Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
It was one of those old, tiny flash drives.
A disorder blustered through my being.
This sense coming on that made bile lift in my throat.
The truth that something was…off.
Wrong.
My brother hadn’t been sick.
He was fine.
I swiped my hand over my face, trying to process, to stop my mind from racing toward assumptions.
To keep from diving into paranoia.
I gathered up the pictures and stuffed everything into my pocket, quick to close the locker door and jump back into Eden’s car. I started it and raced back to her place.
“Do you have an old laptop around here?” I called as I tossed open the garage door and jogged back into her kitchen where she was giving Gage a snack.
“In Dad’s office. He’s got a billion,” Gage told me from around a mouthful of apple and cheese.
“Thanks, buddy.”
“You know I got your back, Auntie Tessa.”
Eden frowned, her worry thick. “What’s going on?”
“I just found something of Bobby’s I want to take a look at.”
Except, I didn’t.
I absolutely didn’t.
Because on the zip drive was video after video of Bobby in a ring.
Dreary darkness all around. Eclipsing goodness and everything that was right.
My brother fighting.
Being beaten to a bloody pulp.
Him doing it in return.
And the last…the last demolished my shattered heart.
Because Milo was standing over his beaten body, where Bobby lay in a pool of blood, his leg bent at an odd angle. Voices curled through the air, demanding that he end him.
Right before the video cut out.
FORTY-TWO
MILO
FIVE YEARS AGO
Shouts thundered through the sordid air, vileness riding on the thinned vapors of oxygen that smothered all morality.
Loathing seeped down to his core, infiltrating every molecule.
The disgust at what he’d succumbed to, the revulsion for what he’d done.
Pain throbbed at his right side from what he was sure was a cracked rib, and blood dripped from his ear and down his chin as he stalked around the edge of the ring, weighing his opponent who’d turned out to be far more difficult to beat than he’d anticipated.
No doubt that was why he’d been forced into this corruption, the stakes higher than they’d ever been.
Ten million he’d heard rumbling through hushed voices, the anticipation of it curling through the basement on dark ribbons of greed.
And if he didn’t win?
He refused to even consider it.
The man they called Immortal stalked forward, tossing out a blow that landed Milo on the jaw.
Violence screamed, the thirst for it racing through his veins, clouding out reason and sight.
Milo attacked.
Throwing blow after blow, knocking the man back farther and farther across the ring with each hit.
Blood splattered, and Milo could feel the crunching of bone. Immortal fell back against the ropes, and someone shoved him off, and the man lumbered three steps forward.
It gave Milo the perfect opportunity to knock him in the temple.
His fist cracked.
The man slumped forward.
Facedown.
TKO.
Greedy shouts erupted, chanting through the air. “End him. End him!”
Milo turned in a circle, mind jumbled with the disorder, with the aggression that thrived and the disgust that made him want to turn and run.
Nothing making sense.
They kept chanting.
Chanting and chanting.
It was different from before.
Something sinister filling the air.
Nausea spun through his stomach as dread clawed across his flesh.
Vipers that sank their teeth into his soul.
The ref was still standing there, not calling the fight.
He stumbled back to the ropes, realization bottling his conscience into a fist of terror.
Stefan leaned in from behind him, his wicked voice hissing in his ear, “You heard them…end him. I promise you, he’s not immortal.”
Milo spun to look at him.
The twisted fuck cracked a grin.
Disbelief shook Milo’s head. “What are you saying, Stefan?”
“I warned you that the stakes were greater than before, Milo. End him. Because it’s him or it’s you.”
FORTY-THREE
TESSA
“I really think you should wait, Tessa. Trent’s on his way home right now.” Eden’s panicked voice covered me as she chased me back into her garage, begging me to listen to reason.
But there was no reason right then.
There was only agony and pain and the deepest, most brutal kind of wounds.
Had he done it? Had Milo hurt Bobby? Is that why he freaked out and left?
Horror cemented in my throat.
He’d…killed people before.
He’d admitted it.
Tossed it out. Proof that he shouldn’t be trusted.
And I’d ignored it like it was rational.
I gulped around the torment. Around his truth he’d confided in me. The confession I’d promised him I would hold.
My head spun through the anarchy that tugged my thoughts in every direction.
Everything I’d thought I’d known at odds with everything I’d discovered.
But Bobby’d had an accident.
He was hiking, and he’d fallen.
Hadn’t he?
“Oh my God.” A convulsion of pain wrenched through my body, and my arm went to my stomach like I could keep the sickness from overtaking me.
Like I could protect myself from experiencing it.
From feeling it.
Because I couldn’t handle it if this was true.
I managed to make it to Eden’s car and ripped open the door. She tried to stop me.