Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
They forced me in front of Warren, but I didn’t look at him, my rage reserved for my brother.
“Look. At. Me.”
Warren must have been entertained by the exchange because he allowed it to continue.
“I said, look at me.”
My brother fought the order, eyes on the floor at my feet and then at the side of my head, like he could fool me into thinking our eyes were locked.
“Come on, you fucking coward.”
He still avoided me.
“You turned your back on your family, but you don’t have the balls to look me in the eye as you do it?”
He worked his jaw like he was ashamed and mad at the same time. The cords in his neck were taut like a tightrope. He released a strangled breath before he finally looked me in the eye.
The second we looked at each other, I spat on his face. “Figgh’i buttana.”
He closed his eyes when the spit hit him in the face, and he just stood there while it dripped down his cheek.
The man holding me tightened his grip on my hands like I might try to kill my brother.
And he was absolutely right.
“So, it was either you or nobody?” I asked. “You would rather destroy your family legacy?”
“I didn’t destroy it,” he said quietly. “I took it.”
My father had been silent through this whole exchange, but he finally spoke, his eyes down the hallway like he refused to look at his son. “You really are an idiot.”
I turned to my father.
Leo did too.
“You think Warren helped you do this for a partnership?” My father worked his jaw before he turned and looked at Leo, and the expression on his face…was as hot as the lava inside Mount Etna. “No. He used you like a puppet, and now he’ll kill me and your sister, and probably you, and take this business for himself.”
Leo shook his head once. “This business is mine, and it should have been mine in the first place—”
“He’s right, kid,” Warren said. “Not about everything, but he gets the gist.”
The shock was immediate on my brother’s face as he looked at Warren.
He was really that naïve?
Then Warren pulled out the pistol from his back pocket and pointed it at my father’s temple.
My father didn’t react, eyes hard on my brother’s face.
“No,” Leo said. “You said you wouldn’t kill him—”
Boom.
Blood…everywhere.
I screamed and jerked back. My shoes slipped on the blood that now coated the floor.
My ears started to ring again.
I saw everything that happened, saw the brains splatter and the blood explode like a geyser, but my mind blocked it out the second I saw it. My knees gave out, and I slid to the floor as the sobs cracked my chest instantaneously. I could hear my brother screaming in the echoes of the background.
“You said you wouldn’t kill him!”
Against my better judgment, I looked at my father, who was dead on the floor, a huge puddle of blood already underneath him, his eyes lidless and open, his hand soaked in his own blood. “Dad…” I started to crawl toward him, wanting him to be alive when I knew without a doubt he was beyond saving. “Dad…” I gripped his hand, my clothes getting soaked in the red blood that was everywhere. “No…”
“Take her,” Warren ordered. “Let’s go.”
“You said you would let her go!” Leo yelled.
“Well, I changed my mind. She’ll be my little pet. We can play hide-and-seek in my mansion. It’ll be fun.”
All the fight left me. All the hope died in my heart. I was too devastated to care about anything. My eyes remained on my father, and then suddenly and violently, I vomited all over the floor, my insides mixing with the blood spreading there.
It splashed on Warren’s boots, and he kicked off the debris. “I said, let’s go.”
The guy who held me dragged me to my feet and forced me upright.
My legs weren’t cooperative at first, shaky and weak, and my shoes slipped in the blood and the vomit, and I almost fell. “Wolfe…where are you?” I suddenly sobbed again, grieving the violent death of my father that he should have stopped.
Leo continued to argue with Warren. “This wasn’t the deal we made, and you know it.”
“Oh, I know.” Warren nodded toward his cronies to take me down the stairs. Then he clapped Leo’s cheek a couple times. “With a little more experience, you’ll catch on.”
The man started to escort me to the stairs, and when my shoes hit the rug, they began to dry and lose their slipperiness. I sobbed as I moved down the stairs, tempted to throw myself down and crack my head open. I’d lost my father to a bullet and my brother to betrayal, and the man that I needed most wasn’t there.
I hoped he hadn’t been killed…then I really would throw myself down these stairs.