Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
A grin pulled at my mouth.
This was going to be fun.
Only the grin slid off my face when I felt the disturbance. This feeling that saturated the air in a clotted dread.
Awareness slipped through my senses.
The kind that promised the faulty foundation I’d been standing on had just been ripped out from under me.
Oz led another player downstairs, and the man slowly rounded down, the clack of his shoes echoing on the wood steps like the tapping of destruction.
The sense only grew as he came more into view, until that awareness turned into shocking recognition.
It pitched the air out of my lungs and sent my defenses to high alert.
Ice slipped down my spine, and any warmth that still remained in my blood went cold.
Jarek Urso crawled to the underbelly of the house like the scum that he was.
A flash of rage singed through my being.
Fierce.
Savage.
A swell of lightheadedness rushed to my brain.
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
I had to physically hold onto the arms of the chair to keep from launching myself across the room to snuff him out. To beat a debt out of him that he’d had coming to him for seven years.
He’d taken the one thing from me that had ever mattered. The one thing that could never be replaced.
My hands curled tighter to the chair as my vision clouded over in red when my attention caught on the woman who trailed behind Jarek with her hand twined in his.
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see her face.
I’d recognize her from a mile away.
My stomach soured, and hot hatred pounded through my frozen blood, ripping open an old, ugly wound.
Jarek took the last step into the basement, coming up short when he felt the force of my stare, the grudge that burned and the dark ideas that spun too far and too fast.
He angled his head in a clear-cut challenge.
Since her head was downturned, Aster Rose all but collided into his back.
Aster who jerked her attention up to find what had stalled her husband.
Aster whose fire-agate eyes went wide and whose rose-petal lips parted when she found me sitting across the room.
Shock whispered through the air in tendrils of hot static.
Hate and hurt.
Hate and hurt.
I wasn’t sure if it was hers or mine.
Jarek’s eyes narrowed in possession, and his hand tightened on his wife’s.
My jaw clenched, and my heart thrashed.
Haille chuckled as he glanced between us like the snake knew he’d just invited two beasts into the ring, and he was excited by the prospect of us ripping each other to shreds.
A fight to the death.
“Welcome to my home.” Haille lifted his arms in a show of pretension. “Please, have a seat. It is time to begin.”
Jarek took the last spot directly across from me.
Aster stood behind him like an adornment, long, dark brown hair worn in an intricate, seductive twist, pieces trailing down to kiss the skin of her bare shoulders. A black, silky dress draped over her curves like the sluicing of dark water.
And in a moment, I knew all bets were off.
I wondered if it was possible to drown on hatred as another hand of cards was dealt.
Wondered if my lungs could physically implode with the weight of the loss, with the shape of her presence, if there was a chance we’d be crushed by the carnage strewn between us.
Tension bound the room, and few words had been said, everyone’s attention rapt on the duel going down.
It wasn’t unusual for a high-stakes game.
But tonight, while I sat there trying to hide the fact I was twitching like a rabid beast, it felt like the purse had shifted.
The goal, the objective, the target—they had blurred and hazed and taken new shape.
Purpose skewed.
Contorting.
Distorting reason and sound mind.
Hours had passed.
Each had whittled away a little more of the exterior—the pretenses and façades—and peeled away my flesh to reveal bare bones.
It seemed I was no longer playing for wealth.
It was pride.
Revenge.
Or maybe it was purely survival because I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through this alive.
The only thing I was certain of as I pushed another ten grand into the pot and stared across at the single player who remained was that I was going to destroy him. Take everything he had and ruin what was left.
Jarek tried to keep his expression neutral, the pompous prick with his slicked back black hair and his careless confidence that had been given to him through his name rather than earned.
Like he was confident I would let him reach out and take what was mine.
Not ever again.
Even with the pungent arrogance, I saw the tick of his jaw, the flinch of his eyes, the sheen of sweat that hinted at the edges of his brow and glimmered beneath the dull lights from the chandelier that hung from above.
He glanced at his dwindling chips.