Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
A crack sounds.
It is closely followed by a groan.
Oddly, I don’t cringe when the removal of Roy’s gag, so he doesn’t choke on the blood Nero’s fist forced from his nose, is chased by a tooth being spat onto the dirt floor.
I get an immense amount of satisfaction.
For years he abused me. It may not have been with his fists, but it was just as dangerous.
It almost killed me.
Though I’d like to witness Roy get some more just desserts, I shift on my feet to the true culprit of the latest crime wave to hit Vegas.
I was already slotting the pieces of the puzzle together, but the picture became clear when I attended a meeting with Nero in Nikolai’s office.
When I look at Tasha as if it is the first time we’ve met, I don’t see her svelte frame that would have been revolted at the thought of eating greasy burgers and fries to make it through the week alive, or the glossiness of her hair that couldn’t look bad no matter how disastrous the hair day.
I look at the woman behind decades of perceptions and years of false idolizations.
That’s when I truly see her, and the dilation of her pupils when I smile announces she is aware her cloak has been stolen.
As I raise my hand to Tasha’s mouth to remove her gag, Nero issues her a stern warning. “If your teeth get anywhere near her fingers, I will saw your hands off and feed them to you.”
His threat shouldn’t turn me on, but it does. Confidence doesn’t solely come from within. It comes with the utmost certainty that someone will be there to catch you anytime you may fall.
Nero is that man for me.
The way he defended me to Nikolai assures me of this, not to mention how he’s letting me take the lead in our latest coup.
I remove Tasha’s gag without incident before shifting my focus to the pain in her eyes.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Confusion blasts through her eyes, forcing me to clarify. “Not being seen.”
She scoffs at me. “Please. I was so seen your husband couldn’t get enough.”
Her snippy attitude doesn’t dint my confidence in the slightest because I wasn’t referring to Roy. I was talking about how even being the prettiest, shiniest object in a room of despair can’t force Nero’s eyes to rake her body once.
Although grubby, her clothing is risqué and she has a ton of cleavage on display, yet Nero isn’t the least bit interested.
I’ll keep Roy’s horndog expression to myself. I don’t want to make you sick.
“Was it like that the first time?”
Nero warns Tasha to watch her fucking tone when she snaps out, “First time what? You’re acting as if you know me.”
“I do know you,” I bite back, giving her a small snippet of the attention she’s being denied from Nero. “You’re the woman he never saw. The one who stood right in front of him, dying for an ounce of his attention, but was not awarded a single snippet of it. You may as well have been invisible because he was never going to look at you how you looked at him.”
I twist to face Nero, who appears as lost as Roy. He is an amazing actor. “When I met your mother on the first day of the rebuild, the entire crew was here. Contractors, electricians, plumbers, and an interior designer team who had allegedly cut off their noses to spite their faces by offering their services for well below market value.”
I return my eyes to Tasha in enough time to watch her throat work hard to swallow.
The quote I found in Nero’s room matched the details of the business my assets had been transferred to.
It is then that Tasha’s ruse started unraveling.
“There was so much buzz that day, but hardly any of it centered around the build. Everyone, including yourself, was excited about the owner’s anticipated arrival later that afternoon.” She lunges forward like a lunatic in a straitjacket when I mockingly whisper, “But despite killing your livelihood to get close to him, he didn’t look your way once, did he?”
“He almost saw me. He was about to look straight at me!” she barks in my face, covering my cheeks with spit. “Then he saw you.” She is already blistering with anger, but her next confession surges it to a pliable level. “He canceled an entire rebuild and stole months of income from his construction crew so he could watch you through shutters incapable of revealing how horrifying you truly are.”
She spits in my face, but before Nero can pounce, I retaliate with the same level of violence.
I slap her hard across the face, sending her ranting shrieks to pained sobs.
My whack does little to weaken her campaign to slice down my confidence, but since it sees her walking straight into my trap, I don’t protest. “It is disgusting. You couldn’t even keep your husband’s attention—”