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He’s standing by the window, his silhouette dark and unmoving against the city lights glinting in from outside. Smoke curls from the cigarette in his hand. My hand tightens around the blade, and I inhale deeply but quietly.
Then I move,fast.
I rush the distance between us without a sound, just like I was trained. In one swift motion, I rear back and plunge the blade into his back—once, twice, three times; a fourth. When he doesn’t cry out, my brain short-circuits in confusion before I stab him again, and again, and again…
Until the mannequin I’ve just slashed to ribbons quietly tips over and rolls across the floor.
Oh fuc—
The scream doesn’t even make it out of my mouth before a hand wraps hard across it. His other one yanks the knife from my hand, tossing it away to clatter across the floor, then wrenches my arms behind my back and holds them there tightly.
Fear floods my system. Panic has my brain glitching and shorting. A gasp hitches in my chest as I smell the dark leather and whiskey scent of him, and Cillian pins my back to his chest.
“Good girl. I was sodearlyhoping you’d pick the hard way.”
10
UNA
Fear,as they say, is the mind killer.
That particular nugget’s not from my father, though. That’s Frank Herbert. My father’s version was more “if you freeze up and get scared like a baby, I’ll hurt you.”
I think I was nine when he taught me that particular lesson.
But, bastard that he was, that lesson—all of his lessons—are still lodged in my brain.
Like cancer.
For a split second, I consider fighting Cillian off. But that plan flies out the window the second his grip tightens on my wrist. The hand on my mouth drops, curling around my throat and sending electric fire through my nerves.
I can’t possibly fight back. He’swaytoo big, and too strong. And even worse, I’m already pinned.
Trapped.
So I switch tactics: I start to fake cry.
“Please!” I sob, choking violently, my throat hitching. “Please! They forced me!”
Cillian chuckles, his firm chest rumbling against my back. “Try again, little girl.”
“You don’t understand!Please! They were going to kill…” I gulp. “Me! They were going to kill me unless I came after you! I swear!”
He sighs, unmoved. “That’s a nice little fairytale.”
“Please!” I sob even louder, forcing real tears down my cheeks. “I’m just a girl! Please don’t kill me!”
There. There it is.
It’s not much, but suddenly, I realize I have the slightest opening. He pauses, his grip loosening. It’s just a fraction, for only a millisecond. But it’s my chance, and I’m not going to waste it.
In one motion, I raise my foot and then stomp down hard on the arch of his. Cillian grunts, and his hand on my throat loosens by a hair.
It’s all I need.
Hissing, I jam my elbows back, hard—first the right, square into his ribs, and then the left. That one, I aim higher, and when I feel my elbow connect with something soft beneath his clothes that sure as shit feels like gauze and bandages, I know I’ve hit my mark.
His agonized grunt of pain sort of gives it away, too.
