Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
I stand, look at my makeshift dagger, a shiv, I guess. I feel calmer for it. Carefully tucking it into the pocket of my oversized sweats, I walk to the door. I need to get out of here. I need to figure out some plan for Wren and me. I can’t just sit here and wait for him.
“Hey!” I call out. “Hey! Let me out of here!” I slap my hands against the door. It’s loud and it hurts my palms, but I do it again. I want this over with. I need it over with. I need him to come. This was a mistake. Blackmailing a man like Ezekiel St. James was a huge mistake.
There’s nothing though. No response. He doesn’t come. I’m not even sure the driver is outside my door or in the house at all. Hell, maybe he’s just going to leave me here to starve to death.
I pace the room, try the windows, but they’re sealed tight. Not sure what I’d do if I could open one anyway, scale the wall? Not likely. I’m not Spiderman.
Again, I go to the door and bang and holler. Again, nothing. The image of the brothers at The Cat House comes to mind. How they’d looked in their cloaks and masks. How big they were when they stood. How strong the one who wrapped his hands around my arms just a little tighter than necessary in the guise of helping me when I would have fallen.
Tears threaten but I wipe the few that escape away and tell myself to stop it. It’s pathetic and I’m scared, yes, but I need to think about Wren. What will happen to her if I don’t get out of here?
“Let me out!” I scream again, the words ending on a sob as I slam my fists into the door and this time, this time, there is something. Someone slams their fist into it from the other side and I jump backward, my heart hammering. I think it was better when there was no response.
It happens again, that fist slamming so hard the door rattles in its hinges, and I back up, wondering how long someone has been out there. Wondering if he was just listening. Waiting. Getting in my head.
The lock disengages and I hurry away from the door, my heart in my throat. I slide my hand into my pocket and close it around the shiv, wincing when it slices my palm because those few tissues wrapped around it don’t offer much protection.
I back up as the door opens. Light from the hallway illuminates his dark form, making him appear bigger. Darker. More menacing as he stands in his cloak and mask and I swear he’s taller and bigger than he was at the club, eyes on fire with power, and fury, knowing his dominion over me. I hear the pathetic sound my throat makes. I’m sure he hears it too.
There’s a part of me that wishes it was the driver. It’s not. It’s Ezekiel St. James. He steps inside and he doesn’t stop until he eats up the space between us and backs me into the wall. He towers over me and the sight of him in that cloak and mask is fucking terrifying. I’ve never been this scared in my life. Not even the night that changed my life forever. The night that sent us on the run.
The sheer size of him, his presence larger than life, his fury a palpable thing in the room with us, it’s all too much. It’s all too fucking much.
4
Ezekiel
Terror has her muttering senseless words. Has her frozen to the spot, her back pressed to the wall. Her narrow shoulders shake hard. She brings a hand to my chest, her fingers trembling. It’s as if she’s checking to make sure I’m real. Her touch is so very insignificant, like a butterfly landing on a lion. Her eyes search my face behind the mask. She is unable to hold my gaze.
I could end her. Here. Now. No one would know. All it would take would be a quick twisting of her tiny little neck. The slamming of her head against the wall. Just one of my hands pressing against her throat to squeeze the breath from her. To steal the life from her. She’s that much smaller than me. Maybe five-feet-two-inches and petite. Physically, she doesn’t stand a chance.
And yet she dares to try and extort money from me. To threaten to expose me. To threaten Zoë and Jericho and all those about whom I care.
She makes a sound, something like a broken little bird caught in the jaws of a predator.
Broken. No. That’s not right. Not with this girl. It’s something else. She’s a fighter. A survivor. That sound is the sound of someone who is caught. Who is desperate.