Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“Murderer.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “He had it coming. If it wasn’t me, and some might suggest the swiftness of my bullet a mercy, Trevino would have done it, and I can tell you he’d not have been so merciful.”
A soldier brings him a glass of water. He sips, makes a satisfied ah sound. I lick my cracked lips. I’m so thirsty my throat burns.
“Drink?” Malek asks, holding out the glass.
I turn my face away. I won’t drink from his glass. I look around the large room of the ruined house, take in the destroyed furniture covered in five years’ worth of filth. Splatters of blood somehow stand out in a deep, terrible brown against the walls. Who cleaned up the bodies of the dead men? I didn’t see that part. Soldiers, I suppose. Men who are used to seeing death. Cleaning up murder. Men used to delivering it.
No. I can’t think about that. Can’t think about the last time I was here. I can’t. He hasn’t killed me yet. If I want to survive this, I need to focus. No time to relive the horror of those days and nights.
The place where my pinkie used to be throbs. Ten days. Ten nights. Rescued on the eleventh. Rescued too late.
Stop it. Focus.
I’m alive. He would have killed me if he didn’t need me, I’m sure of it. As long as he needs me, I’ll be all right. I will. I need to get my racing heart under control.
I won’t be all right, though. How can I be? The way he murdered Michael? Michael who didn’t even see it coming. Michael who trusted him. Amal was right. Cassian was right. Michael wasn’t in charge. Malek had been taking the reins slowly, but surely, biding his time, ever since my father’s death. I knew it too, didn’t I?
I blink, look up at him, realizing something.
“Did you kill my father too?” I ask, my mind working on a different question. A more important one. Why did he bring me here, to this place of all places?
Because who killed my father is not a question that keeps me up at night. My father died a better death than he deserved. If you reap what you sow, he got off easy.
“Do you truly expect me to believe you mourned his death? It was for show, Allegra. A good one, I must say. My compliments. But you knew him as well as I did. You knew what he did.”
I don’t comment on that. I can’t.
“Sir,” a familiar voice comes from behind him. Malek turns. It’s Rami. Rami who worked for my father. Who worked for Michael. Rami who doesn’t even look at me. I’ve always known he was a mercenary only loyal to the highest bidder.
“What?” Malek barks.
Rami just shakes his head.
Malek draws a breath in through narrowed nostrils and glares down at me before turning back to Rami. “Then find another. It’s not that fucking hard.”
There’s an infinitesimal twitch of Rami’s eye. “It’s not so easy. There’s…” he glances at me, clears his throat. “They’re afraid to go against him. Sir.”
Does Malek hear the contempt in Rami’s sir?
Malek turns to me. His jaw is clenched tight. “I said find another. He can fucking disappear after he’s done what I need him to do with the money I’ll be paying.”
“It’s impos—”
“Fucking find someone!”
A beat passes. “Yes,” Rami says through clenched teeth before turning and walking back out the door.
Malek puts the glass of water down and pulls a chair over, turns it so the back is to me and straddles it.
“You trust him?” I ask, rubbing the bump on the back of my head.
“Of course not, but he is efficient. And merciless.”
I glance at the closed door Rami just left from. Panic begins to rise again. I know what’s beyond that door. The winding staircases that lead to the other one. To the dark hallway. The stairs that go down to the cellars. To that room.
But up here, this was where it happened.
Up here, this is where she lived her horror. Down there was where I lived mine and it was nothing. Nothing in comparison. I never witnessed her butchering. Only the aftermath. Only holding my trembling mother in my arms after they did what they did.
I suck in a breath, force the tears away, tell myself to breathe, to stay calm.
I’m alive. He needs me. That’s what I need to focus on.
“You remember this place,” Malek observes.
“I see it in my nightmares. But you must know that or you wouldn’t have brought me here,” I say, facing him again, taking in his dark, empty eyes. Dead eyes. I think of Cassian. Of his beautiful eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea. I think of how Cassian looks at me.
How he looked at me the last time I saw him. What he almost did to me.