Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
I went in.
So much so that my mouth was dry and my jaw hurt from talking so much as Lucas looked more and more bewildered by each passing moment.
I practically made myself out to be a KGB or CIA trained spy by the time I simply ran out of things to make up to confess to.
“He’s going to cut you up into little, tiny pieces before he kills you,” Lucas said when I was done, shaking his head at me. “But he might work on Nick first. Just to hurt you all the more.”
“Nicky is innocent,” I insisted. “The only thing he is guilty of is the same crime you are. Letting me have access to his phone occasionally.”
“He’s tainted by connection to you,” Lucas declared, shrugging.
“Then you are too,” I told him.
“Who would Colin want on his team more than me?” Lucas asked. “A man willing to sell out his own siblings, to stand by and watch them be brutally murdered? I am exactly the kind of man he wants in his crew.”
“That’s not something to be proud of, Lucas,” I told him, hearing the disappointment in my voice, and not even caring that it was riling him up once again.
“Says the bitch fucking a mafia hitman,” Lucas shot back.
“I think most rational people can differentiate between someone who kills because killing is necessary, and someone who gets off on hurting people. You’re not the same. You’re not even in the same hemisphere as Massimo. It’s pathetic of you to think you are.”
Apparently, thoughts of self-preservation flew out of the window when someone tried to insult Massimo.
I wasn’t surprised that Lucas’s anger snapped, or that he took it out on me.
Maybe even a part of me was glad for it. Because with the blow, and the explosion of pain it brought, I could feel that bond breaking. I could feel that deeply planted love for him getting ripped out by the roots, leaving nothing but a hole where it used to live.
“What the fuck!”
Nicky.
A shuddering exhale escaped me as I looked past Lucas to find our brother being escorted in by two of Colin’s enforcers.
Enforcers, but no Colin.
Maybe it should have felt some relief not seeing him there, but in a lot of ways, his enforcers scared me just as much. Possibly even more. Because they, like Lucas, wanted to impress someone as cold and ruthless as Colin. Which meant they needed to be even more vicious and violent than he was.
When Lucas turned, I mouthed the only thing I could to Nicky.
Run!
I knew he saw me and understood when his eyes widened, then darted between everyone else.
But this was Nicky we were talking about.
He wasn’t going to run away and save himself while I sat there strapped to a chair, already beaten, and about to get more abused.
“Colin said we can have some fun with her,” Marty, one of the enforcers, said. “But he wants to have the ultimate fun with her first. Then he said she’s free game for us to take turns,” Marty said, making my stomach twist and bile rise up my throat.
I knew.
You could say I always knew that, someday, Colin would snap and force himself on me. It was a reality I lived with day in and day out for four years.
But to hear it was coming? And with not only him, but his enforcers too?
No.
Gone were any pretenses at holding it together. My entire body started to shake, hard enough that the feet of the chair started to knock on the floor.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nicky asked, jerking away from Marty and the other enforcer. “Why is Cammie zip-tied to a chair? And who did that to her?”
“Didn’t you hear? Dear ol’ sis is a big ol’ traitor,” Lucas said, making Nicky’s jaw tighten. “And word on the street is you are too.”
I watched as all the pieces fell together, as Nicky realized what was truly happening, what his fate was going to be. And, of course, mine.
He could have run.
Sure, it was risky, but he was close enough to the exit that he had a slight advantage, and if he was determined enough, he could get away.
But what did he do?
He moved inward.
He kept coming until he was standing in front of me.
“You’ll have to go through me first,” he said, making that battered, broken thing I called a heart start to swell up again.
“Yeah, fuckhead,” Lucas said snorting. “That’s the plan.”
I couldn’t see what was happening past Nicky’s body, except Lucas’s feet moving forward, and then a loud crack that had Nicky dropping to his knees in front of me.
Only then did I see what had happened.
Lucas had pulled out his gun and whacked Nicky across the face with it.
“No!” I shrieked.
“Colin better hurry the fuck up,” Marty said, grinning wickedly as he looked at me. “He’s going to miss all the fu—“