Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
My head flies back with a kick directly to my mouth, and the pain shoots through me. Blood seeps from my split lip, and I do what I can to curl into a ball, shamelessly trying to protect myself.
“HEY!” I hear from a voice far away. “LEAVE HER ALONE. I’M CALLING THE COPS.”
The men scramble, grabbing my open bag off the ground and racing toward my car, as my phone falls from my bag to the pavement. I watch in horror as the men steal my car, the tires squealing as they race away, and I do what I can to pull myself up off the bloody ground. But there’s no use, I can’t get my feet under me.
Inch by inch, I move toward my phone, army crawling across the pavement, when a large man hurries toward me, scooping up my phone. “You good, girl?” he asks, scooping his arms beneath me and dragging me right back into the alley where he sits me up against the wall.
I shake my head, unable to form a single word, and when he crouches down and swipes his thumb across the screen of my phone, unlocking it, all I can do is watch as he then lifts it to his ear. “Yo, this girl is hurt. Just got jumped in the alley by five guys.”
He doesn’t say anything else, just straightens up and tosses my phone down onto my aching stomach. “Sorry, girl,” he says, giving me a tight smile. “This ain’t my fight.”
And with that, he takes off, dashing across the street and leaving me for dead as my world turns to darkness.
30
HARPER-RAYN
Asudden jolt forces consciousness through my foggy mind as I wake with a gasp. I’m cramped, lying across the backseat of someone’s car as they speed down the road. Pain rockets through my body, and I curl back up into a tight ball, groaning in agony.
Everything is blurry, and my head spins, but there’s something familiar about this car, about the smells around me.
I press my hand to my throbbing head, and my fingers come away with sticky blood. “Wha . . . What happened?” I grumble, feeling tears on my cheeks. “Where am I?”
Bits and pieces come flashing back. The janitor from work. His hand reaching out to me. Mine splintering across the front of his throat. Everything snowballed from there.
I try to sit up, but pain shoots through my torso, making me cry out in agony, only to double over and throw up everything in the pit of my stomach.
“Fuck,” a voice comes from the front seat.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that I wasn’t alone, and I try to search the front as we speed down the road, hitting every bump and flying around the corners, jostling so much I’m almost positive I’m riding around a bumper car arena at the fair.
Consciousness comes and goes, and dark spots dance in my blurry vision as I grip my aching head, positive this is death.
“Who did this, kitten?” comes a stern voice from the front.
Fear blasts through my chest.
“No. No. No. No. No.”
This can’t be happening. It can’t be him.
“Kitten,” he rumbles, his tone demanding answers. “Who hurt you?”
I fade in and out, thinking back, trying to remember the faces, the people, the places, but nothing is coming to me. It’s so frustrating. Only a moment ago, I could picture it so clearly, but it has fallen right out of my brain.
“KITTEN!”
“NO!” I cry. “Don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready. No! Please. Just let me go.”
Visions come in and out. A back alley, faces I don’t know, a man rushing across the street, but none of them help me to piece together the reason I’m hurting so badly, why my brain feels as though it’s swelling inside my head. “It hurts,” I cry, clutching my agonizing waist. “It hurts.”
“I know,” he murmurs, his tone shifting and scratching at something inside my brain. Something familiar.
I know that voice, but why? I can’t work it out, can’t pinpoint how I know it while my head is hurting like this. I can’t even think about trying to work it out. All that matters is making the pain go away.
“Please,” I cry. “Make it stop.”
The driver looks back at me, and I get a flash of that terrifying mask, and I realize the man who was running across the road had grabbed my phone. He must have called someone in my contact list. Did he call Laith, only to get a direct line to my stalker? Is he responsible for this?
Tears flow down my cheeks, and I taste blood in my mouth. “You’re mine, kitten,” he says, a lethal chill in his tone. “I will gut the bastards who put their hands on you. Tell me who did this.”