Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Now, along with his fists, I notice his back tensing too. And I get my confirmation. Of course it’s about my father. Of course. Everything wrong in my life is because of him. So why not this too.
“He probably… he probably did something to you. Didn’t he? He”—I swallow thickly—“took something from you. Maybe your land, yeah? You mentioned a ranch, didn’t you? So maybe he took that from you. And now you want what, revenge? Is this about revenge? Or maybe money. You want compensation for what he did to you. And that’s why you kidnapped me? Because you think whatever it is you want, taking me from him will make him give that to you.”
Even though he can’t see me, I’m shaking my head. “It’s never going to happen. It’s never going to work. Do you understand? My father is never going to give you any money. You can’t touch my father. He’s untouchable. People have tried, trust me. People have tried to kill him. People have tried to exact revenge. They all die in the end. Do you understand? They all end up dead. My father kills people. He’s going to kill you.”
He still doesn’t turn around.
And my urgency grows. “Are you listening to me? Whatever it is you’re thinking, you need to give it up. For your own sake. Sooner or later, my father’s going to find out I’m missing. My brother is going to find out too. They’re both really bad men, and they’re—”
I stop talking when I watch him take a deep breath, his massive back rising and falling, before he lowers his head to stare at the ground for a few seconds. As if in defeat. I don’t know what it means, and I don’t get the time to figure it out because he spins around to face me. I barely have time to study his features—which appear blank and unbothered—before he comes back to me and drops down to his haunches again. I try to speak but can’t. Because he brings something out of his pocket—a cloth similar to the one he has wrapped around his hand—and as he shakes it out, I realize it’s his skeleton mask. Only it’s not a mask, it’s actually a bandanna, and he uses it to gag me and shut me up.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Quiet Mustang
STANDING JUST OUTSIDE the door to my truck, I fish my phone out of my back pocket to send a text.
Me: I’ve got her.
The reply is instant.
Unknown number: Proof?
I exit the app to go to the camera folder. I select the picture I want, the one I took while she was still out: tied up to the tree, her head slumped to the side, her blond hair framing her face, cheeks dirt-streaked. And I send it off.
Again, the reply is instant.
Unknown number: Stand by for time and place of delivery.
I clench my jaw as I type my reply.
Me: Your turn.
Unknown number: You know that’s not how this works.
Unknown number: Wait for the text.
I keep staring at the screen, even though I know it’s not going to light up again. I’m not going to get the text I want. I also know if I call the number back, it’ll show as disconnected. I almost crush the screen in anger. But I know that’s not going to give me what I want either. The only thing that can give me what I want is her.
I look up and lock eyes with her through the window. Sitting inside my truck, she looks like a vision. The Turner Princess.
Seething blue eyes, the shade of which matches the sky over the ranch on a cloudless day; sunflower hair thick and long, strewn about her face haphazardly; fair skin flushed and those little tits jerking under her torn dress with every angry breath she takes. Her wrists are bound behind her back—still with hemp and still with the knot only I know how to untie—and her pretty pink mouth is gagged with my bandanna because she doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.
I’m not going to lie; it does something to me, seeing her like this. Roped and at my mercy.
It fucks with my head. It fucks with my body, makes me hard and hungry. Harder and hungrier than I’ve ever been for anything in my godforsaken life. The only thing missing from this picture is her tears. Her genuine fear, the kind I saw in her eyes, making the blue in them even darker, only a few moments ago when I gagged her mouth. Maybe it really makes me what people call me: a monster. But then again, I never claimed to be a man, let alone a good one.
She isn’t for me, though. Never was; never will be. That’s not to say she isn’t useful.
In the coming days, she’s going to hear a lot about why she was taken, why I’m bringing her to a place her daddy probably taught her to think of as hell. But none of those things are going to be true. It’s not about her father like she thinks, or about some piece of land.