Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
JD stood like a rock. “It’s gonna be okay,” he told Cody. “It’s gonna be okay, pal.”
“Move,” Radoslava repeated. The knife twitched…
“JD!” I begged.
JD cursed under his breath…and stepped aside.
Radoslava pulled Cody through the doorway and backed away through my bedroom. I saw Colton step up behind her. He raised his arm as if to grab her and looked at JD: should I?
JD gave a quick, bitter shake of his head.
Radoslava dragged Cody out of the room, out of the penthouse…and they were gone.
61
LORNA
There’s a feeling only a mother knows, that primal panic that claws at you when your child is missing. From the moment they leave your body, you always know where they are, even if they’re at summer camp, or at a friend’s house, or with grandparents. So when you don’t, when you turn around in the store and there’s an empty space where they should be, your stomach drops. And this was a thousand times worse because I knew he was in danger.
It had been almost a half hour. My instincts were screaming at me to go full tigress: I needed to run, to scream, to kill anyone who stood between me and him. Instead, I just had to stand there…and wait.
JD pulled me into his arms. “She’ll call.”
He wrapped me up, but I was stiff and wide eyed, huffing air in quick little gasps. “What if—What if she doesn’t? What if she just kills him?”
JD squeezed me harder. “She won’t.” His voice was as firm as always, but I wondered how much he was trying to convince himself. “She loves him. I’ve seen the way she looks at him, I think that was real. We were wrong about everything else about her, but we weren’t wrong about that.”
I stared at the ruined living room. Gabriel and Kian had been down to the basement and gotten the power back on and with the lights on, the damage looked even worse. How did this all go so wrong, so fast? Just a few weeks ago, everything had been normal. Now Cody was gone, my dad was dead, the company was about to collapse and even our home was wrecked.
What if she just kills him? She was determined to hurt me and she was unstable. What if JD was wrong, what if—
My phone rang. I snatched it up.
“Put it on speaker,” JD told me. He was staying strong but I could hear a father’s fear in his voice.
Radoslava’s voice filled the room. “Are they listening?”
“Yes,” I croaked. “Is Cody okay?”
Radoslava said something to someone in Polish. Footsteps. Then—
“Mom?”
“Cody!” It was almost a sob, my voice was shaking so much. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” His voice was so small, so terrified, that it felt like a knife in my stomach.
“What do you want?” I begged. I was ready to give her anything, absolutely anything.
“I’ll contact you,” Radoslava told me coldly. “Just you. Or I will hurt him. You know I keep my promises, Like when I told you I’d return your dress.”
And she ended the call. I stared at my phone in horror. I’ve never felt so helpless. I realized my cheeks were wet with tears. I hadn’t realized I’d started crying.
JD stepped towards me but I put a hand up. “Give me a minute,” I told him, and went to my room. My legs went shaky and I had to sit on the edge of the bed or I would have collapsed. She has him. And he’d sounded so scared…
Think, Lorna. Crying won’t get him back. I swiped at my face with my sleeve.
She’d said she’d contact me, just me. She wanted to talk to me privately. Why? Because she wanted me, not him. She wanted to arrange a trade, my life for Cody’s, and JD would never let me do it. How? How would she contact me privately?
I replayed the conversation in my mind. That last part about borrowing my dress…at the time, I’d thought she was just being mockingly playful. But…
I poked my head out of the door and checked the coast was clear. JD was still in the living room, talking to the rest of the team. I sneaked out of my room and into Paige’s. I still couldn’t think of her as Radoslava.
Months ago, Paige had borrowed an old dress of mine, a scarlet, strappy thing that was way too small for me. She’d only been going to wear it once but it looked so good on her that she’d hung onto it for another night out, then another. It had become a running joke between us: I’d kept saying she could have it, it didn’t fit me anyway, but she kept insisting she’d return it any day now. She told me where I could find it, if I ever needed it: in a box under her bed.