Total pages in book: 174
Estimated words: 172061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 574(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 172061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 574(@300wpm)
Shame bit at her features, but still she fumbled through the locks at the back door while she kept swinging the gun between me and the girls.
“I’m not betraying you, Daisy. I’m saving you. Saving us.” She shoved it open. A shadowy wraith appeared, Ethan pure spite and malice as he stepped inside.
“Hadley, no,” I cried on a whimper. “I don’t understand. What are you doing?”
“What I have to.”
“Aren’t you excited to see me?” Ethan cocked his head. Arrogance sloughed off him as he slid the door shut behind him and relocked the doors. A gun casually dangled from his other hand.
“I don’t understand…” I didn’t mean to beg it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“Cash should have known he would never get away with it. He was always a prideful prick. He wasn’t even willing to throw one measly game to save his brother. To save his family.” Ethan tsked. Then hatred flamed across his face. “But when he killed mine, that’s where it ended for him. I always knew you’d be my ticket to him. I just never knew it would take so fucking long.”
“What?” It was a horrified exhalation.
He didn’t answer me. Simply pointed the barrel of his gun at the panel on the wall. “Reset the panels.”
I hesitated, and he shouted, “Do it, you stupid bitch, or they’re all dead.”
Trembling, I turned, my fingers barely cooperating as I reset everything. The alarm and the security plans blipping back into place.
“You…” He gestured at Hadley then at Charleigh, Raven, Emery, and Piper, who remained face down on the floor, their spirits coiling with uncertainty.
Hadley dropped her head and rushed over to them, pulling out a roll of thin twine from her pocket. She knelt behind Charleigh and began to bind her wrists, and Raven started to shift, no question willing to give it everything to protect her sister. Only Ethan was across the floor, pointing the barrel of the gun at her head. “Don’t fucking think about it. Any one of you move, and you’re all dead.”
On a cry of hate and fear, Raven’s eyes slanted to me for help before she slumped back down. Hadley quickly shackled each of them.
Ethan slowly strolled back in my direction. A wicked serpent who’d come to destroy. He tucked his gun into his back waistband then dug into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches.
“Ethan,” Hadley gasped as she stood. “No, you promised. Daisy and I walk out of this. Alive.”
He looked at my sister with a sneer. “You’re even more stupid than I thought.”
He walked into the kitchen, lit a match, and held it up as he grinned. “Now, let’s see how fast he comes running this time.”
Then he let it flame against the bottom of the curtain that hung over the kitchen sink.
FIFTY-TWO
CASH
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
Cash stumbled toward the double sliding doors that led from the emergency room and out into the blinding glare of the breaking day. He felt as if his mind were detached from his body. His heart severed from his soul.
A walking shell while his ghost hovered in the blank space above his head.
They were dead.
All of them.
His mother.
His father.
His brother.
Nausea roiled in his guts, crawling from a dark pit inside him and slipping out to saturate every molecule of his being.
A festering sickness that corrupted and decayed.
Eating him from the inside out.
He blundered out into the parking lot. No clue where he was going.
Disoriented.
Lost.
Once Daisy had been discharged in the middle of the night, Ms. Lopez had forced her into leaving, doctors ordering that she needed to rest after the mild smoke inhalation she had suffered.
She tried to refuse. Tried to cling onto Cash to give him hope and support.
But there was none of that.
Hope.
He’d been so catatonic, he’d barely recognized she was there, and when he shunned her affections, Ms. Lopez had pried her away and told Daisy she could return in the morning.
He had to get out of there before she did.
He was sure he couldn’t stand the light that would shine on her face. Sure he couldn’t stomach the sympathy that she would pour into him.
Because the only thing he could process right then other than the unbearable numbness was the hate.
Hate for himself.
Hate for Matthew.
Hate for the men who had put him in that position.
It was a hate that was as hot as if he were standing beneath a thousand-degree sun and letting it boil his flesh. The same as the flames that had licked up the skin of his back. Burns that right then he could barely feel.
The drugs they gave him to ease the agony still running through his veins.
He wondered if they’d directly injected him with poison instead.
With venom.
Some social worker had told him that his grandparents were on their way. That he’d likely be in the hospital for a week, then they would take him back to Florida where they lived.