Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 167671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 838(@200wpm)___ 671(@250wpm)___ 559(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 838(@200wpm)___ 671(@250wpm)___ 559(@300wpm)
My eye begins to twitch.
Is that what she’s been doing?
Paying off a debt to some guy with our money?
She raises the bat again.
“Please, it’s not my fault,” the guy cries. “I was just doing what I was told. Please, have mercy.”
“Like you had on us?” she barks. “You know your fucking friends came for me.”
“We were doing what we were told.”
“You know damn well why you were told to do it!” she yells back. “You deserve the same pain I had to endure.”
She lifts the bat high.
The man begins to laugh. “Killing me won’t help you now. It’s too late for you and your little Cora.”
She pauses midair. “What?”
“Check my phone if you don’t believe me. Ivan already told him everything he needs to know … Stefano is coming.”
Her whole face turns white as snow.
THWACK!
She hits him right in the head, knocking him out.
THWACK!
THWACK!
Blood oozes from his ears, but she keeps hitting him over and over until nothing is left except her anger slowly flooding out of her like the blood leaving her victims.
Her breathing comes out in ragged breaths when she stops, her clothes completely soaked through with blood as she chucks the bat aside.
Fuck.
Yes.
This is the one.
The one thing that can make my dead heart tick.
Ivy
Two people, gone within an instant.
Wiped off this planet with the strength of my own two hands.
I stare at their mangled bodies and the onslaught I left behind.
I swore I would do anything to protect her, and I did.
Honest to the devil … a murderer of his making.
My darkened eyes find Silas’s lethal eyes from across the room, the red hue of annihilation flickering behind them, finally feeling familiar.
So this is what it’s like to become a monster.
I wipe the blood off my face with the back of my hand. “Happy now?”
A proud fire rages in his eyes. “Well done.”
“Is this what you wanted? To turn her into a fucking killer?” Max grits, as he barges at Silas and grabs his shirt. “You had no right.”
Silas jerks free from his grip with ease. “She wanted this.”
Maybe I did.
But could I ever say it out loud like he so proudly does?
“Bullshit,” Max growls. “You did this for you.”
Silas laughs in his face. “So what if I did? I do what I want, when I want. No one controls me.”
Max shoves Silas forward, clearly upset he put me in this position.
But Max doesn’t understand the visceral brutality hiding beneath these layers of endurance I’ve been forced to wear.
Max doesn’t feel the need to blow up and destroy, but Silas does.
“Max is right,” Heath says, stepping in. “What was the point of all this? You could’ve just killed them yourself.”
“No. This was what she needed,” Silas says, tilting his head at me like he’s waiting for me to admit it.
But all I can do is stare at the two bodies like I’m waiting for them to come back to life just so I can kill them again.
He’s right. I did need this.
Desperately.
More than any one of these guys could ever understand.
“She was being chased by a debt, and I took care of it,” Silas adds.
But that’s just it.
Killing these two didn’t change anything.
The second they stopped me from looting the Phantom House, it was already over.
These fuckers know we were hiding at the Skull and Serpent Society.
Ivan knew … because of them.
“No,” I mutter, and everyone looks at me. “It only made it worse.” I throw a damning glance at Heath. “You … you know Ivan. You told him about my location.”
“I did not,” Heath growls back. “But you didn’t tell us the truth about Cora.”
What?
My eyes flicker with unseen rage while I glare at Heath, the tension like crackling lightning.
Heath picks up the bloodied bat, gazing at it with intent before his eyes fixate on mine. “She’s not yours, is she?”
Fuck.
That’s it.
That’s the one thing I told myself that would make me want to pull the trigger and blow up the whole thing.
For the first time since I met him, Silas genuinely looks shocked.
“W-What?” Max stutters. “You aren’t her mom?”
“She’s not going to give you the answer, Max,” Heath says.
A kind of darkness that makes me shiver has fallen over Silas’s face. “Once a liar, always a liar.”
Fine.
He wanted me to break?
Force me to reveal the truth?
They can have it … after they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
A deadly but disappointed smile forms on my face before I turn around and run.
CHAPTER 53
Max
The girl … isn’t hers? She’s not Cora’s mother?
No, that can’t be right. This has to be a mistake. She wouldn’t steal … a child?
Heath nearly breaks the bat in two with just his fist.
Suddenly, she turns around and runs off down the stairs.
“Ivy, stop!” I yell, but she ignores me completely.
I bolt down the stairs and follow her out of The Shack. But she’s already jumped on my bike, and my hands immediately fly to tear out my own hair. “Wait, that’s my bike!”