice takes a step toward me.
I scream into the gag, trying to force it from my mouth as my fear overtakes me. A surge of adrenaline unlike anything I’ve ever experienced shoots through me like electric shock, causing my body to spasm.
I kick off the floor, causing the chair to topple over backwards. I slam hard onto the concrete floor. Pain bursts through my wrists as my bodyweight lands on them, but I manage to roll and scramble onto my knees.
“Frank! Hold her down!”
Out of nowhere, a large man appears and snatches me by my arms, pinning me to the ground. I recognize his touch, his scent, as the man who kidnapped me and threw me in the back of the car to bring me here.
His strong fingers bite into the skin of my arms as I kick helplessly against his grip.
My heartbeat thuds in my ears as the organ in my chest does its best to beat through my ribcage in a moment of sheer panic.
I’m sweating, on the verge of tears, screaming muted screams into a soaked gag of cloth that’s been stuffed and tied into my mouth, all the while wondering where my daddy is and wishing to God that he could hear me.
“You really should have known your place,” Janice hisses as she kneels down in front of me, brandishing Harold’s razor threateningly before my eyes.