Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
“Now, now,” he drawled, his voice dripping with casual amusement, like he was watching a child throw a tantrum. “This wasn’t part of our deal. You can’t kill me. I helped you.”
He didn’t look worried. Not even slightly. The weapon in my hand might as well have been a water gun to him.
Matteo didn’t think I was a danger. He had never thought I was one , not even when we bargained, and that was the miscalculation that could cost him everything.
“Put the gun down,” he ordered, expecting the same absolute compliance everyone else gave him.
My lips thinned, pressing into hard lines. “I should have known better than to make a deal with you.”
He chuckled, and the sound scraped against my nerves. God, I hated him. “You didn’t have a choice. I found out your truth, remember?”
My body went rigid, every muscle locked into place. “I always have a choice.”
“Not in this world.” He tilted his head, studying me. “Women like you are a commodity. You don’t get to make choices.” His voice dropped, colder now, the amusement hardening into something sharper, more dangerous. He was losing patience. “Now put the gun down. I won’t ask again.”
I didn’t put the gun down.
The silence stretched between us for a long second.
“You know what else wasn’t part of the deal?” My voice came out low, barely above a whisper. “You killing my unborn child.”
As the words left my mouth, I felt something physically crack deep inside me. A jagged, violent rupture that flooded my chest with everything I had been holding back for weeks.
“You caused my miscarriage, didn’t you?” I hissed. The gun trembled again in my hand. “I heard what Adrian said. I heard what you did to a woman called Beth. I heard everything. How evil can you? How depraved can you be?”
Matteo’s expression didn’t change. But his eyes darkened, a warning that told me I may have pushed too far. A reminder that Matteo was, after all, a dangerous man.
“You hurt me.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. “That wasn’t part of the deal. You took an innocent life. My baby’s life. That. Was. Not. Part. Of. The. Deal.”
Matteo dropped his arms to his sides, and then he laughed. A soft, incredulous sound, as though I had said something genuinely absurd.
When I only looked at him in confusion, he laughed even harder.
God, he was demented. Truly, fundamentally demented in a way that went beyond cruelty.
“You were never meant to get pregnant in the first place,” he finally said when he stopped laughing. “I thought you hated him. And yet here you are, mourning for his baby. A thing that is part of him. Part of the man you hate? I did you a favor. You’re welcome.”
“That thing…” I said, my voice breaking on the word he so carelessly used to refer to my unborn baby. “...was part of me.”
“Why would you want his baby?” he asked, and the question was sincere in the worst possible way. “Why would you want a reminder of the man you loathe for the rest of your life?”
He didn’t understand. He could never.
The concept of wanting something simply because it was yours—because it had grown inside you, because it was made from your blood and your body and your breath—was beyond his understanding.
To Matteo, children were assets or liabilities. Continuations of bloodlines or complications to be managed. Children were political, plain and simple.
“It doesn’t matter what I want.” My voice steadied. “You had no right to make that choice for me. To take that choice from me.”
I pressed my finger against the trigger, not pulling, not yet, but letting him feel the proximity of it. Of what I could do, what I was capable of.
“What do you think you’re going to do? Kill me and my brother both? Do you think you would ever get away with that?”
No, he was right. I would never get away with killing the Salvatore brothers. Not both of them, at least.
“We made a deal. I will facilitate your vengeance and you will give me what I want,” he said, his eyes hardening. “I kept my end of the bargain. Now, give me the information that I need.”
“See, there is a problem with that…”
“Don’t fucking test me,” he cut me off, growling. “Tell me where—
“You can’t sleep.” Adrian’s voice slithered through the memory, dragging me out of it.
I turned my face to look at him. He was awake, his eyes roving over my face as he took in my expression. I hated how he did that, how he looked so closely, as if he was cataloguing every piece of me, every inch of my skin, every fragile twitch in his memory.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I responded and then inwardly winced. That response was too fast, too weak.