Page 22 of Dark Surrender

Better.

Ha.

This isn’t rehab for sick fucks. We don’t have a twelve-step program on how not to be a trafficking piece of shit. There is only one step. Die. At least these assholes don’t deal in children. So they’re not the lowest of low. Ya! They’ve got that going for them. They’re not pedophiles.

Giving Maxim all the time in the world, I pick my nails for something to do, and when he’s done pondering life, he can get back to asking me whatever twenty questions he can’t help but ask.

Dark

Ava.

Ava.

Ava.

Curvy Ava.

Harold’s Ava.

The woman with the mismatched eyes.

Pale skin. Freckles.

“That was part of the plan…” Her words slam around in my skull.

Part. Of. The. Plan.

Fuck.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I exhale hard and will both my heart and cock to calm down.

I have an erection, and trust me, I don’t want it. It’s not that I’m turned on, but he is. He has a competence kink.

Smart women. Badass women. Women who look through me, just like Ava’s doin’ right now, patient and calculating. A woman who spent months getting close to my father-in-law, to have this very moment with me sitting naked in this shitty building, in the middle of the woods, stripped of my dignity, with no chance of freedom. Yeah. He likes that.

Moving around so Ava doesn’t get a look at what’s goin’ on down south, I give him a few more seconds to shrink to half-mast before I open my eyes to find her just as she was before.

“When?” I ask.

“When, what?”

“When am I going to die?”

Ava peeks out of the open door. “Not today.”

“Tomorrow then?”

She shrugs a single shoulder, not all that concerned. “Possibly.”

“And Penelope?”

“She’ll die too.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Whenever my sister decides.”

Her…