Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
She continued to mumble her gratitude or apologies. I wasn’t really listening, anyway. I cleared my throat to get her attention. Her brilliant green eyes flickered up, meeting mine, and just as quickly went back to the ground, waiting for me to say something.
“Take your clothes off.”
CHAPTER 3
ROSE
He couldn’t be serious.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
When I told him I would do anything to pay for his act of valor, I meant I would give him money or make a dinner reservation somewhere no one could get into. None of the things I had in mind involved nudity.
Of course, he wanted more. I saw him. I saw the way he fought with those men. Gentlemen didn’t fight like that. He must have been some kind of criminal. Who else could fight off four men? Who else would be in an alleyway like that? Just waiting for someone to fall into their trap.
I was out of the frying pan and into the fire.
My mind flashed back to all the true crime stories that a few girls at Columbia used to be obsessed with. They were fascinated by the stories involving women’s bodies being found beaten, with all sorts of horrible things having been done to them before that, and we were all hooked on the drama. The conversations afterward were thrilling, as we speculated who had done it and what we would do in that situation. It had always filled our group with this buzzing terror, horror, and false excitement, and I ate up the energy, everyone talking about how we were too smart, too prepared to let ourselves fall into that kind of situation.
I said I would never be caught alone, unarmed at night in a dark alley, but if I was, I would fight.
All of us had said that. We wouldn’t be like them. We wouldn’t be the victims of some crazed lunatic.
Now, in that same situation, the one I said I would never be in? I wasn’t fighting. I was frozen in fear. In a few years, my case would go cold and end up on someone’s podcast while their listeners said they would never be so stupid.
Fuck.
If there was ever a time that word was warranted, it was now.
“I… uh…” My arms started shaking, and I tensed my muscles, not wanting this stranger to see how terrified I was. I looked around the room and realized I did not know where I was. This was getting worse by the second.
Between being dropped off at the wrong place and getting hit and dragged into that alley, I wasn’t sure what block I was on. I didn’t even see which building he brought me into. I only knew that the hallways outside this room were dark and empty. If I screamed, I would just make him angry. There was no one to hear me. I almost wished I was back in that alley. At least out there, I had the chance of a police officer or someone more chivalrous than this stranger finding me.
When the stranger brought me inside the room, it was pitch black, and now it was lit only by a single candle.
I did not know where I was or where the door to get out of this room was located.
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry with panic and tears burning in my eyes. The air was dusty down here. It was cold, but not as cold as outside, and I could smell incense and books. An office or a library of some kind, but that was it.
“I said, take off your clothes,” his voice repeated. “I don’t have all day.”
I opened and closed my mouth several times, the tears now spilling down my cheeks and fear choking me. Even if I knew what to say, I couldn’t speak.
The stranger stood in the shadows. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw his body, which was dressed in black slacks and a black button-down shirt. His broad shoulders and powerful arms strained against the fabric of his shirt as he crossed his arms, impatiently waiting for me to comply with his order.
He was big, and I knew he was strong. There was no way I could fight him off.
His thickly veined hands, with blood drying on his knuckles and covering his gold pinky ring, visibly rested in the crooks of his arms.
Even a sheltered Upper East Side princess like me knew only gangsters and thugs wore gold pinky rings, especially ones with large inlaid rubies. I’d bet the sharp edges of the stone cut the other men. Were they even red rubies? Maybe they were diamonds covered in blood?
I shook my head.
My eyes returned to the floor, and I tried not to jump with every tick of a clock from somewhere in this room. I was so on edge that even the clock’s steady tick made me anxious, like it was counting down the seconds I had left.