AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dimly, in the background, I’m aware of a loud thump and a string of curse words, but I was too busy trying to force air back into my lungs to pay much attention.
I trembled with rage and humiliation. My cheeks flared with heat. Oscar, sensing my distress, growled at Hugh, but if the publisher noticed, he was too busy being a smug bastard to say anything.
It was bad enough that Hugh said all those awful things to me last night, but did he have to humiliate me in front of all the other writers?
“I’m sorry, Mina,” Christina whispered as she patted my leg. “Hugh is the best in the business. I enjoyed your story, but if he says it’s not any good, then it’s probably better that you find out now rather than make a fool of yourself trying to get it published.”
“Especially since you can’t get your facts right,” added Charlie Doyle snootily. “Because the police would never allow someone to escape from jail and then forgive her because she found the real murderer. In my thirty-three years on the force, I never heard of that, and as for your medical examiner character—”
“No one will want this dribble,” Hugh scoffed as he japped his fingers at my manuscript pages. “Mommy porn and talking ravens don’t belong in serious crime fiction—”
“How dare you?” a deep, rasping voice boomed across the room, dripping with malice.
A voice that never failed to make my knees weak and my panties wet.
Heathcliff.
He stormed into the room, exuding Big Heathcliff Energy. Beside me, Christina let out an excited yelp. Killian leaped from his chair and ran to intercept him, but Heathcliff tossed him aside like an Instagram influencer after a cryptocurrency scandal. My beautiful, furious, monster of a boyfriend came to stand in front of Hugh Briston’s chair.
“Who the devil are you?” Hugh said with a sneer in his voice, but I detected a hint of terror.
“I’m the man who’s going to invert your ribcage and tie your arteries into fleshy balloon animals. I’ll teach you for talking down to Mina like that.”
“Heathcliff, what are you doing?”
I remembered now that Heathcliff said he was in the reading snug opposite the library. The library door had been open, and he must have heard everything Hugh said to me. Heathcliff grabbed him by the collar, yanking Hugh off the chair.
“Put me down!” Hugh bellowed.
I tried to grab Heathcliff’s leg, but Oscar – sensing a tense situation – placed himself between me and the two warring men. I couldn’t get around without crawling over Christina. Panic rose inside me.
With his free hand, Heathcliff tore the front page off my manuscript and screwed it up into a ball.
“Open wide,” he growled at Hugh. “You want to treat my girlfriend that way, I will literally make you eat her words.”
“This is unheard of!” Hugh spluttered. “What this the meaning of this mmmmmoooo mmmmphffffffffffff…”
“That’s it.” Heathcliff stuffed the ball of paper into Hugh’s mouth. He held Hugh’s jaw shut while the man wriggled and writhed in a vain attempt at freedom. “You’d better start chewing, because you have many more pages to go. Oh, but first, I think we need to sweeten that mouth of yours.”
He grabbed a handful of potpourri from a bowl on the mantlepiece and shoved the leaves into Hugh’s mouth alongside the now mushy paper.
“Mmmmmmmmmphffffff!”
Hugh’s cheeks puffed out and his eyes were so wide they reflected the firelight.
“Jonathan!” Donna yelled. “Come quickly! There’s an incident!”
“What are you doing?” Christina cried. “You’re hurting Hugh.”
“That man should be arrested.” Charlie Doyle rose to his feet. “I’ll hold him until the police get here. I know how to deal with criminal scumbags like this—”
“No one’s calling the police,” Jonathan growled as he stepped around Oscar and inserted himself between Heathcliff and Hugh. Jonathan grabbed Heathcliff’s wrist and somehow managed to loosen his fingers from Hugh’s throat. “Come on, big guy. Out of here with ye.”
Heathcliff dropped Hugh, who collapsed into his chair, coughing and spluttering as he spat out gobs of paper and dried leaves.
“He was trying to kill me!” Hugh rasped out, clutching his throat.
“Damn right, and I’ll do it, too!” Heathcliff growled as Jonathan dragged him away. “You can’t treat Mina this way. I willgutyou, you fiend. I will unbraid your DNA from the inside!”
