Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
I hoped she got a kidney stone.
I hoped it hurt when she passed it too.
But the most important thing at this point was to buy The Defender time. As much as I wanted to tell her to fuck herself, I had to do what I had to do, and that was be a bigger person. For him. For the rest of humanity.
So I ducked my head back down and planted it on my stacked arms.
She was probably going to kill me and harvest my organs, but I hadn’t been joking. If I saw a white light, I was going the other way. Grandma used to say that her grandma had stuck around after she had passed away, until her husband eventually died. Apparently, he’d cheated on her and she had taken revenge in her own way.
I think I would have liked her.
If this was the end, it was the end. I didn’t want it to be, but I wasn’t willing to give up on the only person who might someday make this fucker pay for what she had done to me. Sure, it wouldn’t be in my honor, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy it.
Fear and misery fought a battle in my heart as I pretended she wasn’t there. I shivered and then shivered some more before the sound of the door opening cut through the quietness in the room. “All right,” she said in that bored, flat voice. “Remember you asked for this.”
And I wasn’t surprised when the two assholes moved toward me, grabbing my arms and lifting me. There were more zip ties. Another cloth. One of them was already holding the spewing hose. They aimed it at my face.
Then they did it again.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
I flinched at the sound of the door opening and tucked my arms into my sides even closer, like my body had any heat left to make a difference.
It didn’t.
I’d tried thinking about all the hot afternoons working in my garden that had been almost unbearable.
I’d tried remembering how warm it had gotten in the houses we’d always lived in because none of them had had efficient air conditioners.
None of that worked either.
I was cold down to my damn bones. My jaw hurt from how hard and long my teeth had rattled.
Plus, my head hurt like hell, my throat felt like it was battling a mutant strain of strep throat, and basically every single inch of my body hurt too from how hard I’d been shaking for hours. Or had it been days? Everything seemed so blurry now, so I had no idea. I felt straight awful as I lifted my head and peered at the doorway, expecting the worst.
Two men were there, dressed in the same black clothes as the last shitheads, but they weren’t the same people.
I didn’t move, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to.
“Are you getting up or do you need to be carried back?” the one on the left asked, his tone bland.
I hoped their significant others cheated on them.
I sniffled and instantly regretted it when it felt like a knife being shoved up my nostrils, straight into my brain. The sarcasm I kept wrapped up so tight in me loosened, even though every word hurt on the way out. “Depends. Are we going somewhere fun for me or fun for you?”
That got me two glares.
Stupid asses.
They deserved the surprise they were going to find behind the toilet eventually. I had taken advantage of the moments of privacy I’d gotten when they weren’t on the brink of drowning me. I wasn’t about to shit my pants in front of them if I could help it.
“I can walk. I don’t want you guys ruining my dreams of being in the Little League World Series by tearing my rotator cuffs,” I told them sarcastically, my throat filled with glass.
“Get up,” the other man demanded with a flat tone that made me think none of this was new to him. Did they do this a lot?
I thought about putting up a fight, but honestly, I had nothing left but my pride. I could barely talk. I was beyond exhausted. I’d pulled muscles I didn’t know existed. And literally, I never would have thought that it was possible for my sinus cavity to feel the way it did.
Whatever was going to happen… needed to just happen.
I had told them I didn’t have the money. We all knew no one was going to believe that though. They were going to wait me out until I begged, or I’d be back in here for more.
I would take the break they were offering, just like I’d taken every other one.
Gingerly getting up, my knees cracked and my tailbone ached like hell from the hard floor. Even my wrists creaked as I planted my hands to help me up. They’d taken the zip ties off after the last time, and my skin was bruised and tender. The cuff felt twice as heavy. Once I was finally on my feet, I stumbled forward, debating whether to ask where they were taking me, but then I decided it didn’t matter. What was I going to do? Fight them and run away? I’d played a ton of Street Fighter, but that wasn’t exactly going to help me. Plus, I hadn’t been paying enough attention when they had brought me in here. I had no idea where to go, and I knew I’d only have one chance to escape, if I even had that much. I wasn’t going to waste it. Not in this condition.