AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Okay, this isn’t good. “Leah, honey, I’m sorry you’re having a bad day. Is there somewhere I can drop you off?”
“That’s it. Just get rid of me. That’s what people do. That’s what he did.” She raises her voice, before turning away from me and muttering, but I can’t quite hear what she’s saying.
“Leah, I’m sorry, but Tommy and I have to go.” My instincts are telling me to get the hell out of here. I put one leg in the car, but she grabs my arm.
“I don’t think so, Annabelle,” she says my name in a cold sneer.
Then she brutally yanks, and I hear the pop of my shoulder dislocating as intense pain washes over me.
This bitch just dislocated my shoulder.
But that doesn’t stop her from pulling me out of the car. When I try to push her away, she pulls a small silver gun out of her pocket. “Don’t scream, Annabelle. Don’t say a word, and I won’t hurt him.” Then she nods toward Tommy, who’s blessedly engrossed in his video and headphones. “You’re coming in the house with me right now, and so’s the brat in the back. Get moving.”
“Why don’t we just leave Tommy out here?” I try to convince her. But the gun gets shoved into my side.
“Get him out now,” she slowly instructs, and I suddenly realize the very real danger we’re in.
I grab my bag with my right arm, holding my left arm close to me and get out. When I open Tommy’s door, I gently pull down his headphones. “Hey, bud. I need to take care of something. I want you to go right to your room when we get inside. Okay? Right to your room and watch your video. Got it?”
My blessedly oblivious little brother smiles big as he nods his head and pops his headphones back on his ears.
I kiss his head. “Love you.”
Once we’re both out of the car, Leah yanks my bag off my shoulder. “This stays here. God only knows what you carry around in that monstrosity.”
I drop the bag on the ground near the car and continue to walk in front of Leah with Tommy in front of me.
“Disarm the alarm. No funny business, Annabelle. I’m watching.”
My hands shake as I punch the code into the keypad.
Luckily, she isn’t paying any attention to Tommy, and he does as he’s told and goes to his room.
“You, sit over there.” Leah motions to a couch in the family room.
Once I sit down, I start trying to strategize how the hell I’m getting us out of here.
Shit.
Did I do the right thing sending Tommy upstairs? I wanted him safe, but did I just make this more complicated?
Fuck.
Leah walks into the kitchen, talking to herself about how it’s supposed to be her.
She still has a direct view of me from the waist up, but the couch is blocking the rest of me. I slip my phone out of my jeans and shove it in my hoodie in one quick move. Inside the hoodie, I keep my thumb on the bottom button to unlock it and thank God I never upgraded to the newest iPhone.
When she walks back out into the family room, she has a butcher knife in her hand.
My mind whirls, looking for something to use as a weapon when I catch sight of what she’s wearing. “Why are you wearing Declan’s Notre Dame jersey?” My heart plummets. “Oh God, did you do something to Declan?”
“Uh-uh-uh. No questions from you. I tried to be your friend. It’s not easy, ya know? You’re a closed-off little thing. Had to stake out the damn coffee shop just to finally meet you. It wasn’t hard to do once I moved in across the street. Gave me total access to the studio too.”
“You?” I gasp. “You broke into my studio?”
“Jesus Christ, Annabelle,” venom spews from her lips. “Yes. Your studio. I had to figure out what it was that made you so damn special. Why he was willing to give you the chance he never gave me. How else was I supposed to change his mind? Hmm?How else was he ever going to realize what a mistake it was throwing me away? Besides, the studio wasn’t as easy to get access to as the house.”
“You were in my house? How?”
“How? she asks.” She spins on me. “Like it was hard. I’ve had cameras in here and your precious little studio. I’ve been watching you for weeks. What I can’t figure out is what you have that I don’t? When Declan told you about me, did he happen to mention that I graduated from Notre Dame in four years with a master’s in computer engineering?”
“Declan never talked about you,” I answer before good sense kicks in, getting me backhanded across the face. Thank God, she didn’t cut me.
When her eyes catch sight of the open box with the onesies Nattie gave us, a guttural scream rips from her curled lips. She picks one up with the tip of the knife, then slices it in half.
“You really are having fucking twins. When you told him that, I’d hoped you were lying to trap him. But not Little Miss Goody-Two-shoes. Of course, you had to go and get pregnant with twins. What a fucking fairy-tale ending for you.” She’s pacing my family room with a knife in one hand, and I think she has the gun in the back of her jeans. “Do you know most fairy tales have tragic endings? That’s going to be the ending you get today. If I can’t have him, you can’t have him either. Now, let’s see. Do you think this knife is too big to cut those babies out of you?”
I hear a car door shut outside and then feel a heavy weight come down on the back of my head before Leah’s voice starts to sound like it’s in a distant tunnel. “Do you think this is the job of a paring knife or a butcher knife?”
It’s the last thing I hear before my eyes start to close.
