Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 184867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 924(@200wpm)___ 739(@250wpm)___ 616(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 184867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 924(@200wpm)___ 739(@250wpm)___ 616(@300wpm)
“You should’ve thought of that before you taught me how to wield a weapon,” she growls. “Now let go of me before I hurt you too,” she grits.
“Hurt me?” Blaine scoffs. “Darling, I’m already hurt.”
“This isn’t about you,” she says, pointing her knife at me. “He deserves to die.”
“And now all your secrets are out in the open,” I say, licking my lips. “The facade of the sweet, beautiful girl finally broken into pieces.”
“You fucking murderer!” she screeches, punching Blaine to get rid of him.
“Crystal!” Blaine yells, trying to hold her down.
“If you can’t kill him, I will!” she yells back.
“Release her,” I say.
Both boys look at me like I’ve lost my mind.
But I knew what I signed up for when I made that deal with her and locked her up in the place I call home.
Fate has been chasing me all this time … and now it’s finally caught up with me.
She immediately thrusts the knife underneath my chin, the blade carving another line into my skin. The pain doesn’t faze me, it never did. But what I didn’t expect was the way my heart beats slower and slower as her ruthless gaze settles onto me.
Caleb struggles to hold himself back as he lifts a hand, desperate to intervene in my inevitable demise. “Why?”
She swallows, staring into my soul as though she’s waiting for me to give him the answers that belong to her.
“Because he’s the one who killed my father.”
CRYSTAL
Two years ago
The shadow on the other end of the street near a building with a symbol of bones makes me pause in my tracks. Even though it’s dark outside, I can still make out the silhouettes of a man huddled over another. The shadowy figure wears a suit and a long coat, his face hidden. On his shoes a fiery emblem of horns.
Beneath him lies a body in a pool of blood.
I gasp and drop my bag on the ground, swiftly covering my hand so the man won’t hear me.
Why did Dad want to meet here after he was done with his flower delivery?
I knew it was a bad idea. This neighborhood is dangerous.
My eyes are glued to the shadow as he rips a knife out of the man’s body and tucks it into his pocket before he turns around and suddenly locks eyes with me.
Cold gray eyes peer straight into my soul, stealing my breath.
He swiftly runs off to a car in the distance and jumps in, racing off.
But all I can focus on is the dead body lying on the cold, harsh street in the middle of the night, bleeding out slowly.
I suck in a breath and pick up my bag, then step closer, and closer, and closer, until I can no longer stop my feet from running straight to him.
My own father.
“DAD!” I shriek, falling to his side to hold him up.
But the blood streams out of him, coating the pavement in crimson.
“No, no, no!” I shriek, tears welling up in my eyes. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Please!”
His eyes have already turned into themselves, lifeless, his body limp in my arms. I pull my hands back only to see blood caking my skin, and I shiver and shake in place as the tears begin to tumble.
My eyes rise to the streets where the killer just disappeared in a car.
A murderer who doesn’t know what’s coming for him.
My hands ball into fists.
I will never, ever fucking stop until I find him …
And slice his throat.
Present
“I saw you pull this knife from his body.” My lip twitches with anger as I seethe. “You’re a coldhearted murderer.”
“How?” Blaine mutters, completely caught off guard.
But I’ve been planning this for so long that it feels like I can finally lift the veil on my own ruse.
“I searched day and night for my father’s murderer, scouring the internet for a connection between that Bones symbol and a man with piercing gray eyes,” I grit, lost in my own memories. “Finally, I found a picture online of that gray-eyed monster with that horn emblem on his boots.”
I push the knife farther into Ares’s neck, and a droplet of blood rolls down his skin.
“And then I discovered you were going to the same university I was enrolled in. It was fate beckoning me.”
“You planned all of this?” Caleb asks, shivering in place.
And even though it hurts to hear the shock in his voice, I refuse to let it get to me.
I knew it would cost me my soul, heart, and body to avenge my father.
“I promised my father I wouldn’t rest until I’d done what I came here to do,” I say, watching the blood roll down his neck.
God, I feel so fucking powerful watching the one man who’s the cause of all my misery bleed out slowly just like my father did.