Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Tears fell and fell, but I held on to the anger.
“I got rid of it.” I’d tried to spit it like venomous truth, but halfway up, the lie had stuck in my throat.
You’d swayed to the side.
Gutted.
I knew it.
I saw it in your face.
And I hated you even more that you’d made me put you through this.
If you’d only listened.
If you’d taken us far from here.
We could have hidden away together.
That’s where I’d always wanted to be—hidden away with you.
I knew the second you saw the gaudy, disgusting ring on my finger.
A shackle that maimed.
“What the fuck is that?” Your voice was so hard. Shocked and outraged.
I was outraged, too.
“I’m Jarek Urso’s wife. What did you think, you could crawl back here, and I’d just be waiting for you? How could you come here? After what you did? You stole from my father. You killed my uncle.”
How could you?
How could you?
God, you were still so beautiful out there beneath the hidden stars, even with your face contorted with disgust.
I’d wanted to go to you.
Fall on you.
Beg you to take me away from this horrible place.
I had to guard myself from your words. From the desperate pleas that fell from your mouth.
I couldn’t listen.
I couldn’t hear.
Because I’d bartered my life for yours, and I hated you for that, too, and it was now my responsibility to see to it that you never returned again. Just your standing there could have been a death sentence.
So I’d forced out the bitterness that was bottled inside me, tried to claim the lies as truth. “Don’t touch me! Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Me. You were never good enough for me, and we both know it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I would have died for you.”
Your words broke through, and my soul screamed that I was dying for you.
“That’s good because you’re dead to me.” I’d forced myself to take a step away. “I hate you, Logan Lawson, and I don’t want to ever see you again.”
Then I’d turned and run.
And that was the night my North Star went dim.
FORTY-SEVEN
LOGAN
It was close to ten when we pulled into the circular drive of the mansion hidden deep in the forest outside Redemption Hills. Night stretched long and dense across the heavens.
A shroud of debauchery.
An oozing of sin.
My knee bounced uncontrollably as I tried to breathe around the ten-thousand-pound weight that sat squarely on my chest.
I fought with the urge to jump from the passenger seat to go storming the castle like some kind of twisted knight.
My soul reeled from the star Taylor had asked me to read.
It consumed me in a fist of grief and a thirst for vengeance, tortured by what Aster had been through.
Her sacrifice.
Her loss.
Her pain.
While hatred burned so hot toward Jarek I thought when I saw him he might burst into flames.
Disintegrate into ash.
Like he felt me getting ready to splinter apart, Trent muttered, “Play it cool, man,” as he pulled his Porsche to a stop in the drive.
Jud was in the backseat.
Tension coiled in the air, bands that stretched taut between us and made every single one of us feel like we were going to snap.
I knew it.
I could feel it radiating off my brothers.
The truth that we were waltzing into the lion’s den.
“Are you two sure you want to go in there?” One last chance for them to back out because I wasn’t coming out of that house without my girl.
Whatever it cost.
“Like we’d let you go in there alone and miss out on all the action? I don’t think so, brother,” Jud cracked.
“Yeah, not gonna happen,” Trent added. “Besides, it looks like you’re going to need more than two hands for this little endeavor. And that’s what this family does…we lend a helping hand when it’s required.”
He smirked at that because we all knew this was a whole lot more than a helping hand.
Things were bound to get wild in there.
Would likely end bloody.
It would be dangerous and unpredictable.
I took a steadying breath, opened the door, and pushed to standing, hand gripping tight on the case that held the stone.
Ferocity simmered in my blood, close to boiling.
My nostrils flared.
I could feel it.
I could feel her spirit crying out from within the walls.
My chest tightened with the promise. “Even if I can’t see you, I’ll know you’re there, and I’ll find my way to you.”
“Easy,” Jud said as he came up to my side. “Know you want to run in there with guns blazing, but we have to play this smart.”
“Good thing smart is what he does.” Trent almost grinned.
My hand squeezed on the handle of the case that held the box. It was fucking ironic how the whole goal for that bastard was getting the second stone back from me, and he didn’t have a goddamn clue that I now possessed both. The other stone that Taylor had raided from his house was safe with her and the Demon where they waited for us back at my place.