Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
I am the giver of pain. I am the devil of sadism. I am a beast, and my will be done. He calls me grand, the fucking peasant, like it’s a joke, but I am grand. I am important. If I could, I’d hurt Mr. Big Boss instead, but it has to be Jacob. I will find a way to make him squeal like the piggy he is. No more defiant looks. No more little smirk like he thinks it’s funny I’m whipping him.
“Are you okay, Rafael?” the boss says from his throne.
I’m shaking with rage, I realize. “The operation won’t be affiliated with you in any manner. The whole thing will look like an accident.”
“How do you even know where he is?”
He wasn’t going to trick me twice. That’s how. When I made that threat, I saw true terror in his eyes. I ordered my men to put a tracker on his friend’s car, and when Jacob himself showed up, they put a tracker on that car. I’ve got the precise location of his place in the forest—quaint American-sounding names like Little Hope and Pilgrim’s Peak. It’s snowing, apparently, a canvas for a bloodbath.
“I have my ways,” I tell him. “I’m actually quite useful.”
“Use Americans,” the big boss snaps. “They can’t be linked to us in any way. Make it clean.”
His second-in-command steps forward, leaning past a drugged-out woman clinging to the boss’s arm. His face is crumpled in confusion as if he can’t accept this, but I know something the big boss and his little lackey don’t. I know the big boss is sleeping with his so-called brother-in-arms’ wife. Just like all scumbags, they show their true colors. I can only push the blackmail so far. I can’t be bold about it, but the photos I have, for now at least, have allowed me some leeway.
“Clean,” the big boss snaps.
“Clean,” I reply.
Really, he’s got no way to verify that. I can do whatever I want with them. I could even simply make them “go missing.” Nobody would ever find them. It may seem petty to some, but it’s everything to me. I won’t let somebody make a fool of me. I won’t let somebody laugh when I’ve shredded their back with a whip.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JACOB
Icheck the cameras, relieved they’re still working in the blizzard. The connection is satellite military hardware. I couldn’t take any chances about this. At the very edge of the forest, it’s all ready just in case, but this blizzard was a sudden forecast. The weather conditions aren’t ideal for fighting, but it won’t come to that, not yet, not until the storm stops. Not even hired guns are stupid enough to try it now.
Rusty sighs from his place at the fire. Emma is painting him again, this time with the orange light of the flames lighting up his fur. Despite Mike being missing, somehow, this feels homely. There’s a glow in me I never expected to feel. If somebody made me describe heaven, it wouldn’t be far off this.
I should’ve given Mike a satellite phone. The fear made me too hectic and compulsive to handle it calmly. Losing Emma would be like losing a piece of my heart I didn’t know existed until that night. Jesus Christ. Heart? I owned her, spanked her, and left her on the floor. There’s nothing romantic about me. I’m a killer. I’m a savage. That’s all.
Emma’s hand trembles slightly as she paints. Her posture is tight, all the pain at Mike being gone, pulling at her muscles. It’s difficult not to walk up behind her, wrap my arms around her, and whisper it’ll all be okay, but I know where that’ll lead. It won’t end with just a hug.
“Are you hungry?” I ask from the kitchen.
She doesn’t turn. She’s got her hair tied up in a wavy ponytail like she’s begging me to grab it, use it to guide her perfect lips to my… What’s wrong with me?
“No,” she replies.
I walk over, sitting beside her, the same place I was sitting when she first painted Rusty. None of that peaceful feeling can return now. That was before we knew Mike was gone. That was before my woman started torturing her mind with all the worst-case scenarios.
The firelight flickers in her cheeks. She lays her paintbrush down and wipes the hair from her face.
“He’s going to be fine,” I tell her.
“I know,” she whispers. “It’s just… Can we talk for real now? It’s not like he’ll hear us.”
“It’s the guilt,” I say. “Don’t worry. I feel it, too.”
A sudden gust of wind batters the cabin. Emma shivers. I clench my hands into fists, trying so hard to stop myself from touching her. She’s got so much pain in her, pain I could help with, but we’d only cause more.
“I think I might go to bed soon,” she says, “and maybe lock my door.”