Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 72480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
She stares at me for a few seconds, then nods at her guards, and they quickly walk off and close the door behind them.
“No … you’re a woman now … a woman who has managed to enthrall a very special man.” She reaches for me with her index finger, caressing my cheek, and the sudden shift in personality chokes me up for a moment. “Tell me, what is it that you see in him?”
My cheeks flush. “I don’t see any—”
“Of course you do, honey,” she barks. “Why else would he be so infatuated with you?”
“I was his prisoner,” I say. “Nothing more.”
“Yet he’s been searching for you nonstop ever since you escaped his claws.”
My eyes widen. “How would you know?”
She cackles. “You really are naïve, aren’t you? You think Marcello is the only one with eyes and ears all over the city?” She raises a brow. “Or did you think one of my guards just happened to stumble onto you, hmm?”
It’s getting too hot under my feet, and I don’t like where this conversation is going. “What do you want from me?”
“Tell me about Marcello,” she says, grabbing a strand of my hair to curl around her finger. “Why is he so interested in you?”
“I don’t know … I …”
“Think hard,” she murmurs. “Because I don’t want you to regret what you tell me.”
I gulp and think back to everything Marcello told me, and something about the restaurant and his dying fiancée springs to mind. “I think he said I reminded him of Alannah.”
“Alannah?” Her pupils dilate, and her nostrils flare, but she instantly regains her composure and clears her throat. “Interesting. No wonder he took you in.”
I don’t like where this is going. She’s fishing for information, but it doesn’t feel right. Even if I once considered her my mother, I don’t think I can trust her. Maybe I never could. The more she asks me about Marcello, the less I’m willing to talk. I don’t want to betray him. Even though I know he’s a bad guy too, he somehow feels less dangerous than my mother right now.
I straighten my back. “I don’t understand why any of this matters to you. You have me back. That’s what you wanted, right?”
Her eyes narrow, and a tepid but dangerous smile spreads on her lips. “Come … There’s something I want you to see.”
She walks toward the door and says, “Unlock it.”
The guards open the door and let her out, and she glances at me over her shoulder with a deadly gaze. I don’t think I should defy her. Not now.
So I swallow my fears and follow suit.
She takes me downstairs and underneath, where there’s a hidden door that leads into a grimy-looking basement. The walls are covered in webs, dust litters the floor, and the lower we go, the harder it becomes to breathe. Doesn’t feel like they air this place out very often.
However, the moment I get downstairs, I stop breathing entirely.
There’s a man strapped to a chair, blindfolded with his arms locked in place behind him. Another guy holds a gun to his head.
“What’s going on?” I mutter as I clutch the wall with one hand to steady myself.
“Please … help me,” the man in the chair begs, his voice fluctuating in tone as the gun is pressed firmly against his temple.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Release him.”
My mother glances at me over her shoulder and proceeds to laugh. “Release him? No, honey. He’s here for a reason.”
I stare at the guy’s twisted ankle, the bloodied mess at his feet, and the finger lying on the floor. Bile rises up my throat.
I don’t know who he is, but no one deserves that kind of pain.
“He defied my orders. No one defies my orders,” my mother says.
One flick of her fingers is all it takes to make the guy scream.
BANG!
The gun goes off.
I close my eyes.
Not in time to avoid seeing the bullet fly straight through his brain, lodging into the wall to the right. When I open my eyes again, the man’s body slumps sideways, still attached to the chair.
Panic unfurls inside me, and I swallow my vomit as it rises.
I can’t stop staring at the man in front of me who was tortured and then killed, regardless of his answers. At the man who probably didn’t deserve this fate that’s worse than a quick death.
And no one did a thing to stop it.
She had this man killed without showing an ounce of remorse.
My mother steps toward me, her lips pursed as she inches closer to my ear. “That’s what happens … when you betray me.”
My body begins to shake.
This wasn’t just an execution.
It was a threat.
Not to that man … but to me.
Harper
She grabs my hand and pulls me up the stairs and out of the basement. Before I know it, I’m dragged all the way back up to my room again, this time without a key to escape. She shoves me inside and clutches the door while staring at me.