Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 26912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
"Andreus?"
He almost didn't want to look at her. There was still a part of him that was simply waiting for her to end things between them.
Andreus tensed when Hallie suddenly laid her hand over his.
"I love you, Andreus," Hallie whispered. "Always. And there's nothing in this world, no one in this world that can ever make me stop loving you."
A moment passed, and Andreus released his grip on the shift stick to twine his fingers with hers. He didn't have to say anything else.
I love you, Hallie.
Always did.
Always will.
HALLIE WASN'T SURPRISED to see Monique enter the living room with flashing eyes made crazy looking by rage.
"How dare you show your face here, you slut?"
"Please take a seat," Hallie said softly.
"If you're here to brag—-"
"I know what you did."
Monique stiffly sat down at the words. This girl had to be bluffing. She couldn't possibly know. She couldn't!
"You could've kept Andreus' video from being leaked. Someone tried to blackmail you about it. But instead of telling Andreus or the police, you paid them for the right to choose when they'd leak it."
Monique forced herself to laugh. "You're insane."
"Did you really think I was in Tokyo all this time? I was here all along, working with the FBI to take you down. And you will go down because we have all the evidence we need. We were able to link your IP address to the original source of the leak. We were able to prove you were the first one to see the video. We were able to trace the sum you wired—-"
"Fuck you!"
"If you had really loved Andreus—-"
"What would a slut like you know about love?" Monique screamed. "I'm the one who deserves someone like Andreus. You're nothing but a fucking whore while I'm someone who's waited all these years for the right man. I've saved my virginity for him, and once he's tired of you, he'll realize that someone pure like me—-" Her words crashed to a stop when Hallie took her phone out of her pocket, and Monique saw too late the other woman had her on loudspeaker, with Andreus on the other end of the line.
"You bitch—-"
"Thank you for confirming on record that Andreus has never touched you."
Hallie's polite tone was just too fucking much. Monique leapt to her feet, intending to claw the other girl's eyes out, but instead she found herself on the receiving end of a resounding slap.
Aaaargh!
Monique charged forward, but the other girl was just too fucking fast, and the next thing she knew, she ended up on the couch, with Hallie painfully gripping her by the hair to keep her still.
"You hate me, and I hate you, too," Hallie said curtly. "But as much as I also hate admitting this, I can see there's a part of you that really loves Andreus, and that's why...I wanted to give you this one last chance to make it up to him."
"Fuck you!"
But Hallie only went on speaking like she hadn't heard Monique at all.
"You were probably told that the second video would show Andreus doing nothing while a girl was being raped in his bedroom. But did you ever ask why that was?"
"He was on drugs—-"
"He was also being raped." Hallie released his hold on Monique the moment she saw the other girl pale.
"Y-You're lying. You have to be."
"I wish I was," Hallie whispered. "But I'm not."
Monique's heart was racing.
Oh God.
Her heart just wouldn't stop pounding.
God, oh God.
It was only when she dimly felt Hallie grabbing hold of her shoulders to give her a shake—-
"Breathe, Monique!"
She finally realized she was hyperventilating, and she released a shaken gasp as she tumbled dizzily back into her senses.
Her Andreus.
Raped.
Her proud, beautiful, charming Andreus.
She remembered all the times she had deliberately put him down.
Remembered all the ways she had tried to destroy his very soul just to keep him from leaving her.
She would've done almost anything to own him, but to know that he had been raped, and to realize that she had practically taken the side of those who had raped him—-
No, no, no.
Monique's shoulders began to shake. "I didn't know. I d-didn't know. I d-didn't."
"You can still make it right, Monique. Just please tell me the truth. Who was it that tried to blackmail you?"
The other woman started to speak, and every word just made Hallie want to run back to Andreus' arms and tell him she loved him.
Oh, if only she could.
But for now, she still had to fight for him.
THE SIX O'CLOCK NEWS that night broke the Internet, and because the world would always be shamelessly fickle, the thousands of people that had been so quick to cast stones on Andreus were now just as quick in saying that they had believed him all along.
It's the soul-shattering twist that no one saw coming, and stock prices of the company Andreus Economou and the rest of the Afxisi owns have skyrocketed as a result...