 by Anne Malcom.jpg)
Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Or so everyone thought.
No one knew how many pieces of her he took to the grave with him. She hid her scars, her nightmares. She hid everything until she couldn’t.
Then she ran.
But Colby followed her.
He’d follow her to the ends of the earth. To hell and back. Sariah knew he would…
Because Colby had already wrenched her out of hell once.
Because Colby loved her.
Only Colby loved the girl she was before. The carefree girl she used to be.
She had to show Colby that girl was gone.
By any means necessary.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
I told myself I wouldn’t scream.
Wouldn’t beg.
Made promises to myself when it was clear what was happening. When it was clear who he was. What he was.
But although I excelled at keeping my word with my friends, I routinely broke every promise I ever made to myself.
Why should this be any different?
“Please,” I begged, coughing a pitiful, wet sound. The single word was coppery, bitter, coated in the blood that filled my mouth.
His lips stretched out, exposing straight white teeth in a wretched smile.
“You wanted to think that you were different,” he sneered, running the knife coated in my blood along my ruined, naked body. “That you weren’t like the others.” When he leaned in, I could smell the way my blood scented his body. My stomach roiled as I fought to keep from vomiting. Not that there was any left inside me.
“But you’re just like the rest,” he whispered, the tip of his knife pressing against the soft flesh of my stomach. “Just another whore.”
My scream echoed off the walls as he pressed the knife in. He didn’t plunge it in. No. He did it with devastating slowness. Patiently. So he could inflict the worst kind of agony. So I could feel the steel tearing through every layer of skin and flesh before puncturing my organs.
He wanted me to die slowly.
That I knew.
He wanted my last hours on this earth to be bloody, agonizing, horrific.
I’d seen the crime scene photos, hadn’t I? Poured over them with a sick fascination, some kind of warped arrogance that I would be the one to find him.
And I guess I was.
But I wasn’t going to be the one who exposed him. Wasn’t going to be the girl who escaped. I wasn’t special.
I was dying.
The cuffs around my wrists had rubbed the skin raw as I tried to slip my way out of them. I thought that my blood would make them slick, slippery, aid in my escape. But that shit only happened in the movies. When you were cuffed by a serial killer who also happened to be a cop, you didn’t escape. You didn’t outsmart them because you thought that’s what you would do as the heroine of your story.
Every girl who came before me was the heroine of her own story, but that didn’t change a fucking thing. Not when the villain, the real fucking villain, was in front of them, puncturing their skin with a sharpened knife.
“Whores giving their bodies to countless men,” he continued as the blade cut through me. “So many, they don’t even know who the father is when they get pregnant.”
I let out a sob of agony when he ripped the knife out viciously. The pain was white hot. I didn’t dare look down at my torso which must’ve been a shredded mess. I could practically feel the cold warehouse air kissing exposed organs as they slipped through the tears in my skin.
“You shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce,” he hissed, waving the knife at me. My blood flew off the blade, small droplets hitting my face. “Shouldn’t be able to grow life when you abuse your body. Trash it. When you don’t keep your baby safe like you should.”
When the hand not holding the knife reached down to cup me between my legs, bile mixed with blood in my mouth.
His eyes glowed at my revulsion, his face contorting into a shape that didn’t seem human.
“No life will come out of you,” he hissed. “And in death, you’ll be mine.”
The tip of the knife teased along the seam of my thighs, between my legs. For one horrendous moment, I thought he’d put it … inside. I was already in agony, but being cut from the inside out? Maybe my body would protect me, maybe I’d finally pass out. Maybe I’d never wake up. That would be nice.
I tried to grit my teeth, narrow my eyes, rustle up my signature attitude. “Fuck you,” I whispered, the words coming out weak and garbled.
He smirked at me, keeping the tip of the knife at my entrance.
“Oh, I will be fucking you, as you so eloquently put it. But not yet. I’ll wait.”
The knife hovered for a second longer before he stood up, staring at me with disgust before turning on his heel and walking out of the room.
I felt no relief as his footsteps receded. Because he’d come back. And I’d still be here.
They say history is written by the victors. Whoever the fuck ‘they’ are. But really, history is written to immortalize the villains into infamy.
This fucker would be famous. People had finally been catching on to the murders in the last month. Online sleuths were going crazy. Hell, I was the one with all of the fake social media accounts, spreading the word about the man who would eventually murder me. There was going to be a lot more publicity, especially with my death.