Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“God, you’re an asshole.”
“See, you don’t like it. Nobody talks to my people like that. Don’t worry princess, you’re not special.”
She shakes her head and glares at me but at least she starts to get everything cleaned up.
I turn away and find Eric standing in the door to the office, looking annoyed about the whole thing.
I smile sweetly and flip him off. He rolls his eyes and walks back inside.
“Nolan.” Cora’s looking at me again and this time her expression’s softened. “What are you gonna do about the people that burned down my trailer?”
“I’m working on it.”
“You know they’re not finished with me, right?”
“I’m aware.”
“You should take all that overprotective macho energy bullshit and go hunt them down and leave your stupid customers alone.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, princess.” I tilt my head and try not to smile. “Get back to work.”
She flips me off, but doesn’t argue, and though I don’t love her attitude, I know she’s right about one thing: the ORB’s coming sooner rather than later.
That fire was just the start, but that fire needs an answer.
Chapter 13
Cora
I can’t sleep that night. I keep seeing Nolan grab that drunk idiot by the back of the head and slam his face into the bar. I keep seeing the blood on the wood and the way Nolan stood over him and viciously kicked him in the chest again like the man’s pain meant nothing to him.
I know he’s a gangster. I know half his life is violence. But I’d never seen it before, not until tonight, and I don’t know if I liked it. I think of that blood spot in Momma’s trailer and how I spent so many nights staring down at the invisible mark beneath the carpet thinking about her final ugly moments, but that blood spot’s gone now, burned to ashes, sizzled away in the flames. The guys that set the fire are still out there somewhere, probably laughing about how they took my whole life away.
The guy that killed Momma’s still out there, too.
Nolan promised he’d take care of all this. He wants to find Momma’s killer and he wants to punish the ORB for coming after me like a bunch of cowards. But what’s the mean in reality? It means more blood and violence. It means he’s going to hurt a lot of men just like that guy back in the club, except a lot of them aren’t going to get up and walk away.
It means more death and more blood on my hands.
I can almost feel it, sticky and thick.
Other thoughts intrude: the way he tugged me into the bathroom. The way he undressed me. The way he praised me. The way he got me off and asked for nothing in return. It’s hot and I’m sweating into my sheets and rolling from side to side, and that’s when I hear the sound of a motorcycle backfiring in the near distance.
I sit there, wide awake, eyes staring at the ceiling and my heart racing.
The sound wasn’t out front. It wasn’t on the street. But I swear it came from somewhere in the woods.
I climb out of bed. My room’s barren except for the mattress and the frame and some simple linens. I go to the window that overlooks the forest and stare out at the trees trying to spot movement, or a light, or any indication that men are creeping up on the house from behind ready to burn this place to the ground.
But Nolan’s here this time. I can’t let my fear control what I do.
I slip out of the room, too awake to go back to sleep. I tiptoe down the hall and gently turns Kady’s doorknob. “Hey, are you awake?” I poke my head into the darkness of her room and stare at her bed.
It’s empty.
I’m on the edge of panic when I walk inside. Her phone’s gone and her shoes are missing, which means she went somewhere. Clothes are piled on the floor and stacked in little bundles, organized in some vague way Kady probably understands, and I try to figure out what she wore but I can’t tell, there’s too much chaos. I hurry downstairs and look in the living room, the kitchen, the pool room, even the garage. My voice echoes off the cold concrete floor when I call her name and nobody responds.
She’s gone.
I hurry to the front door and stare out the window toward the driveway. The truck’s still out front, which means she couldn’t have gone far, but where the hell would she run off to in the middle of the night? It’s a little past two in the morning and it’s not like her to disappear like this without saying something.
“Cora? What’s wrong?”
I yelp and spin around. Nolan’s standing nearby, wearing only a pair of gym shorts. He’s holding something black in both hands and it takes me a second to realize it’s a gun.