Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 101872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Battery-operated. Was there power here? Maybe not.
Shit.
That didn’t seem to bode well for them being rescued. They could be anywhere and if they were off grid, it might be really hard to find them.
“You stupid boy! Let me go! Right now. I can’t believe you would do this to me, you lazy idiot!” the Grackle cried.
“Yeah, well, I’m beginning to see that was a mistake,” she said dryly as Barney stomped over to his aunt.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he yelled.
“I will not shut up! How dare you do this to me. What do you think you are doing! When I get out of here—”
Smack!
Opal jumped. Shit! She hadn’t thought he would hit his aunt. And neither did the Grackle if the way she cried out, then went silent was any indication.
“Shut. Up,” he snarled.
Opal eyed him warily. Right. This wasn’t easygoing, submissive Barney.
“I’m in charge now. Not you. For once we do what I want to do. Eat what I want to eat. No more of you telling me what to do all the time! I’m thirty-five, Auntie! And you treat me like a boy. No. More.”
“I wouldn’t treat you like a baby, if you didn’t act like one,” the Grackle sneered.
Slap!
Okay, she was really starting to think she’d overestimated Mrs. Gingers’ intelligence.
“Right, let’s just calm things down okay,” Opal said as she shuffled her way between Barney and the Grackle. “Barney, what’s going on here? What are you doing? Have you really thought this through?”
And how the fuck was anyone going to find them? Why had she let herself be fooled by him? She’d run into the house without a phone or Zappy, Bangy, or Stingy.
Renard was not going to be happy.
“I will not be questioned!”
Smack!
Ow. Fuck.
Pain shot through her face and she fell back onto the floor.
All right. As well as overestimating the Grackle’s intelligence, she’d also underestimated Barney’s sanity.
She’d never imagined that he might do this.
Useless cunt.
Only one thing you’re good for.
She lay on the floor, staring at the wall, ignoring the noises around her as the past captured her.
The pain.
The humiliation.
The fear.
Fight, Opal.
This isn’t going to be your life.
You’ve had darkness. You’ve had dirty. You’ve had wrong.
And now you have beauty. You have kindness and hope and the sexiest fucking man on the planet.
Fight, Opal.
“You want to know why you’re here? Why I’m doing this?” Barney screamed as he paced back and forth. “Because you have humiliated me day after day.”
Opal sat up to find him glaring down at his aunt who cowered behind her. Opal didn’t know how old the Grackle was, but she was certain that she could take more pain than the older woman.
“Bossing me around, telling me what to do, then picking on everything I did. I was never good enough, was I, Auntie!” he screamed.
Opal figured the fact that he wasn’t worried about screaming wasn’t a good sign.
Because it meant he knew that no one was close enough to hear him.
“But now who is in charge, Auntie? Me! Now you do what the fuck I say.” His face was growing red, almost purple.
Damn, was it too much to ask for that he have a heart attack and die?
Yep, seemed it was since he was still breathing.
“Why do this?” she asked. “Why not just disappear out of her life? Why come back every weekend?”
“I was going to stop. Tried to do it, but she kept calling and calling until I came. I had it down to once a month. But then you moved in across the road. And I just knew it was a sign. The universe was finally giving me what I deserved. You were meant to be mine, Opal. The perfect little slut for me.”
“What the fuck?” she snapped. “I’m not a slut!”
“Yes, you are. Crass and classless is what my aunt would call you. As I jerked off in the basement while staring at you as you slept, I knew that you were going to be my perfect little whore. So I kept coming back because of you.”
Oh.
Fucking awesome.
29
Renard was losing his mind.
He was sitting in a meeting room in the police department. Everyone seemed busy, rushing around, doing what they could to find a trace of his girl.
And he was sitting here.
Doing. Fucking. Nothing.
Screw this.
He stood. He was going to find her.
“Where are you going?” Saxon turned to stare at him. He hadn’t left his side since Duncan delivered the news to him that Opal was missing.
That was ten hours ago. It was now seven in the morning. And they had next to nothing. Christ.
“I’m going to look for her.”
“We have no idea where she is. We can’t just go looking for her,” Saxon told him.
“I can drive around. I might find something.” What, he had no idea. But there had been nothing so far. And he couldn’t take it anymore.