Page 84 of Bad Seed

And I recognized the voice instantly.

Ike grabbed my hair and pulled me from the trunk. He tossed me to the ground, and I heard the cock of a gun. The cool sensation of metal pressed against my head, and I began sobbing. Tears dropping onto the dirt beneath me as I held my arm up to try and block his attack.

“Please. Ike. Don’t do this,” I said breathlessly.

My eyes finally adjusted to the light around me and the look in his eyes made me heave. The crazed angry glare of a man who had lost control of his life. It made me vomit onto the ground below me. I felt his hand come down around my arm and he yanked me up, ranting about how disgusting I’d become. How he could’ve loved me was beyond him. How I was a waste of space and wasn’t going to get away with ruining his life.

I stumbled along beside him, and an abandoned building came into view. I had no idea where I was. No clue. I spat onto the ground to try and rid my mouth of its awful taste, and Ike slapped my cheek. I tried yanking away from him, but it was fruitless. His grasp was so tight I could feel the bruises already forming, and I knew I was in trouble.

I honestly wasn’t sure if anyone would find me. How the fuck had he gotten out of jail?

Ike kept ranting as he yanked the door to the abandoned building open. He tossed me inside, and I stumbled and crashed to the ground. The floor was cold and covered with mold, and I immediately began to cough and wheeze.

Then, I felt his gun at the back of my head.

CHAPTER 32

GRANT

My heart was racing as I drove through town. There was only one person who could have taken Theresa, and I was going to dismantle him limb from fucking limb. How the fuck he’d gotten out of jail was beyond me, but I didn’t fucking care. I had promised that I would keep her safe, and I had failed. When I’d returned from dealing with her landlord to find the front door wide open, her clothes spilled onto the floor, and no one in sight, I had gone into immediate panic mode.

So, I opened my phone, plugged her number into a tracking application I’d paid very good money for, and let it loose.

She was on the other fucking side of town on the edge of an abandoned steel mill. I’d called Hollis and told him what was up, and he told me he’d gotten a strange text from Theresa. The moment Ike’s name left my lips I heard him crash through a pair of doors on his side and the phone call went dead.

The sirens in the distance told me he was coming, too, but I was going to get there first.

And when I did, Ike was going to be dead.

The sirens raged behind me in the middle of town as I traveled through the thick woods, over bumps and railroad tracks and cracked cement with weeds growing through them. Like Ike. A damn weed I had to kill. They always found a way to sprout back up, no matter what you did.

Unless you pulled them up by the root.

And I was about to pluck Ike from the earth like the little weed he was.

I pulled into the closest lot near the dot on my phone screen, and I saw a car with its trunk popped. I was in the right place. I jumped out of my car and shoved my phone into my pocket, then looked over toward the abandoned warehouse.

I took off for the front door, no longer trying to keep quiet.

My woman was in there. And she was hurt.

I barreled my shoulder into the door and crashed into the room. Ike looked up at me with wild eyes and a snarl on his lips, but the only thing I saw was the gun that he had trained on Theresa.

I ran at him as he turned his gun on me and fired. Theresa was screaming and curling tighter into the corner as the bullet screamed by me. My hand shot out and gripped Ike around his neck, and without thinking, I lifted him into the air.

“Does this feel good to you?” I asked.

I slammed him into the floor before I put my knee straight down into his thigh. His groan was so satisfying that I raised my fist into the air.

“What about that?” I asked. “Does that feel good? Right in your leg?”

“Get the fuck off me!” Ike yelled.

I brought my fist down into his jaw before he started fumbling with his gun. I disarmed him easily and ejected the magazine from the gun. I cracked it against his face before I threw it across the room, right through a fucking window that shattered.

Theresa was crying, and nothing was stopping me from killing this man I had pinned underneath my knees.

I raised my fist into the air and gritted my teeth. I drove it hard into his face, knocking it off to the side. Punch after punch. Hit after hit. And his bones began to give way. Crunching underneath my fists. My vision was dripping black. The pathetic excuse for a sack of skin whimpered as my fist kept delivering blow after blow until he was barely recognizable.

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