Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
It wasn’t hurt from her betrayal that drummed through me.
It was fear.
Harsh pulses that thrummed like poison through my veins.
Sickness pooled in my stomach as bile lifted to my mouth. I tried to swallow around it, but it was impossible. No way to subdue the way it felt like I was being strangled by the horror that ensnared every cell in my body.
Sweat slicked my flesh as I sat there waiting for this fiend to have his way with me.
He slowly stalked forward, a gleam in his eye when he reached out and ripped the tape from my mouth, leaving a burst of pain in its wake.
Gasping, I struggled to bring large gulps of air into my aching lungs.
To stay calm. To believe.
But I’d seen firsthand what this monster would do. I’d seen the evil that occupied every recess of his mind.
“I’ve been waitin’ for you.” He said it softly like we were old lovers, and I tried to edge back from the foulness he exuded when he leaned in and dragged his nose along my cheek.
Recoiling against the filth that oozed from his spirit.
“Always so shy,” he murmured, and he reached out and dragged the blunt edge of his fingernail down my cheek where his nose had been.
I wanted to spit in his face. Fight him. Tell him I was so much stronger than any of them had ever given me credit for. Shout the lengths I would go.
But I was bound, trapped the way I’d been when I’d been nothing but a helpless little girl.
His eyes glinted in some sort of victory, as if he’d seen my internal reaction. “But you’re not so innocent, are you?”
His voice transformed in a flash, and he moved before I could make sense of the action.
A scream punctured the air when he drove the blade deep into my thigh.
Agony sundering. Rending through me on a hot, searing burn as he knelt in front of me, twisting the handle as he did.
I nearly blacked out from the pain, and I sniveled and choked through it, trying to keep my composure that was quickly slipping.
“I know it was you,” he seethed, getting close to my face. “They blamed it on the Demons, but I know it was you. You, little bitch. You killed my brother and the others, didn’t you?”
He cranked the knife as he gritted, “Did you think I was gonna let you get away with it?”
Another scream.
Anguish clutched me in a fist, and a sob catapulted out with it. Saliva poured from the side of my mouth as I wheezed around the misery.
“I saw you running through the shadows. Saw you thinking you could slink through them unnoticed.”
Lightheadedness rushed through my mind, and the hazy blur of my thoughts tumbled to Otto. Back to the time when everything had changed. I’d known the torment he’d suffered. I had watched him wilt away in the week after Haddie had been killed. I had witnessed his despondency.
I’d known exactly what was happening when I’d heard him moving around in his bedroom after River had walked out. I knew he was going for them himself. Without the help from the rest of the family.
I couldn’t let him do it. Couldn’t let him become some kind of martyr lost to his grief.
Because of Haddie, I’d known where Gideon and his friends went on Thursday nights. The many times she’d sneaked off to meet him there during the time that Otto had been in prison.
I couldn’t let him do it.
Alone.
The guys had made sure that I knew how to protect myself. That I knew self-defense, even though it hadn’t done me any good when I’d been pinned under Dusty in that kitchen where I’d lost so much of myself. But the one thing they’d taught me that I could use was how to use a gun, River drilling it into my head that it was only for my safety when he’d take me out into the desert for target practice. Drilling it into my head that I should only go that route if I had no other choice.
And I was sure that night when I’d heard Otto leave that there was only one choice to be made.
So, I’d stole into River’s room and had taken one of his rifles, and I’d gone, riddled with pain from my wounds. Riddled with the sorrow of losing my best friend. Riddled with the anguish of the man I’d loved turning his back on me.
Then I’d been riddled with desperation when I’d found him on his knees, Gideon pointing a gun and getting ready to shoot.
I hadn’t thought twice about it.
I’d opened fire.
As if I wouldn’t protect Otto the way he’d always protected me.
As if I would hold an ounce of remorse over it.
I lifted my face to the monster who snarled three inches from my face. “You killed Haddie.”