AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My gaze flicks from her to the elevator and to the rooftop access door, wondering if I could somehow reach either of them. And if I did, are they unlocked?
As if from out of thin air, Noah produces a piece of rope. When he tries to take one of my wrists, I make to get up again, but I’m slammed into the damned chair again. It doesn’t matter how much I fight, he easily pulls my hands behind me and ties them.
“You wanted her, there she is,” he says to her, and I notice with at least a bit of satisfaction that he’s panting. I guess I wasn’t that easy to subdue.
Noah’s stepmother comes toward me, her hips swaying. She sips her wine as she studies me. “You killed my husband.”
I don’t bother to respond to her comment. She doesn’t care what I have to say. If she did, she would have asked me if I did it. And if so, why. All she cares about is revenge. The who, what, and why of it doesn’t matter to her.
Turning to Noah, I realize he’s not once asked me either. They’re the same. Part of the same ruthless crime family. The Giannis.
It shouldn’t surprise me that my life is insignificant in his world. But it does. And though I didn’t think it was possible, it breaks my heart all over again.
“Kill her,” Sylvia says dispassionately.
I look at Noah and stare into his icy dark gaze as he tugs the gun I hadn’t noticed from the waist of his pants and presses the barrel of it between my breasts. He’s going to pull the trigger, ending this once and for all with one deafening boom. His revenge finally complete.
Their fingers always twitch. Dad’s words blare through my mind. Had I listened to them, I might not be about to learn the pain of death. I wouldn’t be all too familiar with the agony of betrayal.
I would never have fallen in love with a monster.
Noah doesn’t have to shoot to kill me. He’s done it already.
Part of me wants to beg him to stop hurting me. Plead with him not to do this. But when he leans in and grazes my lips with his, he effectively shuts them.
He whispers something that I can barely make sense of but sounds like, “Stay down.”
Then he moves away with a clear message in his eyes.And do not beg for mercy I cannot give.
For a moment, I can’t inhale. Can’t fill my lungs with air, even though I should be relishing what could be my last breath. I laugh inwardly at the irony of it all. I never would have imagined I’d end up with a literal gun pointed at me.
A million thoughts race through my mind in the span of a millisecond. Will this hurt? Like the people on the internet, will I too survive a bullet to the chest?
If he kills me, will I love him still in death?
Even now as he narrows his eyes on me, his hand firmly wrapped around the hilt of his Glock, I love him. As deeply as I did the first time I saw his gold-flecked stare and he lit that torch inside my belly. I want him as much as the first time he touched me.
I have no more control over that than I do the desire to punch him in the face. Because right now, I hate him too.
It’s true that betrayal can spark to life a bone-deep hatred of someone. But love and hate aren’t natural opposites that cancel the other out. They can reside within the same heart. Bleed into each other. Become so tightly wound around each other that it becomes impossible to tell which is which.
Guess I won’t have the time to sort that mess out.
“Good night, Emily.” His deep warm voice rumbles through me just before the crack of the hammer against the bullet.
Pain spears me through the chest and I go down to the floor, chair and all. White-hot fire blazes from my ribs to my back and I futilely gasp for air.
He stands over me, looking at me the way I imagine he’s done with the dozens of others he’s killed. Then he lifts his arm and aims at my chest once again to deliver the finishing blow.
And he shoots.
21
EMILY
The pain is almost unbearable. Every part of my being wants to scream, to claw at my chest and tear off the thing that’s piercing into my skin like a white-hot poker.
But I don’t move. I don’t even allow myself the privilege of a deep breath.
