Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 108709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
“Fuck.”
She’s small and fast, and I bet she assumes my brute size will slow me down, but I’ve been training for this. I’ve been working toward this breakout for years. Sure, it came a little earlier than anticipated, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not ready. And while my abundance of muscle sure as fuck slows me down, my long stride makes up for what I’m lacking.
I sprint after her, breaking past the bushes as low-hanging branches whip across my face. I follow her every step, ducking and weaving through the trees like a fucking maze.
“Come on, Menace. You can’t outrun me,” I holler behind her. “Where do you think you’re going to go?”
“I’m not your menace!” she cries, her arms pumping as fast as they can go, trying to propel herself deeper into the thick bushes with no clear plan in mind.
Rage consumes me. After everything she has done to me, everything she’s put me through, how dare she think she can try to escape me.
She gets ahead for all of three seconds before my long strides eat up the distance between us, and if I wasn’t so fucking exhausted, I might have let her think she got the best of me, but today is not the day. We don’t have time to waste on this bullshit.
Aria screams like this is some fucked-up scene out of a movie as I quickly catch up to her. Then, only allowing for one final step, I close my hand around the back of her neck, slamming her against a thick tree trunk, instantly bearing down on her.
“You wanna fucking do this, then let’s do this,” I roar, my hand not moving from her throat for even a second as she trembles in my hold, her eyes filled with the kind of fear that I’ve only ever seen once in my life. “Your time for bullshit is up. Start talking, and maybe I’ll end this quickly.”
Aria grips my wrist, frantically trying to claw her way free, her nails digging deep into my skin, but the adrenaline pulsing through my veins keeps me going.
“Start. Talking.”
Tears well in her green eyes, flowing over her lower lashes and down her cheeks, and I almost laugh. There was a time when those big, fat tears would have brought me to my knees. Not anymore.
“I swear,” she chokes out, desperately pleading. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do whatever it is you think I did. I’m not . . . I’m not her.”
“You can’t fuck with me, Menace,” I snap, digging my hand into my pocket and pulling out the Polaroid I’ve kept of her pretty face since the day I took the goddamn picture. I hold it up in front of her face, roaring with frustration. “This is you. Riley fucking Maddox. The real you, not this bullshit version of yourself, Aria Ashford. There’s no mistaking it. I have known you since you were four years old. We grew up side by side. I know every goddamn scar on your body, every freckle, every fucking hair, so don’t try to insult me by telling me that you are not her. Nobody on this fucking planet knows you the way I do.”
That familiar green gaze settles on the small Polaroid picture in my hand, and I watch as confusion clouds her eyes. I know exactly what she’s thinking as her eyes track the curve of her younger face. She’s taking in her own beaming smile, wondering how she can possibly deny this.
“No,” Aria breathes, starting to shake her head, her brows pinched together. “That’s . . . That’s me, but how do you have that? I don’t . . . I don’t understand. That’s not possible.”
What the hell is she talking about? How is it not possible? “The fuck it is. I took the goddamn picture eleven years ago.”
“But . . . I was only thirteen then. I was just a child. There’s no way. I don’t—”
My grip tightens around her throat, and her gaze tears away from the Polaroid and back to mine. “What the fuck is going on, Menace?”
There’s a real fear in her eyes, but this is different. It’s as though she doesn’t even notice my hand around her throat anymore. She goes somewhere far away, her gaze dropping to my chest as she tries to figure something out, and as I take her in, I wonder if I even know her at all.
The woman I grew up with wasn’t afraid of anything, especially not me. She was fearless, reckless, and full of life. She was just like me. I molded her that way because it was the only way for us to survive, but the way Aria trembles and shrinks away . . . She’s never done that before. Apart from what’s happened today, I have never given her a reason to fear me, not even when she watched me tear those six men to shreds all those years ago.