Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 67468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“I can talk to her any way I want to,” Oberon insisted. “How about we figure out just how much you fucked up. Did you remember to turn the perimeter alarm back on when you got into the house?”
“No.” Coran rolled his eyes. “I didn’t bother because you said you were about to leave.”
Oberon snorted. “And you think I can leave now? I have to be here to give you an alibi. If I’m seen in town, they’re going to know that I wasn’t here.”
The ‘moron’ wasn’t said aloud, but it was definitely implied.
Oberon wasn’t dumb… at least mostly.
He’d obviously been perpetuating the perfect double cross of his—and Cassius’s—lifetime. He’d been keeping Crista Costas prisoner for years.
At least, that was what I assumed, anyway. I mean, why else would she still be here?
“How about you tell me what’s going on here?” Crista, Cassius’s mother, asked. “You were supposed to bring him food, Coran. Which, yet again, you haven’t done. Do you ever follow through with what you tell us you’re going to do?”
If that didn’t sound motherish, I didn’t know what did.
“No, ma’am.” Coran winced.
I had no clue what in the hell was going on here.
“How about you let her go because she looks scared,” Crista ordered.
Coran’s grip only tightened.
Crista obviously understood, because she moved so that she had her hand on my arm, and she was tugging me gently away from Coran. “You’ll hurt her.”
Okay, so obviously she knew how to handle Coran. Was he mentally unstable or something? Autistic? Slightly psychotic? I mean, obviously there was more to Coran than met the eye.
Coran loosened his fingers, and just as his hand slipped away and Crista was pulling me gently toward her, she whispered, “Don’t make any sudden moves. He overreacts.”
You think? I wanted to say.
Instead, I moved so slowly that I felt like I was moving backward.
“But if you take her, she can’t stay with me like you stay with Dad,” Coran insisted.
“Get her to the other room,” Oberon murmured.
Crista moved so that we were in a different part of the house. An area that felt like it was completely closed off from where we were previously. So closed off, in fact, that I couldn’t hear a word that was being said.
Something in which I didn’t like, at all, and pulled away from Crista.
“No, come back,” she rushed out.
I shook her off and moved so that I was close to the entranceway, only to see Oberon yanking Coran off into another part of the house.
I quickly followed, with Crista ordering me to come back at my heels.
“He’ll be so mad if you interrupt. Trust me, I’ve tried. But sometimes, Coran is a little unmanageable. He will freak way the heck out, and he only calms down with Oberon. Trust me when I say…” She trailed off when the object of my affection stepped into the room.
He took one look at me, his mother, and then stalked toward where he could hear Oberon talking.
He took two huge, giant steps into the room, hauled his hand back, and struck out with such ferocity that I was surprised and a little taken aback. Oh, and turned on. Seeing him hit Oberon?
What’s worse was he didn’t just punch the man like a normal man would that was pissed. He open palm slapped him across the face as if Oberon were a woman.
Oberon cried out, his hand going to his face, and looked so stunned to see Cassius standing there that he at first didn’t react.
Which, luckily, gave Karen enough time to get into the room, take a quick glance around, and head straight for Coran.
“Coran, you are under arrest for the abduction of Alice Paradis,” Karen said, holding her cuffs out. “Turn around and put your hands on your head.”
That’s when shit went to utter hell around us.
One second, everything was calm and controlled, and the next, both Coran and Oberon were launching themselves at Karen as if she were the biggest threat in the room.
Which, technically, if Cassius was a rule follower, she would’ve been.
But that was the thing about Cassius Ulysses Costas. He was not a rule follower. He was not even a rule breaker. He made his own damn rules and gave zero fucks who he offended when he did.
Before Coran could launch himself at Karen, Cassius laid him out with a quick one-two punch to the face. Oberon, not expecting that kind of violence out of Cassius, rounded on him. But Karen showed that she’d read that situation clearly, because she had Oberon contained and moving toward the corner of the room with a quick ‘you do anything and you’ll regret it’ motion.
“While he’s down,” Karen called on her way, “pick those zip tie cuffs off the floor and restrain him.”
“I’ll do it,” Crista murmured as she picked the cuffs up that’d been discarded and went to work on Coran’s unconscious form. “But just sayin’, when he wakes back up, he’s going to freak the hell out. He doesn’t do well confined.”