Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
“How did you come to work for Stone?” I asked, looking up from my plate.
I could’ve asked a safer question, his favorite movie or color, perhaps. Pretending we were on a bad first date, skirting past the elephant in the room. But that wasn’t possible for me. The elephant was not an elephant but a huge, black shadow, corporal and oppressing, stifling the life from me.
“I’m curious as to what happens in a person’s life to result in them working for a mob boss, doing his dirty work,” I continued, no bite to my tone.
Half of me didn’t expect an answer. Knox didn’t have the same trouble keeping silence intact as I did. He seemed to despise the human practice of conversation. Or at least with me. Though I found it hard to envision him discussing normal things with anyone.
“Why did something have to happen in my life?” he asked, his voice smooth as silk. “Can’t I just be evil?”
His response caught me off guard. There was no teasing or sarcasm in it, just a note of truth. Did he truly consider himself to be evil? And if he did, then I doubted he truly was. Evil people weren’t aware of their wretchedness. More often, they were puffed up with their own importance or convinced they were the hero.
I put down my knife and fork to answer his question.
“No.” He shook his head before I had the chance to. “You eat and talk.”
I pursed my lips against the command, tempted to fight against it. But the prospect of conversation with him was more important than holding on to the façade of my sovereignty in this situation.
Dutifully, I loaded up my fork with tomatoey lentils and rice then put it in my mouth. I felt Knox’s eyes on me the entire time.
It felt intimate, the way he watched me eat. Possessive.
“No one can just be evil,” I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “Maybe a small portion of the population, but I think that’s a farce more than anything. Evil, if such a thing exists, is made. Created. Situations continually push someone into less and less desirable circumstances until they commit more heinous acts, justifying them until they don’t feel the need to do that anymore because they consider their acts to be a reflection of who they are now instead of things they do.” The words spilled out of me, things I’d been marinating on my entire life while desperate to find explanations to my parents’ behavior.
Knox had been impassively, coldly watching me before I spoke, but something in his eyes changed when I finished. His jaw slackened just a little, and the force of his attention no longer felt entirely cold and predatory.
Then he recovered, his mask slipping back on.
That’s what I was becoming sure it was. A mask. There was a human underneath there. Who’d endured trauma. A human with wants. Needs.
Me. I was one of his needs.
I felt somewhat powerful that this seemingly controlled man was beginning to unravel out of want for me. Or perhaps that was a story I was telling myself.
“You have too much sympathy for assholes,” he said matter-of-factly. Coldly. “They don’t deserve it.”
I tilted my head to regard him. “Or maybe they need it most of all.”
He didn’t reply. I didn’t expect him to.
“What prompted you to work for Stone?” I repeated my question, a daring thing to do as I felt myself dancing with his cruelty, bracing for the verbal snap of it. I waited for a threat, a reminder of my place in the world as his helpless captive.
I watched him consume a mouthful of food. He was polite in how he ate, had good table manners. Chewed with a closed mouth, the column of his throat moving pleasingly as he swallowed. My gaze dipped down to his chest, following the movement.
“I went to work for Stone because I wanted to.” At the sound of his words, my eyes snapped up to his. Dark, endless. “He didn’t trick me, blackmail me or control me into my role. Nor am I a mindless goon following orders out of fear. I’ll work for him for as long as this role aligns with my needs.”
“What are your needs?” I asked without thinking. An innate instinct in me wanted to know them so I could meet them. I wanted to take care of this man. Save him. No reason for this existed beyond the inescapable thread tightening between us. He was giving me proverbial crumbs to prove it existed, yet I was feasting on them.
His gaze never let go of mine. “Death,” he said simply. “I need to kill people, Piper, in order to survive. There is no justifying my acts. And despite what your armchair analysis says, I am my acts. I kill because I am a killer. There is nothing deeper than that.”