Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 87961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
I toss my hands up. “What do you want me to do?”
“Leave!” Her chest is heaving. “Let me leave.” She looks utterly broken.
I drag my hands through my hair and pace. I glance at her, tears are streaming down her face. I don’t need her here, because she is a weakness. If Joe finds her, so be it. She doesn’t belong to me, but for some reason part of me feels like she should. Exhaling, I point toward the door. “Leave then. If that’s what you want, then leave. I won’t stop you.”
She stares at me, her expression falling blank.
“Believe me. You can leave, but Joe will find you. What are you gonna do, huh? Go to the police?” Laughing, I shrug. “You’ve no idea how corrupt everything is. If I have the police in my back pocket, believe you me, so does fucking Joe. The second you go to them, he’ll find you.” I fall silent, thinking of the shit he did to my mother and sister. “And the things you’ve unfortunately experienced here will pale in fucking comparison to what he will do. So if that's what you want, just go ahead and leave. I’m not fucking keeping you prisoner. The fucking debt has been paid. Go!” I realize I’m shouting.
She nods, walking past me cautiously, like at any minute she expects me to grab her and force her against a wall. As soon as she gets to the door, she runs.
I exhale, my eyes dropping to the floor. If she really leaves, she’s as good as dead.
Leave. It’s one word with so much meaning. Freedom, escape, liberation. His eyes bore into mine, daring me to go.
I turn on my heel and walk out the door without a backward glance. My pace picks up as I climb the stairs and run along the hall to the front door. I throw it open, half expecting an armed firing squad to appear at any second. Nothing. I watch a handful of dead leaves blow across the gravel drive.
I jump down the steps and start running, the gravel crunching beneath my feet.
I hit the tree line and keep going. I run until I realise that I don’t know where I’m running to. I stop in a clearing, my chest heaving as I try to catch my breath. I have my freedom, but what is freedom when you have nowhere to go. You can release a bird from its cage, but if you’ve clipped its wings then its freedom is merely a false kindness.
I have nothing. I believe Jude when he tells me that Joe will kill me. Any man who would kill Jude’s family and risk his wrath is not a man that I want to risk provoking.
I could go to the police, tell them I’m not dead, but the second I do that, Joe knows I’m alive and it will only be a matter of time.
I could run away, but I have no money, no friends to help me anymore. I’m completely alone, more alone than I have ever felt in my life. Its one thing to be lonely, but quite another to be a dead girl walking. I don’t exist anymore. I don’t exist outside the boundary of Jude’s property. Jude and Caleb are all I have left, and isn’t that just tragic?
Tears stream down my cheek as I realise what a broken mess my life really is. My former life seems like a distant dream, and like a dream that you can barely remember, there seems to be no way back to it.
If I run now, the likelihood is that I will die.
I lean against a nearby tree for a second and listen to the birds chirping happily in the trees. I remember when I was little, I always used to climb into my mother’s bed early in the morning and she would tell me to listen to the bird song. I always took that sound for granted, but now I can’t remember the last time I stopped and listened to it. Sometimes it’s the small things in life that make it worth living. She would want me to live. She would want me to make the best possible choice for my own survival, because when this is over, and I have to believe that it will be over, life will go on.
Jude is my only option here, because he will protect me from Joe. For some reason I trust him, I trust him to do as he says. If he says he’ll protect me then I know that he will. He has no reason to lie to me, and everything that he has done, he did because of Joe. Joe has taken everything from me, and he destroyed Jude’s family. In a way, we are united over a common enemy.