Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Fuck. My heart was hammering. My friends were staring at me, bewildered and terrified. “Bronwyn?” asked Luna.
“The man your fiancé killed,” said the boss, drawing lazy figure eights in the air with the tip of the knife, “was important to me.”
“You’ve got the wrong woman,” croaked Jen. “Her fiancé’s a property developer.” She looked at me. “Right?” I didn’t reply. “Right?”
I looked back at her helplessly. Fuck. Why did she have to pick this bar? But it wasn’t her fault. I should have told her the truth.
The boss moved closer. I tried to move but I was awkward on my crutches and he was right in my face before I could get away. “Where I come from,” he told me, “when someone is killed, there must be p’vokhhatuts’um. Compensation.” He looked thoughtfully down at my dress, then slipped the tip of the switchblade under one of the shoulder straps. I caught my breath as the point nicked my skin. “We’re going to extract that compensation from you.” He jerked the switchblade, and the strap parted. My dress sagged.
As if a signal had been given, his men shut the drapes that covered the glass wall. No one downstairs would see what was about to happen. Over the thumping music, they wouldn’t even hear the screams.
The boss moved the switchblade to my dress’s other strap. Fear had made my mouth dry and I had to struggle to speak. “Not them,” I managed, glancing at Jen, Sadie and Luna. “Just me. They don’t even know who Radimir is.”
The boss smirked at his men. “She wants us all to herself.” He leered at me. “Fine. They can watch.” The switchblade severed the other strap, and my dress started to slide down. I grabbed it and jumped back, staggering on my crutches, but the boss just laughed. My back hit the wall: there was nowhere to run. The boss pocketed his switchblade and advanced.
I closed my eyes. Maybe I could block it out, shut down all my senses while it happened. But then I heard Luna moan in fear, and something snapped inside me. The unfairness of it, the swaggering male arrogance of it.
If they were going to have me, they weren’t getting me without a fight.
I opened my eyes and as the boss stepped forward, I leaned on my left crutch and swung the other one up and around. The crutch was heavy, and it made a very satisfying thump as it hit the side of his head. He staggered, clutching at his scalp, and I drove the tip of the other crutch into the middle of his belly, doubling him over. But now I was off balance and when he came for me again, I couldn’t get a crutch up in time—
Jen, Sadie and Luna all swarmed him, grabbing arms and legs. “Get away from her!” panted Jen. I managed to get a hit in with the crutch and stepped forward for another.
But then the boss’s men grabbed Luna and Sadie, plucking them off and hurling them aside, and the boss shook off Jen and turned to me, red-faced and furious. He stepped forward and, before I could react, he punched me in the face. My head snapped to the side, and it felt like a bomb went off in the center of my brain. Everything throbbed red and black, and I fell sideways, crashing down onto one of the couches, ragdoll-floppy.
The boss was on top of me in a second. “Just for that,” he spat, “I’m going to make it hurt.”
The door flew open.
A figure stood in the doorway. The flickering blue lasers turned him into a silhouette, but I would have recognized those wide shoulders and the ramrod-straight posture anywhere.
The boss scrambled off me and fumbled for his switchblade, but Radimir was already stalking towards him, a slender dagger in his hand.
“W—Wait,” the boss stammered. He’d gone as white as his suit and he suddenly looked like a kid, playing at being a gangster. “You can’t kill me; you’ll never get out of here al—”
Radimir stabbed him in the heart. It was so fast and so vicious that the boss was lifted almost off his feet. All of us jerked in shock.
Radimir pulled the boss into an embrace. His voice was ice cold and rough with emotion. “You were dead the second you touched her.” He let go and the boss crumpled to the floor, dead, a sticky red flower blossoming on his white suit.
The boss’s men ran at Radimir, but they were shaken and Radimir was ruthlessly efficient. He stabbed one in the stomach and slashed the other’s throat and they both fell.
Radimir held out his arms and I ran to him, abandoning the crutches. I crushed myself to his chest and he wrapped his arms around me like he wanted to protect me from the entire world. The adrenaline started to sluice out of me and I went shaky, squeezing my eyes shut as I thought about how close I’d come. “I’m sorry,” I babbled. “I had no idea this was their place, I’d been drinking…”