Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
I don’t answer, but then his fingers slap my chin. “Answer me, Halen. Before your brother gets here with Vaden and we give them a front-row seat to yet another one of our fights.”
“Yes, I was leaving, okay?” The words leave my mouth in a cruel whisper.
His face falls. “Why?”
I hate that I know he’s disappointed.
“Because I can’t—I can’t breathe. Because I saw the fucking baby, War!”
His eyes narrow for a moment, and when he realizes what I’m talking about, he laughs, but it’s sinister and ugly. “Oh, I see. Yeah, whatever, Halen. You go do whatever you’ve got to do to make yourself feel better instead of flat-out fucking asking me.”
“I don’t have to ask you!” I yell, my hands flying up. My anger feels rogue, but with every passing minute I stand here with him, my skin feels like a ticking time bomb.
“Whatever the fuck you guys do on Perdita, with all the games, torture, recruits, and the—sex!” I screech. “You managed to get her knocked up. Now she has your baby.”
“That baby is four months old.”
“And?” I snap. “How is that relevant?” I don’t feel the tears as they fall down my cheeks. I don’t feel anything but the resounding fracturing of my heart, because whether I like to admit it or not, he is mine. He always has been and always will be. Evie is my rock, but War has always been my world. It isn’t that he came into my life during a time I needed him. No. It’s that he is always there even when I don’t need him. But now—now he’s not. I’ve lost that. I’ve lost him. I’ve lost almost everything.
“Halo!” He forces my face to his by the squeeze of my cheeks. I melt in his grip because this is what he does. The only man walking this earth who can handle me, and he always lets me slip from his grip.
He rests his forehead against mine. “The kid. Ain’t. Mine.” My chest rises and falls as my heart continues to gallop. Silence pulses between us. Moments.
Clarity.
“Why would she—” I stop myself. She didn’t. She just let me think it.
“Because she’s fucking Katsia.” His thumb skims the edge of my lip. “I haven’t been with her for a while, baby.”
My throat tightens around my sob, as he scans every inch of my face before resting on my mouth. “I haven’t been with anyone else but you since this fucking started.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he snaps, his fingers crawling to the back of my neck. “And yeah, I’m well aware that the same can’t be said for you.”
I wince.
“Oh, are we surprised that she’s a slut?” the girl sings off in the background.
I sidestep War, taking purposeful strides to her.
“Halen…”
I ignore his pleas, picking her up by the throat and shoving her up against the wall. Decayed wallpaper crumbles from behind her head, and my grip tenses hard enough for the sharp tips of my nails to sink into the side of her skin. “I could tear your throat out right here and not bat an eye.”
Her nails scratch at mine in a desperate attempt to get me off her. “But these shoes are expensive.”
“You killed my boyfriend. He was—" she wheezes. “He was Candyman’s son.”
Her body falls to the floor with my parting words, “Call me a slut again, bitch, and I’ll hang you from the ceiling by your tits while my brother records a porn with your corpse.”
War snickers from behind me and I step backward until I’m crashing against the hardness of his chest.
With a grip around my forearm, he spins me around to face him. “We’ll figure this out.”
“I need everyone’s attention.”
I’ve fought it too long. Pop is right. Everyone is right. I can’t do it on my own anymore, not even with Pop.
I need to turn around and take the other road.
War
I can sit here and think about all the ways we have fucked things up in our lives, or I can do what she said. Even as she whispered those words into my ear, I can’t trust her. I want to. Fuck but I want to, and I do. I trust her with my whole fucking life. I just don’t trust her with her own.
Priest follows me through the front entrance of the Castle, and we drop the set of keys into the bowl near the front door.
“She all right?” Katsia asks from behind me, and the muscles in my shoulders stiffen.
Priest’s eyes shift between the two of us, before he disappears down the hallway to the back wing of the house, also known as Bishop’s office.
“Why the fuck did you say that to her?” I could kill her. Put everyone out of their misery. But then that would leave River in the firing line of Perdita, and, well…