Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 137326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“You were never a subject of my entertainment,” I snap, then rein it in and breathe calmly. “Let’s meet. We need to talk.”
“So you can finish the job with Violet?”
“I won’t harm her.”
“But Jude will. Like he did a few months ago.”
“He didn’t—”
“Stop lying to me!”
Fuck. If she talks over me one more time, I’m grabbing her throat through the goddamn phone.
Why the fuck isn’t she letting me speak?
“Just so you know, if Jude comes near her, I’ll kill him.” All her sniffles disappear and she sounds stone cold, far away. “Don’t let me see your face again or I’ll kill you too.”
The phone goes dead.
36
KANE
SIX MONTHS AGO
“Is this the place?”
Jude’s voice carries on the wind, doing nothing to interrupt the fucking chaos below.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say.
Most of the streetlight bulbs are burned out—only three work across the entire street. But as his dark eyes scan the area below, carefully observing the sketchy-as-fuck neighborhood, he looks like a grim reaper with a thirst for blood.
The place reeks of so much poverty, we had to leave Jude’s motorcycle and my car at the gas station to avoid standing out and rented a Hyundai to reach this fuckery of human society.
The stench of piss, vomit, and rotting trash fills the air, thickening and swirling in the night’s stale humidity.
From up here, we have a perfect view of the grimy streets, of the skittering shadows moving like ghosts beneath flickering streetlights.
Small-time dealers lean against the walls, barely hidden in the dark, slipping bags of powder or pills into greedy hands, their eyes darting around, their rancid breath polluting the air. The faint murmur of exchanges is punctuated by the occasional shout or cough from the alleyways or the paper-thin walls. Now and again, there’s the dull clatter of a bottle rolling on the cracked pavement.
A couple of homeless people huddle in a corner, too far gone to care about the fights brewing around them. Their rags hang off them like dead skin, their hollowed-out faces lost in the shadow of a world that doesn’t give a damn about them.
There’s the breaking of glass bottles and a muttered quarrel rising between two small-time gangsters under the glow of a busted neon sign, their voices low but threatening, tension vibrating in the air.
“What a shithole.” Jude grins. “Fitting, really. Rats do live in sewers after all.”
“What are your plans for this one?”
“Big. As usual.” He tilts his head in my direction. “Though it’ll be a challenge to make her life more miserable than the literal hell she lives in.”
“I doubt there’s a worse hell than you.”
“Won’t argue with that—”
He purses his lips when a girl trudges down the street, her shoulders hunched. Her light hair is hidden in a hoodie as she quickens her steps, narrowly escaping the two fighting and throwing broken glass at each other.
It takes me a second to figure out she’s our target.
Violet Winters.
“That’s her,” I say. “Back from her late-night shift at some other hellhole.”
Jude says nothing.
His eyes narrow, and I think I catch a spark lighting up the dark brown before it flatlines to its usual deadliness.
“Another fucking one bites the dust,” he mutters, and even though it’s low, his voice is deeper.
His posture is straighter, his gaze more calculating than usual.
Violet stops by the sleeping homeless men no one notices, then she reaches into her plastic bag, pulls out two sandwiches, and puts them on their plates.
She rises to her full height, starts to walk, then halts, fishes a few bills from her pocket, sighs, and places them beneath the sandwiches, carefully hiding them from view.
Jude laughs, the sound low and sinister. “We have a fucking saint on our hands, Kane. The irony.”
“Not really irony. That day, she was the only one to call 911. She’s also the cleanest of the bunch. No matter how deep I dug, I couldn’t find any dirt on her.” I stare up at him. “Honestly, if you leave her to rot, her life will do the honors.”
“Her disgusting innocence will kill her, huh?”
“Possibly.”
“Too bad I don’t believe in innocence. No one from that day is fucking innocent.”
As she hurries toward the house where the landlord rents her and her sister the attic, Violet is swung back by her elbow.
By one of the swaying drunks. Oily haphazard hair, a beer belly, and slurring speech.
“Hi, beauuuutiful. Care for a ride?”
Her face goes red and she attempts to pull her arm away. “Please let me go, Dave.”
Too soft.
Too pleading.
What a lamb.
I’m surprised she’s lasted this long in this type of neighborhood.
“D-Dave, you’re hurting me…please…” She pulls herself free, but she doesn’t make it one step before he catches her from behind, his hands groping everywhere.
Jude takes a step forward.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I whisper. “We’re only here to watch.”
He takes another step when the door to her house blasts open.