Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
He yanked at my mask and finally got it free.
I held my breath and punched him again. My gun had been knocked free at some point. His too. But he had a mask and I didn’t, and that meant I would die the second he punched me in the stomach.
That thought seemed to cross his mind because he rushed me, his entire body aimed for my core.
I dodged out of the way and hurled my entire body against the window. I felt the glass shatter at my weight, felt my body become airborne once I was in free fall. The streetlights were visible, the air was cold for a spring night, and I felt myself fly until I hit something.
It wasn’t concrete. If it had been concrete, my arms and legs would be broken.
A car alarm went off, and I knew I’d landed on one of the vehicles parked on the street.
“Theo!” Octavio ran to the car. “Move.” He tugged on my arm.
I looked up and saw Bolton stick his head out the window. He aimed his handgun down at me.
I rolled off the car and hit the concrete. Gunshots continued.
Octavio fired at the window and forced Bolton to retreat inside.
The other guys came out and helped me to my feet.
“Get him to the car,” Octavio said. “I’ll cover you.” He aimed his rifle and sprayed all the windows, keeping Bolton back so we could make our escape.
The Hummer pulled up, and I threw myself inside. I didn’t land on a seat, just against the floor so everyone could pile in.
Octavio sprayed his rifle as he backed up to the Hummer. He fired off all the rounds until the chamber was empty, and he jumped inside. He yanked the door shut, and then the driver took off, making us all lean to the opposite side.
Bolton must have found another rifle because he sprayed the Hummer with bullets as we made our exit.
When we rounded the corner, the bullets stopped.
I was still on the floor against the door, feeling the pain of the bullet in my shoulder and the aches in my body from falling twenty feet onto the roof of a car. But the pain that hurt most of all was my failure.
I’d failed her.
Chapter 11
Astrid
I was awake all night.
Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t sit. My phone was always in my grasp as I wandered past the windows. I eventually went downstairs because my room started to feel suffocating. I’d visited other parts of the house, like the study and the kitchen, so I assumed I was welcome to do so.
When I walked into the study, Axel was there.
He sat in one of the armchairs, dressed in the same shirt and sweatpants I’d seen him wearing earlier. His ball cap was gone because he’d left it in my bedroom. He didn’t notice me right away, not until I took a seat in the other armchair, the one I’d seen Theo occupy.
His eyes flicked to me.
“Have you heard from him?”
Axel shook his head.
That was the answer I expected, but it disappointed me anyway. I set my phone on the table beside me and tapped the screen to check the time. It was almost five in the morning. Theo had dropped me off seven hours ago, but now that felt like days in the past.
Axel stared at the cold fireplace.
“You said you weren’t worried. But you look worried.”
“Just anxious,” he said.
It was dark, so I hadn’t noticed the rifle leaned up against the opposite side of his chair. My heart dropped at the sight. “Why do you have that?”
“I told you I was anxious.”
“Axel, do you know something?”
He kept his eyes on the fireplace.
Sheer, raw panic burst inside me. “Axel.”
He continued to ignore me.
“Did something happen to Theo—”
“I haven’t heard from Theo or heard anything about him.”
“Then why are you on guard with that gun?”
He finally turned to look at me. “Because Theo synced my phone with his alarm system. I can see all the activity in the computer log. His gate opened around three in the morning. And then the front door.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It wasn’t Theo. He would have told me if he was on his way back from Rome.”
A profound sense of doom hit me.
“So, I think Bolton called his guys once he spotted Theo. And I think his butler is the one who let them in.”
Another burst of panic exploded inside me.
“Otherwise, the alarm would have been tripped. It was deactivated by a keypad password, meaning it wasn’t hacked. There’s only one person besides Theo who has that code.”
There was only one other person in the house where I slept, and he’d been bribed by Bolton. “Theo told me that Bolton got into the house. Wore a bulletproof vest so Theo wouldn’t shoot him. He never figured out how he did it.”