Total pages in book: 331
Estimated words: 315585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1578(@200wpm)___ 1262(@250wpm)___ 1052(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 315585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1578(@200wpm)___ 1262(@250wpm)___ 1052(@300wpm)
Maybe I had this all wrong. Was she buying drugs? Selling him drugs?
The only plausible answer is that they were exchanging something that couldn’t be done in public.
She pulls a trench coat tightly closed, tying it off, and her designer heels slap the water puddles that litter the abandoned parking lot. She doesn’t seem nearly as drunk as she looked a couple of minutes ago. Was she faking it? If so, why? Eve walks to her car parked right by the door of the motel room. Getting in, she starts it, and the reverse lights come on.
I watch her pull out onto the road and remain where I’m at until her taillights fade into the darkness.
Throwing the cigarette down, I make my way across the parking lot and glance around. It’s an old, practically abandoned one-story motel. Half the letters on the sign don’t work and the paint has faded from countless years of sun damage. The number on the door reads 111. But it’s different from the others. It’s been carved with a knife and seems oddly familiar. Like the three lines that were on her hip when I finger-fucked her on the yacht. Now that she’s left, there are no other cars other than what’s at the bar.
I touch the knob and twist it, opening the door to the room she vacated.
Stepping inside, I look over the man who lies in the center of the bed. He’s naked except for the dress slacks bunched around his ankles.
His throat is slashed from ear to ear. The visual gives me a feeling of unease. Blood covers the already dingy sheets, along with his chest, neck, and parts of his face.
I’m equally impressed and confused.
Was this a job? If so, what kind? Was she robbing him? Blackmailing him?
Surely, some sort of exchange was involved, and it went south, requiring her to defend herself. Or she knew she was bringing him in here to kill him. But why him and why here, of all places?
Walking to the bathroom, I grab a towel and wet it. Then I go over to the body and run it over his blood-covered chest. What I see makes me pause. He has a Lords crest branded on his chest—a circle with three horizontal lines through it.
Was she targeting him, or was he targeting her? I watched her clean up a Lord at the cathedral. He had been part of a confessional, so I know she wasn’t the one to torture him. So why this Lord? Was she supposed to deliver him to the cathedral, and things escalated so quickly that she had to take care of him here?
She knew what she was doing. She was prepared. There’s no other reason she would have sat at the bar for over an hour, speaking to no one, then suddenly engage with him as soon as he sat down. Within five minutes, they had walked over to a motel room. One she was conveniently parked in front of.
Her trench coat? Where did it come from? It had to have already been here in the room; she didn’t have it at the bar.
Everett set this up. Her appearance and actions screamed I’m drunk and a cheap fuck. But it was a façade. Part of her game. She lures men in and seduces them in order to kill.
It makes me wonder if I killed the guy for her on the Isabella because she wanted me to or because he really was going to rape her. After seeing what’s in front of me, I’m thinking the former.
I smile to myself. She did good, but I’m not surprised. She’s a pro. Been doing it for years. That night on the Isabella all those years ago wasn’t a cry for help. Everett didn’t need me to save her.
It was just another job. She wanted to play, switch it up. So she pretended to be a whore for that Lord. What man would pass up doing whatever the fuck he wanted to a woman because he’s paying for it? Not a Lord. Money can buy you anything you want, and the Lords have plenty of it.
That also explains why she willingly threw herself at me after I saved her that night. She had fallen off her heels. Eve was pretending that night too. Letting him think she was weak and easy.
But he was my initiation. Was I supposed to kill him before or after he’d raped her? It doesn’t make any sense.
I glance around the room for a murder weapon. Other than a small purse, she wasn’t carrying anything on her body when we arrived at the bar, and she didn’t walk out with a knife when she left this motel room.
Glancing around, nothing stands out. I open the nightstand, and what I see makes me pause.