Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
I’ve seen the eyes of many people right before they meet their maker, and I’ve never seen the kind of fear like what I see in Ani’s eyes.
Mark glares at me. “And who the fuck are you?” He starts walking down the stairs to confront me.
Stupid, stupid man.
“I’m the fucking Grim Reaper,” I say as I punch him right in the Adam’s Apple.
His eyes bulge as he reaches for his throat with a sickening croak escaping from his contorted lips. He falls back, slipping on the last step and splashing into the mud. His wheezing for air mixes with the sound of the storm. The drops of the rain hit the metal roof of the trailer with more intensity, and I know a torrential downpour is coming and it’s time to act before all these hillbilly backroads get washed out.
I’m happier that he confronted me. He entered this fight and now I’m going to finish it. I didn’t like the idea of killing a man in his sleep, and I didn’t want to act like a silent assassin. No, this fucker walked right up to me and stared directly into the eyes of his killer.
Daphne runs up to Ani and takes her by the arm. “We’re leaving. Now.”
I don’t know if it’s the fact that Ani is too shocked to argue and resist any longer, or the fact that seeing the man who caused her to lose her baby laying in a puddle of mud was the last straw, but she does exactly as Daphne ordered, and the two women leave for the car.
Now it’s just me and this piece of shit.
Mark somehow scrambles to his feet, though I can see that he’s still struggling to breathe. He doesn’t have enough air to scream. He can’t beg. He can’t do anything but gasp through the final minutes of his life.
“You beat my wife’s sister.” I take a step toward him as he climbs the stairs of the trailer on all fours. “You killed her baby. You called my wife a bitch. And you threatened my wife. You threatened a Godwin.” I take hold of his hair and yank him off the stairs, throwing him back down in the mud. “And for that, you are going to die. But I don’t just kill. I kill slowly.”
Though I’ve been trying to be Apollo Godwin ever since waking up from my accident, right now, this very moment… I’m Ares Godwin. And this fucker is about to see what that means.
Chapter
Thirty
Apollo
Daphne knocks on my door as I finish getting ready to start my day. “Good morning,” she says.
“How is she doing today?” I ask, having checked on Ani myself a couple of times, but she had been sleeping every time. It’s been a couple of days of recovery, and it’s nice to see some of the swelling go down as well as some of the bright blues and purples begin to fade.
“She’s doing much better,” Daphne says. “Her ribs are still giving her some trouble, and she is having nightmares still…”
“Do you want me to have the doctor come back to the house?”
Shaking her head, she says, “No. He said she just needed time to heal. And I’m feeling confident she is. Slowly, but she is.”
“I’ve tried to leave you two alone,” I say. “I figured you needed some time together. To talk about what happened.”
“She doesn’t really want to talk too much, and I’m respecting that. I think she’s just processing right now. She has healing to do on the inside too. The wounds there are worse than the ones we see.”
“I think that can be said for everyone. We all have wounds on the inside that need to be healed.” I take her in my arms, feeling the need to have her close.
She looks up at me. “True. But what you did… You helped heal a very large one inside of me.”
“I should have done it sooner.”
“But you did it now. Thank you. I know I keep telling you that. But I mean it. I can never say those words enough. When you first asked me to marry you, you said that you’d always keep me safe. That you’d protect me. You gave me my very own Cinderella story.” She releases an unsteady breath. “But my glass slipper had thorns. Until now.”
“I should have plucked out every fucking thorn for you,” I declare, hating the visual of how my brother had caused such pain. Sharp, stabbing pain to a woman who didn’t deserve it.
Although if he were still alive, I want to believe he’d eventually do as I did. I want to believe that he was that kind of man. He wouldn’t have been able to look into Daphne’s eyes for long and resist.
I sure as fuck can’t. I’m growing more and more obsessed over this woman as each day goes by.