Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
My approach to the pair of them is more simple, as are my orders: Angelo is a capture target. Bobby is a kill target.
Bobby is broad shouldered, built like a brute. He is muscled and he has very dark eyes and quite pale skin. He is Polish in origin, though he has presented himself as Italian for all of his criminal career. He is nearing thirty, significantly younger than Angelo.
“Why is he still alive?” Angelo repeats the question back to Bobby. Bobby and I exchange glances of confusion, and I have the very strange experience of connecting on a primal level with a psychopath looking for answers.
“That’s a woman.”
Angelo smirks with a delicious deviance. He is so very pleased with himself, and I truly do not understand why. Bobby’s expression is getting more pissed off by the moment. He doesn’t like not knowing what Angelo is talking about.
“I don’t think it is,” Angelo says.
“It’s been a while,” Bobby says. “But that’s a woman. Tits and all.”
“Oh no,” Anglo purrs, his every word dangerous and confusing. “Women are protected by society. We must not hit women. We must take care of them. Men, on the other hand, or in this case, bad little boys — they are fair game.”
I’m starting to get an idea of what’s to come. Bobby isn’t. Bobby’s just annoyed because nothing makes sense like he wants it to.
“You know that’s a girl, right?”
“Yes, dear boy, I know she’s a girl,” Angelo relents, switching his high-handed communication style for something more simple. “But I have no use for women and girls.”
“So kill her.”
“Not yet. I want to see what potential lies inside this sweet little female frame.”
Not yet. Those words flash through me, freezing me to my core. Death is still an option. Death is always an option. But Angelo wants to play with me first. He wants to take me apart and see how I work. All because he caught my elbow to his jaw.
If I’d done anything else, or nothing else, I’d probably be dead already.
“I am going to treat her just as I would treat any male captive,” he explains to Bobby, who is still staring at me as if I am something particularly disgusting Angelo has dragged in.
“Shoot her in the head and bury the body somewhere nobody will find it?”
“Break her. Strip everything from her. Take everything, her very identity, until she knows she is nothing more than ours.”
“Ugh. I hate it when you try to take pets. It never works. She’s a Fed, and a girl, she’s useless to us. Ugh!”
Bobby finishes his objections with a guttural sound of something like disgust and leaves the room in one powerful physical motion, practically hurling himself out of their lavish shared space.
Angelo and Bobby live on a country estate. Angelo’s net worth is in the low billions. He is one of many quiet criminal billionaires in the world, people who do not flash their wealth around going to space or getting into homemade submarines, but enjoy a level of privacy and privilege that the average person cannot imagine.
To a certain extent, he can no longer entirely be considered criminal. His lawful dealings are highly profitable. He could go straight, if he wanted, but Angelo’s tastes are what drive him, and those tastes are criminal and perverted. At this point, his criminal dealings are practically recreational.
The agency isn’t even officially going after him, but I am. Men like this are a scourge on the Earth. They’re parasites on the population, treating the rest of us like meaningless little NPCs, using us, exploiting us, breaking us for their amusement. I would like nothing better than to see Angelo and all his ilk brought low, his ill-gotten gains taken from him.
I don’t know what it is he sees when he looks at me, but I want Angelo’s end more than he wants mine. This job is personal to me, and being captured by him won’t change the nature of my mission.
“You are an interesting little thing,” Angelo muses. “I see the way you burn with hatred, Riley. Do you know me? Have I done something to you? Or are you just a righteous little lawman who cannot stand the sight of a criminal? Do I turn your stomach with my mere existence?”
He’s perceptive, but I plan to keep my secrets.
“Perfectly sullen creature brimming with violence,” he says, taking my chin between his thumb and forefinger and inspecting my face. “But you were trespassing, and now you have been caught. Do you know what that means?”
I give a brief shake of my head.
“It means you have to be punished, Riley. It means I have to make your flesh ache with penitence.”
When I look into his eyes as I am being forced to do, it is as though his gaze has opened to me, the darkness of his pupils expanding to give me a full view of the open maw of his predatory soul.