Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
He puts his hand on the back of my neck. There’s no pressure yet, but it is his way of reminding me how much control he can exert if he feels like it.
He reaches around me when I still don’t move, pushes the fork into the pancakes, and brings a bite to my mouth. He moves to the side, so he can see what he’s doing, and now it is me, his hand on my neck, and his other one in front of my face.
I smack the fork out of his hand, jump down from the chair, and run.
I get all of three steps before Aiden catches up with me. I curse at him, try to kick him. I go full Ethel on him, as much as I dare. He doesn’t say a word, he just carries me upstairs.
“What the fuck is going on?” Luke mutters to himself behind us. I feel sorry for him. This must be so confusing.
Aiden takes me back up to the bedroom. My stomach is growling because I am absolutely starving, but I still feel that faint nausea that comes with realizing nothing is ever going to actually make me good. I’m fucked. Like, old school fucked. Fucked forever.
“Tell me what you’re thinking and feeling,” Aiden says, making the most unreasonable request of all time.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I am not.”
“I don’t tell people what I think and feel,” I say. “I keep that shit a secret to everyone, including myself.”
He grips my chin firmly and forces me to look up at him. “That might be how this story started,” he says. “But it’s not how it is going to end. Now. Spill.”
“Fine. I think last night didn’t work.”
Aiden lets that sit for a moment, before asking, “In what way?”
“You said I was going to be a better, forgiven person afterward. But I’m not. I’m still evil.”
“Baby girl, that is a judgment you’re putting on yourself,” he says with remarkable softness. “We have forgiven you.”
“I didn’t get you killed. I got Teddy killed. And he can’t forgive me, because the dead can’t do that.”
“Teddy would have forgiven you first out of all of us. You didn’t get him killed. He was a man of our family, the Levin line. He knew what kind of beasts hunted him, and if he put himself in harm’s way, he did so while making a calculated risk.”
“It was my fault. He was off guard because of me.”
“Maybe, but that was his mistake.”
I close my mouth. He doesn’t get it. They can tell me hundreds of times over that I’m forgiven, but I don’t think I can forgive myself. I don’t deserve pancakes, and I definitely don’t deserve the sole attention of all three surviving Levin brothers.
I decide, then and there, to run.
They will be better off without me. They can all find normal women and marry them. They don’t need to all share someone as fucked up as I am.
CHAPTER 15
Ella
It’s remarkably easy to get out. I just wait until Aiden is occupied with work, and Luke is at the gym, and Leo is off presumably killing someone and taking a piece of them as a trophy. They are busy men.
As soon as I have some time to myself, I take some cash and a car. But I leave the car parked neatly and I mail the keys back to them, so it’s not grand theft auto; at least, not for long.
I ensure that I take a good amount of money. Not enough for them to really miss, but enough for me to get around with. Ten grand. Okay, it’s kind of a lot by normal standards, but these guys aren’t normal and ten grand is nothing to them.
I still don’t have much of an appetite, but I get some sushi, and I sit in the shop with a little suitcase at my feet and I watch the world go by and I wonder if I will ever feel like I am actually part of it. I’ve seen too much. Too much has happened to me. I’ve done things I should never have done. I see a young woman about my age walking past with a stroller that she’s pushing with one hand, and an iced coffee with whipped cream in the other. I feel so much envy for her, and what I imagine is a simple, but satisfying life.
I’m going to find one of those.
Leo
“Sorry,” Aiden reads the note. “But I’ve gone away. Do not follow me. It’s best for all of us.”
He puts it down. “Cameras have her leaving the property while we were occupied. She took cash from my office, around ten thousand dollars in unmarked bills. She took the car, then dumped that, and got a ride share, then a bus.”
I snort. Smart move. She must have realized how easily we’d follow the car.