Total pages in book: 331
Estimated words: 315585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1578(@200wpm)___ 1262(@250wpm)___ 1052(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 315585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1578(@200wpm)___ 1262(@250wpm)___ 1052(@300wpm)
My heart begins to race when I see the first one on the right is open. I rush into it, looking around. My tennis shoes crunch the broken glass that still remains on the floor from last night when I visited. Why haven’t they cleaned it? And the blood? The floor is covered in it. Something has been dragged through it. Smearing it across the concrete floor.
“Why are you down here?”
I turn around to see my father following me and step into the cell. “Where is she?” I demand.
“She’s gone, Kashton.”
“You moved her?” I shove him out of the way and rush out of her cell. I go to the one across from her. Wrapping my hands around the bars, I scream into it. “Mom?” A frail woman sits in the far corner, her arms wrapped around her bony legs with her head down, trying to hide her naked body. “Where is she?” I shout, and the person flinches.
“Kashton.”
“Mom?” I scream, starting to panic. I run down the hallway, scanning each cell. There are a few that don’t have bars, just concrete doors, and I slam my fists on them as I call to her, hoping she answers from the other side.
“She’s gone, Kashton.” My father yanks me back by my shirt and spins me around to face him.
“You killed her.” I punch him, and he pushes me away. “Why? Why would you do that?” Tears sting my eyes.
“She killed herself.”
“No.” I refuse to believe that. “She wouldn’t leave me.”
“Come on.” He grabs my upper arm and pulls me through the basement and to the morgue.
We enter a cold room that has rows and rows of drawers stacked three high. It’s where they keep the bodies. There’s a metal table in the center with a white sheet over it that’s soaked in blood.
A knot gets lodged in my throat when my father walks over to it and yanks it back.
It’s my mother, but I refuse to believe it. “No.” My tear-filled eyes go to his.
“She took a piece of glass and slit her throat,” he explains, running his finger across her neck, following the open wound. It looks almost fake. Like a Halloween costume with its uneven line.
“This is your fault,” I scream. My chest is squeezing. I can’t breathe. “You…you didn’t clean up the shattered glass.” It was from the light bulb that had broken. It was all over the floor. “It was cutting her.” She had blood on her hands and knees last night from crawling around her cell.
He says nothing, and I walk over to her and place my hands on her arm. I’ve never been able to touch her before. Even in her cell, she never tried to reach out to me or get close enough to hold my hand. That’s all I ever wanted. To show her how much she meant to me. How much I love her.
“No.” I shake my head. “She wouldn’t leave me. She loves me…” Tears roll down my face. “Please…Mom.” I sniff when my nose begins to run, digging my fingers into her cold skin. “No.”
“Sometimes you have to hurt the one you love.”
“You’ve never hurt me.”
“I will. It’s life…inevitable.”
She knew last night what she was going to do. That she was going to leave me. End her life. I bow my head and close my eyes tightly to try and keep the tears from falling in front of my father. He’ll see me as weak. “Please, God—”
I’m ripped from her, and my father digs his fingers into my upper arms. “Are you fucking praying?” he snaps, and I try to pull away, but he just tightens his grip. “God doesn’t exist, boy. You are the god.”
I shake my head.
“Yes. You are judge, jury, and executioner. You decide who lives, suffers, and dies.”
“I will never be like you,” I scream.
“Sir, we’re ready,” a voice says from behind me.
My father lets me go and nods to them. “Then get it done.”
The man starts to roll my mother to a door on the opposite side of the room. “Where is she going?” I demand, looking at him. “What are you going to do?”
“Cremating her. Then I’m throwing her ashes out with the trash.”
I wake up to my cell ringing, and for a second, I just lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Eve has brought back memories I’ve tried to forget, and I know why. A part of me wants to save her from herself. I failed my mother. The saying goes history repeats itself, and I won’t do the same when it comes to Eve.
But it’s different with my future Lady. I knew I wanted her before I even knew who she was, before I knew about her past.
It rings again and I think about ignoring it. Maybe trying to go back to sleep dreaming of Eve and the future we’re going to have.