Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
“You have a location of the body?” he asks.
I give him the details.
“We’ll check it out,” he says. “You want to finish up there and meet us?”
The thought of seeing Beth discarded in a water culvert fills me with rage. Carina’s shallow grave still haunts me. I don’t need to add Beth’s to a list of things that still haunt me at night. I can inflict great pain. But its only ever on men who have fucked up and betrayed the club or hurt the innocent. Seeing it inflicted on innocence cuts me to the bone.
“Nah, I’m going to stay here.” I pin Eugene with a rageful gaze. “Hang out with Eugene for a few more hours.”
Eugene vomits again because he knows what’s coming next is going to hurt.
And it does.
A lot.
By the time Beast calls me an hour later to tell me they’ve found Beth’s remains, Eugene is begging me to kill him.
But that would be too easy for him.
I toy with him a little longer.
Until my bloodlust is satiated.
Now toothless, thanks to a pair of pliers, Eugene looks at me through his one eye.
“Kill me please,” he begs.
And I do.
With one swing of the sledgehammer.
Just as it starts to rain.
Dropping the sledgehammer, I kick the chair over, and Eugene falls to the soggy ground, the blood from his wounds mingling with the puddles of rainwater.
I walk away.
My job here is done.
It was probably overkill.
But it’s who I am.
I don’t just enforce retribution.
I deliver it in a way only I know how.
With no mercy.
CHAPTER 4
Ella
The dress is champagne-colored silk and falls past my hips and down to my ankles. The spaghetti straps show off my arms, and the neckline is high enough to retain a level of modesty but still low enough to tantalize.
My hair is up, pulled into place by our housekeeper, Antonia, whose wise old eyes noticed the fresh bruises around my throat but whose pinched mouth said nothing as she styled my hair. For months she has watched this home change from a beautiful oasis into a wasteland of fear and darkness. But she says nothing. She has family back home who depend on her income. But as she did my hair, our eyes met in the mirror, and I saw the empathy in them. She knows exactly how my brother treats me and how I am powerless to stop it.
I am now no longer in the safety of my bedroom. Now I am standing in my brother’s palatial den with its high cathedral ceilings and spectacularly gilded walls. When my father built this house many years ago, he made it as an opulent offering to my mother. I’m sure she is turning in her grave right now, just like my father probably is while they watch this spectacle unfold.
In front of me is a camera on a tripod. A blinking red light tells me it is recording.
My job is to stand here and look demure and sexy at the same time. My brother has even gone as far as sticking markers to the marble floor to indicate where I should stand. I am not to move past the markers. I am to stand here like a mannequin. A beautiful, lifeless mannequin with dead eyes and no voice. But I’m not a mannequin. I am a living breathing human being who is about to be sold to the highest bidder, and I am screaming inside.
On the receiving end of the livestream of me standing here in a seven-thousand-dollar designer dress are five men who my brother has invited for today’s auction. I don’t know who they are. But they will be big players in the organized crime world, and it terrifies me. Because I know who exactly they are going to be. Evil. Ruthless. Monsters. Just like my brother.
Luca is watching me from behind his desk, his dark, cold eyes trained on me. Every now and again he looks down at the laptop screen to watch the bids as they come in for the Moretti virgin bride.
It takes everything in me to not cry. Everything to not break his rules. Because if I take one step out of place, my sweet sister will pay the price.
But I am shaking, and my throat is tight with fear. My heart bangs against my rib bones, and the vibration rattles throughout my body. But I won’t give Luca the satisfaction of seeing my fear. Instead, I keep my face as expressionless as I think of all the ways I will murder Luca Moretti.
And as my fate is sealed by one astounding bid, I stare at my brother who is clapping his hands together in glee, and I make a silent vow to one day kill him.
CHAPTER 5
Lars
After leaving Eugene to rot in the shit and the piss and the rain, I don’t head for home right away, despite being bone tired. Instead, I go for a ride along the cliffs that fringe the town because I need the kind of soothing only a night ride can give me.