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“Don’t call me that.” She snatches a blanket and pillow from the bed, then tosses them onto the floor. I’d be a lying son-of-a-bitch if I said I didn’t like this feisty little side of her.
She gets onto the floor on a huff, and I cut the light. After listening to the hum of the cicadas coming in through the window, I glance over at her. She’s curled up on the floor. The angle of her neck looks uncomfortable as hell. My conscience catches on the sharp edges of the thoughts twisting in my head. Blood, money, lies, that’s always been the way of my world, yet, here I lie, annoyed that I’m allowing her to sleep on the floor. This is definitely some bullshit...
“If you let me go,” she whispers, sounding more than uncertain. “I won’t tell anyone about you. I’ll pretend this never happened.”
I want to believe that, but it’s not so much her running to the cops that I’m worried about. It’s what Tom’s master plan is and where we both fall in it. “I don’t have a choice,” I say.
“There is always a choice. Only a weak man denies it.”
Maybe to her, there is always a choice; her world may be that simple. That black and white. But I am dealing with a thousand shades of gray, which she has no idea exist. Quiet seconds pass, ones where I attempt to ignore the gnawing in my gut.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” she whispers. The hopelessness to her tone hits hard, but what the hell am I supposed to do here?
I’m not in the business of saying things to make people feel comfortable. So I settle with, “I don’t want to.”
“You didn’t say you won’t.”
“Because I’m not a liar.” And with those words, I roll over onto my side. I may be a murderer and a thief, but I’m not a liar.
8
Victoria
The alarm clock on the nightstand reads two am, and I’m fighting sleep. Jude came in here smelling like a distillery. I don’t expect a guilty conscience keeps him awake at night, yet I still haven’t heard his breaths even out.
The bedsprings creak before footsteps pad over the hardwood floor. I assume he’s leaving until his shadow cuts over me. My hand slips beneath my pillow, palming the razor I retrieved from its earlier hiding spot under the bed, but I quickly release it when his hands slide beneath my body. I know I can’t take on Jude wide awake, armed with only a disposable razor. The thought is laughable and driven home by how easily he picks me up like I weigh nothing. Panic crawls through my veins when he places me on his bed. I’m sure I hear him whisper the word sorry, but before I can react, he sinks to the pallet on the floor.
Jude—asshole, angry, all-around, bad-guy Jude—just put me in his bed, maybe apologized, and is now sleeping on the floor. I don’t know what to make of any of it.
One minute the guy has a gun to my head, and the next, he’s drying my hair or putting me in his bed. Doesn’t make him a good guy, just a guilty one, I tell myself. He wanted to kill me earlier; I saw it in his eyes. He might have stayed his hand today, but will he tomorrow?
I lie here longer than necessary, listening to Jude’s heavy breaths as sleep finally takes him. My chest tightens, fear setting in as I sit up and glance at the floor. Moonlight spills over Jude’s broad, inked chest. Shadows sink into the chiseled lines of his abs with each breath he takes. He may be a psycho, but I can’t deny that he’s beautiful. It almost seems a shame to kill him—God, what is wrong with me?
I slip from his bed, steeling myself as I drop to my knees beside him to slide my hand beneath the edge of the pillow. My fingertips brush the razor, and I debate getting back in that bed and forgetting this madness, but I can’t.
My hand trembles when I pull the blade out and move it toward his neck. The sharp edge is millimeters from his skin when I pause, my conscience waging war on my survival instincts. This should be black and white. Kill or be killed. I know in my gut that Euan will never pay, then it won’t matter that Jude dried my hair or put me in his bed, because fundamentally he is a bad person. Jude will always be the villain in this scenario, and I’ll just be the naïve dead girl. I know all of this, so why is this so hard? Why do I feel like a horrible person?
I’m staring at the razor, willing my hand to move when his fingers slowly wrap around my wrist. Tears of frustration sting my eyes while a confusing sense of relief washes over me. It’s out of my hands now. I don’t have to kill him...
