Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“You’re a lying bastard.” She wasn’t raped. The doctor examined her. She confirmed Allegra hadn’t been raped. But I never asked Allegra if they did anything else. I couldn’t do that to her.
“She liked it. Whore like her mother before her. I had her too. Felt so warm and wet. Tasted good too.”
My heart thuds against my chest. Blood pumps so hard it blocks out the sound of him.
“You’re a fucking liar.” I say, my voice foreign to my own ears.
Rami grins. “Am I? Or maybe that little whore is the liar.”
“You fucking bastard,” I say, slamming his broken arm down on the ground so hard, he screams. “Hurt?” I ask.
“Fuck you.”
“I haven’t even started yet. I’m going to go slow. Take a little piece each day.”
“He’s going to come for what’s his.”
“She isn’t his.”
He laughs and the sound is deafening.
I look down at the fingers with which he touched her. The filthy hand he laid on her. I raise that knife high and bring it down hard and for one very brief moment, everything goes still. Rami. The room. Time. Everything.
And then he screams.
And I look down at the four fingers lying on the ground, the bloody nub of a hand with just a thumb. It’s more grotesque for it.
Rami screams and screams, eyes wide on the carnage of his hand. I take his other arm, and he fights me, trying to get free. He can’t. I have fury on my side. And when I chop off the fingers of that hand, I feel a grim satisfaction. A sick balancing of scales, although they’ll never be equal. Never. His life wouldn’t pay for a hair on her head.
Rami stares at his hands as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. He’s all thumbs now.
I tear my shirt over my head and gather up all his fingers inside it half-crazed myself. I get up, I don’t bother to lock the cell door. No need. I walk out of it.
“He’s coming for her, you fucking bastard!” Rami calls out behind me.
I pick up the gun and tuck it into the back of my jeans before walking toward the stairs when he starts to laugh a mad man’s laugh.
“He’s coming to get his wife!”
My world teeters sideways. My brain rattles against my skull.
Rami laughs.
I turn slowly, hear racing, blood roaring in my ears. I look into his disgusting face. “What did you say?”
He laughs louder, bloody stumps for hands in front of his face.
I hadn’t understood why he’d left her behind. Left her for me to find. It hadn’t made sense.
“You didn’t know? Guess she wouldn’t come running with the news.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I say, stalking back toward the cell, toward him and pressing the barrel of the pistol to the side of his head so hard, his cheek is crushed against the wall.
“They’re coming for you, the family,” he says through gritted teeth because even now, even with his hands as they are, he’s scared to die. He’ll do anything to stay alive. “You kidnapped his wife, after all. You fucking prick.”
I lower the weapon, press it to his stomach and pull the trigger.
He grunts, doubles over, drops to his side. Blood pours form his stomach, and I stand watching him.
“That’s going to hurt like a mother fucker. And then you’re going to die slow. But not fucking slow enough.”
16
ALLEGRA
Time passes. The house is silent. I’m locked in Cassian’s bedroom pacing, trying to make sense of what’s happening.
Rami is here. In the same house as me.
I finally make myself sit on the floor pressing my back to the bed and push my hands into my hair. What if he tells him? What if he tells him what I did?
Fuck. I need to think. I need to fucking think. I shouldn’t have let Cassian go down there without me. I should have gone with him. I should have taken Enzo’s gun and killed Rami before he could say a word.
What if he tells Cassian what I did?
I force a deep breath in. I need to calm down.
Footsteps sound outside the door. I jump to my feet as the lock is turned, the door opened. I don’t know what I expect to see. It’s not this, though. Not Cassian shirtless and bloody and looking a fucking wreck.
The sight of him makes me stop. It’s not just the wild look about him. It’s what’s in his eyes. Like for the first time in the time I’ve known him, he’s caught off guard. Like he didn’t expect what he got.
I know why.
He knows. Rami told him and he knows.
I drop my head, unable to bear his gaze. I’m too ashamed.
“Look at me.”
He has two things in his hands. A gun casually held by his thigh. In the other is his shirt. It’s stained blood red.