Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
As quickly as my legs will carry me, I run up the stairs, “Fire! Fire! Wake up!”
The sleepy faces of my sister and one of my brothers appears in the doorway of one room. “Meg?”
“Yes. Wake up Dad. Tell him there’s a fire and then get downstairs. Move. Now!”
Their eyes widen with fright, but they do as they’re told and I clamber back downstairs, beginning to hear a crackling noise. Fire. The fire is inside the kitchen now. How can it move so quickly? How? I don’t have that much time. I have no idea how much kerosene has been used to accelerate the fire. And we’re locked inside.
No help for it now, I’m so scared, I can hear my heartbeat rattling in my ears.
Koen’s face materializes in my mind and I cry out for him, uselessly, knowing he won’t survive my death. My soul mate. My twin flame. How unfair would it be to find him only to have everything ripped away from us?
“Fire!” I screech, my voice starting to sound sooty. It’s the smoke.
It’s rising around me, my siblings and my father, who stumbles into the entryway, clearly drunk, but beginning to comprehend the danger we’re in. “The windows are boarded,” he slurs, blinking in confusion.
“Why are we locked in?” shouts my sister over the sound of the flames eating through wood, her hand furiously trying to turn the door handle.
Full of fear, I look around and deduce the flames are farthest from the back of the house, so I hustle everyone in that direction, picking up a chair on my way and wailing on one of the rear windows as soon as we hit that section of the house, hoping to weaken the board. When that doesn’t work, I stand up on the chair and attempt to kick the board free. Once, twice. It’s loosening a little, but oh Jesus, the flames are in the room with us now—
Koen enters the room, a dark figure appearing like a phantom.
He walks straight through the center of the fire. “Meg!” he roars, his distress palpable. Bigger than the fire. “Meg. Meg.”
“Help us,” I sob. “I can’t get—”
His fist goes through the board, tearing it from the window, so it’s no longer blocking our exit. “Wait,” he barks, taking a gun from inside his jacket and looking out the window, his expression deadly. “They won’t leave your deaths to chance. Someone is out there, waiting to pick you off.”
“What?”
“Protocol. But you know I won’t let that happen, don’t you?”
I’m already nodding. He came. He’s here. He walked through fire for us.
“Who is this, Meg?” inquires my father, as if we’re having a tea party.
“I’ll explain later.”
“You.” Koen turns his cold stare on my father. “This is your doing. You climb out the window. When I see where the gunfire is coming from, I’ll eliminate it.”
“What if the gunfire hits me?” my father sputters.
“I’m willing to take that chance on you,” drawls my hitman boyfriend. “But not with your daughter. Get out or I’ll throw you out. Everybody else get down.”
Apparently, my father still has a few working braincells because he doesn’t argue with Koen, deducing based on the way he handles his gun like its second nature that he is the more immediate threat. No, Dad might look nervous, but he swings his leg over the window frame, we all duck, and as promised, a bullet comes winging into the bedroom, lodging in the far wall.
Everyone, including me, screams.
Koen doesn’t even blink.
He calmly aims and pulls the trigger. “Target eliminated.”
I reach for my closest sibling, boosting them out the window and into the arms of my father, quickly doing the same three more times, assisted by Koen and then it’s my turn. “You’ll be right behind me, right?” I scream over the roaring fire.
“Always,” he says, planting a fervent kiss to my mouth. “Always. I’m so sorry I let this happen, baby. Never again. You’ll never be scared again.”
Then he’s picking me up and urging me out into the cool, night air, though I won’t leave the side of the house until he comes out after me, pulling me into his side even as he takes action, searching the night with his gun raised, demanding everyone to get inside his SUV without delay. Within minutes, he’s peeling out of our yard and on the road, his gun disappearing back into his jacket in favor of holding my hand.
“Honey, do you mind telling us who this is now?” This, from my father.
I answer with all the certainty in my heart. “He’s my everything.”
With a hoarse sound, Koen brings our joined hands to his mouth, kissing my knuckles hard, a suspicious dampness in his eyes reflecting the dashboard light. “And she is mine.”
“Where are we going?” asks my sister from the backseat.
“We can’t go back. We can only go forward,” Koen says, looking at me with such an abundance of affection, I must hug myself tight or fly apart. “Together.”