Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Home.
This was really home now. Elaine was my home.
Elaine was the jewel in my crown.
For the first time in my life, I felt I needed to do more to deserve it, to earn that particular treasure.
She was still sleeping as I eased out from beside her, settling down into the covers like an angel. I made sure I was out of her view when I finally accepted my own need for revenge against those who hurt Elaine and my need to do it now. I had been planning on starting with Colonel Hardwick or the pricks on the charity auction scene, but no. I had one person at the forefront of my mind that night.
The first piece of shit to touch her.
I was aching with the need to destroy someone when I checked out Reverend Lynch online. Interestingly enough, he wasn’t all that far from Kington Peak. He was at a backwater manor down at Renyard Lake, only twenty minutes down the road back towards NYC.
Hmm. Maybe there was such a thing as fate after all.
As soon as I saw the details of his manor online I felt the surge of evil in me down deep. There was no way I could fight it, not even for a single minute longer. The cunt had to suffer, and he had to suffer soon. Him and the others, one by one. I’d enjoy destroying every single one of them.
I checked Elaine was still sleeping like a baby as I put on my Terence Kingsley outfit and headed on out to the Merc in the middle of the night. I left a scrawled note on the kitchen counter with a be back soon, baby, sarcastic, like I really was going to get any good at being a boyfriend. The roads were empty as I sped towards Renyard Lake. My brain was churning like an evil sonofabitch as I plotted the ways I was going to hurt him. So many options, so many of them appealing enough to make my pulse race.
I’d packed a blade from the kitchen in my glovebox. A gun would be far too impersonal. I wanted up close. Pointed and sadistic. I wanted to see the fear in his eyes as I exacted Elaine’s revenge.
The manor was on top of me before I’d even registered I was there. It was a sprawling thing, slightly back from the lane. It was the easiest thing in the world to pull into the driveway. It would be the easiest thing in the world to kill him too, considering the security around this place was non-existent. Still, it would be, wouldn’t it? Who would ever be heading out here to kill a reverend?
Nobody apart from Terence Kingsley, that was for sure.
I made sure the glasses were up high on my nose when I rapped at the front door. I felt sick in my gut as I waited for an answer, imagining all too clearly how Elaine’s sweet little body must have been shaking when she arrived at this place every weekend. When the door swung open it was an old woman standing there. Her expression was little more than a scowl.
I remembered Elaine’s secret. I remembered the nasty bitch woman who’d led her through the house.
“Margaret?” I asked, and the old bitch nodded.
“Yeah . . .” she said, with a tip of her head. “And you are . . .?”
“Terence Kingsley,” I told her in a British accent, holding out my hand. “Reverend Lynch should be expecting me.”
She stared at me with piercing eyes under the porch light.
“At almost midnight?”
“British flight, just got in,” I told her, and realized I was lying for one of the very first times I’d ever known.
“Hmm, Terence. Come inside then,” she offered, and I did it. I stepped over that threshold with a smile on my face.
I could’ve taken her out along with him, breaking her neck in a heartbeat, but I didn’t. I wanted to use her to scope the place out for everything it was. My eyes were fixed on our surroundings as we passed by, my head still full of everything Elaine would have been seeing and feeling when she was walking the same road. It was a disgusting facade of religion. I hated it with every fucking bone in my body. Yet again, this was a new thing for me. I’d never hated anything with such vigor as I did this shithole and everything it stood for.
“Wait here, please,” the bitch told me, and stepped away along the hall once we’d turned a corner.
I used the opportunity to make sure the knife was still positioned nicely inside my blazer, acting like every bit the casual British journalist looking for a tale.
I was expecting it when she came gliding back out of there with a puzzled expression on her face.