Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 128356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
His mouth is covered by silver duct tape, and his shirt and pants are torn in places, blood oozing from his multiple injuries. The worst part is his bare feet, where dirt and leaves are stuck to the dried blood.
“Mmmm!” he screams behind the duct tape, rocking back and forth in his chair upon seeing me.
I rush to his side, my legs barely carrying me, and I try to slowly remove the tape. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay, you stupid bitch!” he snarls, shouting. “Untie me before that sick motherfucker comes back.”
“Oh, okay.” I’m breathing harshly as I slide behind him and work on the tight knots. “Who did this to you?”
“Who else? It’s that motherfucking crazy asshole!”
“J-Jude?”
“I don’t know his name. Stop talking and hurry the fuck up!”
“These are special knots. It’s hard to undo them.”
“Useless stupid bitch.”
I release the rope. “If you’re going to call me names, I won’t help you.”
“You…” He exhales deeply. “Just please, okay? I’ve been under a lot of stress with that fucker chasing me with his friends and then drugging me. I just want to go home, so help me out, yeah?”
With a sigh, I work faster on the ropes. People can be really deranged when they’re under a lot of stress, so I don’t blame him.
More importantly, I keep thinking about why Jude and ‘his friends’ chased this man.
As soon as his hands are undone, he helps me untie his feet.
The moment he’s free, he wobbles toward the exit, but a shadow appears at the door.
Large, imposing, and holding a knife in his hand that shines under the light.
I freeze and so does the man.
“Not so fast.” Jude looks at him with that familiar aloofness.
“Fuck! Just let me go, you sick fucker.”
“I can.” Jude’s gaze slides from the man to me. “But only one of you gets to leave this place alive.”
I take a step back. “Please don’t do that—”
“Her!” the man screams. “Kill that stupid bitch, not me.”
I swallow, my heart shrinking. So much for helping him.
“What do you think?” Jude asks me, tilting his head to the side. “Will you be a saint and sacrifice your life for this waste of space? You’re into all that despicable business, so it might be tempting.”
I look down, whispering, “Death doesn’t scare me.”
“But I do scare you, and I already decided that you won’t get the easy way out.”
I gasp as Jude grabs the man, who was trying to squeeze past him, turns him around, and looks me in the eye as he slices his throat open.
9
JUDE
Violet goes into shock.
Her entire body locks, and she stares with wide eyes even as the waste of space’s blood splashes on her face, her glasses, and her clothes.
Her fingers twitched when I held the knife to the man’s throat, but she didn’t move.
Couldn’t move.
And she’s remained in that frozen state since then.
The same shocked yet unmoving position, wearing the same expression she did the day my mother was killed.
I know because I’ve watched her reaction in the surveillance video Kane gave me a dozen times, trying to figure out how the ‘Do you need help?’ blue umbrella girl just stood still.
I see it again now—that motionless wide-eyed look—as I throw the dead weight aside, not bothering to spare one final glance at his horrified empty eyes, the gash splitting his neck, or the pool of blood on the floor.
He doesn’t matter.
None of them do.
Stalking, capturing, and hunting them before taking their miserable lives offers a momentary reprieve from the suffocating darkness.
Only a brief moment of pure air and a feeling of grandiosity that I’m doing right by Mom, but it only lasts for a while.
Then it’s back to nothingness.
And I’m shoved down to where my demons fester and rot, where no one and nothing would be able to extract me from these sick fucking thoughts.
And yet…
As I look at Violet’s body that’s shaking in silence, at her lips that are trembling, her teeth that are chattering, I find myself stuck in a strange pull.
Like a magnet.
No. A moth.
Violet is a flame in its most delicate form. She’s not a raging and absolutely destructive orange, but she’s blue. Discreet, seemingly safe but actually dangerous.
Just like the fucking blue umbrella she put in my hands.
“Death doesn’t scare me.”
That’s what she said, but now she’s staring at the man’s corpse as if she personally killed him.
I’ve never understood people who…feel too much for others. Could be due to my upbringing. Even Mom couldn’t have been accused of being emotional.
My father, Regis Callahan, made me kill a guard who’d betrayed him execution style when I was nine years old.
That happened two months after he told me to kill Mom’s personal butler in the same style for leaking information about our medical empire to a rival company. I refused and even shot a vase, making the glass fly and injure his face.