Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 498(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 498(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
It’s true. I don’t know him and I hate how it seems like he knows me. My blood turns cold. Is it someone from LA? Someone I slept with and ghosted on?
“This is all your fault, you know,” the man says, ignoring my outburst. “Everything was fine. We were going to be together.”
“Who?”
He narrows his eyes at me and purses his Cupid lips. “Me and your mother. Keep up, bitch.”
I recoil at his nasty words. “You slept with my mother?”
“I did more than sleep with her,” he growls. “I fucking loved her!”
My eyes dart to the bedroom door as though I can make Spencer and Hugo materialize out of sheer will alone. No one appears.
“Mom’s married,” I say weakly.
His lip curls up and he sneers at me. “Because the sanctity of marriage matters so much to you? You’re a manipulator and I liar, Aubrey. I’ve been observing you for a long-ass time.”
A chill races down my spine. This stalker/kidnapper/psycho/serial killer has been “observing” me.
“You’re not making any sense.” My voice wobbles. “I just want to go home.”
He grabs my sore ankle and squeezes it, making me yelp in pain. Then, he produces another zip tie from his pocket. I’m too hurt to fight him, easily giving him access to tie my other ankle to another bedpost corner.
“You may as well get comfortable. You’re not going home anytime soon. Hell, you may not go home ever.”
Despair coils in my gut.
The reality of my situation hits me harder than the gun to my skull did.
I’m not getting out of here.
Different tactic. Try talking to him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Tell me why I’m here.”
His anger melts away and his eyes darken as he rakes his stare over my body. It’s then I realize my swimsuit top is askew, brazenly revealing one of my nipples. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip and then grins. “You look just fucking like her. Even your nipples are the same.”
My heart races in my chest. I don’t like the salacious look on his face. But sex is something I can do. If it keeps him from killing me, I’ll seduce him if that’s what it takes.
“How do you know my mother?”
He rests a knee on the end of the bed between my spread legs. “We go way back.”
“How far back?”
“I’ve known her since I was seventeen and started my own business. I’d given her my business card and she hired me on the spot.” He brings another knee onto the bed and crawls over my body, inspecting every hair and beauty mark along the way. “She has a freckle like this one in almost the same spot, too.”
I whimper as his thumb brushes along my lower stomach at the edge of my swimsuit bottoms. The zip ties are cutting into my flesh. A blood rivulet runs down my arm, tickling me along its path.
“We were off and on for years,” he explains, fingers trailing up over my ribs. “I fell madly in love with her.” He freezes and pain twists his features. “Imagine my heartbreak when she told me she was marrying Hugo fucking Park. Some rich asshole who couldn’t love her like I could. It was wrong!”
I flinch at his outburst toward the end but don’t say a word, waiting for him to continue.
“She promised me, though, we could still see each other. She said, ‘Drew, baby, it’ll always be you and me. We need him for the money, but I need you for everything else.’ I may have cleaned her pool, but I was more than that.”
Drew is his name. And he’s the pool cleaner? Never in my years of living with Hugo and Spencer did I ever notice the pool guy. Ever.
“I promised her I’d make us a shit ton of money one day so she could leave him and be with me. Everything was going smoothly until you took things too far and ruined my life.”
I gape at him in confusion. “What did I do? I don’t even know you.”
He hooks a finger under the fabric between my two breasts and pulls hard. I can feel the strings biting painfully into my back and ribs. Squirming, I attempt to roll away from his abuse to no avail. A ripping sound echoes loudly as he finally tears my swimsuit top away, leaving my breasts naked to him.
“Don’t touch me,” I snap, shooting him a nasty glare. “Do not fucking touch me.”
He scoffs, grabbing a handful of one of my tits. “These are real. Your mother’s are perfect and symmetrical and expensive. God, I miss her tits.” His softer tone when speaking about her changes on a dime and he snarls at me. “When you got it through your slutty head that you wanted to fuck your stepbrother, my world imploded. Neena started behaving differently.”