Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
I screamed.
I screamed for help. For my future. Like my grandma had told me to if a stranger ever tried to abduct me.
I screamed for them to please let me go.
Please and please and please.
I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t sorry, and I didn’t say I was sorry. And I didn’t say I would do anything to keep on living, because that wasn’t true either. I wouldn’t betray him. I had nothing left but my honor.
I screamed, hoping for mercy maybe. For my life.
I wished I could have done the sign of the cross. I tried to remember the prayers I’d said thousands of times. Our father, who art in heaven….
Big, fat tears pooled in my eyes and onto the floor. No one listened as they carried me down a hall with more concrete floors and through another heavy door. I was pretty sure I heard someone laugh, maybe more than just a single someone.
My shoulders and hips hurt as blood rushed to my face and into my nose, making it hard to breathe. Eventually, they stopped in front of another door. Then, just like that, these fuckers let me go, dropping me onto the hard floor. For some reason, my eyes instantly went to the sink in the corner, to a hose attached to it and dangling to the floor.
A moment later, my arms were grabbed again and tucked behind my back, and something sharp bit into my wrists.
I cried out as they tugged them up, forcing me to sit up, jerking even more at my shoulders.
I dipped my head back to find the faces of two men looking at me with hard, solemn expressions before a voice said, “That was a lot more dramatic than I’d expected.”
It was a woman. She had dark brown hair and was dressed in gray slacks and a black button-down shirt. She looked just like a person who worked in an office. And she was short. She could have been anywhere between her thirties and fifties. Pretty.
She looked fucking bored. This bad energy came from her as well. My stomach didn’t like it.
I pressed my lips together to keep from making another peep.
“Don’t waste my time. You know what we want. Make this easier on both of us and just tell me where it is,” the woman straight-up said as I sat there, sniffling because my nose was burning from all the blood that had rushed to my head. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
So this was how they were going to do this. No beating around the bush. I didn’t know what to do.
I swallowed hard before tipping my chin up and flicking my gaze from her to the two men looking down at me. I hated all three of them. I really did. “I don’t have the money, and I know you aren’t going to believe me anyway, but it’s the truth,” I replied slowly, sniffling, knowing I needed to buy The Defender time, and pissing her off wasn’t the right way to do it, but….
She stared at me for a long time with dark brown eyes, and I just stared back.
I hadn’t taken the money from her. From them. I hadn’t asked for any of this shit.
Eventually, the woman ticked her head to the side as she flicked her index finger just enough for me to barely notice. “Are you sure that’s what you want your answer to be?”
There was something about her tone that didn’t sit well with me, not at all.
But I had to do this for The Defender. This wasn’t about me. “I’m sorry they stole from you.” That was a lie. I was sorry that this had trickled down to me. If anybody deserved to have money stolen, it would have been them. I’d done my research. I knew what kind of drugs they produced. What kind of crimes they were guilty of. But as much as I wanted to give her—give all of them—the middle finger, I had someone to protect. Someone worth keeping my mouth shut for. “I don’t have the money, and that’s what I’m going to tell you now, what I’m going to tell you six months from now. I don’t have it.”
The woman’s expression went carefully blank in this creepy way before she smiled, and it wasn’t a nice one. Just from the look in her eye, I knew there was nothing behind it. “Everyone always starts by saying they don’t know, and most of them change their mind after a while, Altagracia.”
I shivered at her use of my name, and if I had some sense, I might have shivered at her low-key threat too.
My sense had walked out the door the second a member of the Trinity had landed in my yard. And that’s why I shrugged at her, holding back a groan at the discomfort. “I don’t have it, and I don’t deserve this.”