Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
Sure the fuck enough. When I flip it over, the screen’s black.
Great. Now I have to figure out who to jack for a new phone and blackmail some asshole into jailbreaking it before they use the damn FindMe app.
My eyes snap up to the blonde brat who keeps creating more work for me—as if I don’t have a full enough plate as it is. I lower my arm to my side, my phone dangling loosely from my fingertips. I tap it against my thigh. “Lucky shot.”
She smirks, glancing away, and in a blink, the knife in her left hand is tossed to the right, my phone flying from my grasp as both the knife and it clank to the floor.
I glare and she smiles brightly, like a fucking straight-up beauty queen. Bet she could snap her fingers at almost anyone, and on their knees they’d go.
Pretty little Piranha.
“If you wanted me to stay, sharpshooter, you could have just asked.”
“I’m not well versed in asking,” she fires back.
Glancing around the room, from the marble floors to the vaulted ceilings, weird-ass designs curved and carved along it, leading to giant pillars in each corner. Everything is shiny and crisp fucking clean. Expensive and unnecessary, like the three chandeliers, the dozen or more bundles of white and pink roses randomly scattered around the space, and the crystal containers holding them. They’re useless. Wasteful.
I give a half shake of my head. “Nah, I bet the fuck not.”
“You couldn’t meet the minimum,” she quips.
My gaze sharpens.
Interesting choice of words.
“You don’t know me, girl. Don’t play like you do.”
“We do have a single table that’s a short five K, but it’s a one-hand walk. Win and walk or win and play again.” She rolls along, believing she’s speaking a language I don’t know or can’t follow.
It’s like I said, the girl knows nothing about me.
“Let me guess.” I cock a brow. “Game two is a ten K hand?”
Her eyes narrow slightly before she has a chance to stop them.
Not as clueless as you thought, huh, Rich Girl?
She covers her suspicion with a prissy press of her lips, smashed tight and puckered as if she tastes something sour. “Get them where you want them, right?”
We study each other for a long, silent minute.
“Why take my phone?”
Picking up her abandoned drink, she brings it to her lips for a slow sip. “You know why.”
“Why do you care if I had your plate number?”
“Why would I tell you the answer to that when I did what was needed to make sure you didn’t?” She uncrosses and recrosses her legs in the opposite direction, flashing the small triangle cloth hiding her pussy for a split second, and leans forward.
When I say nothing, she adds, “Only someone with something to hide would go through the trouble to attempt to retrieve what was stolen.”
“And that right there’s it, ain’t it?” She took my phone because I took her plate number, but what’s someone like her know about hiding or getting dirt beneath her fake fingernails? If I allowed the first glance to dictate the answer, it’d say not a damn thing.
She hums, her lips twitching, though her stare homes in. “What’s your name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does if you want it on your headstone.”
“I’d rather burn than be buried.”
“Would you look at that.” She grins, using my words against me as she picks up a third dagger she had tucked beneath her ass. Blindly pressing the sharp tip into her middle finger, she twirls it with her other hand. “Yet another thing we have in common.”
Ever so slowly, her gaze pulls from mine and begins traveling across my face. She pauses on the scar near my left eye and then moves to my lips, swollen and straining against the lip ring—the one shot the fucker I left bleeding got on me tonight when he threw his head back in a last-ditch effort to get free.
Such a bitch move. He knew he had a debt to pay. He should have taken his punishment like a man. Listen to words not meant for you, lose your ability to do so. It’s fair.
He’s lucky I left him with one intact eardrum.
Honestly, he’s lucky I left him with his life, but my bosses aren’t exactly keen on unnecessary bloodshed.
Doubt this girl realizes it, but she’s now drawing with the tip of the blade she holds, re-creating the smooth lines of the tattoos crawling up my neck from under my T-shirt, where her forest eyes are now glued. The blood spilled from tonight’s cleanup job has dried, the large stain turning the thin cotton crisp against my skin, but I didn’t exactly have time for a fuckin’ wardrobe change in my rush to get my shit back from the little thief in front of me.
I don’t have much, so no one gets to take what’s mine. It might be broken now, but that’s all right. So long as she has no use for it, I don’t care. It’s mine, and what’s mine no one else is allowed to touch.