“You’re making a big mistake.”
“You think I am?”he asked, laughing.“Trust me, Knox doesn’t know who he is dealing with.”
Ava looked at him.“This your place?”
He didn’t answer.
“Let me guess, you have an issue with Knox because he took away your funding?”She started to fill in the blanks.“You were fucking Blondie’s wife, weren’t you?”
He glared at her.
“Yeah, that’s your problem.You saw a little meal ticket in the gold-digging bitch, and because Knox made sure she was put behind bars for nearly killing her husband, you want a little payback.”
“Shut your fucking mouth.”
Ava gritted her teeth as he struck.It was an open palm slap this time, but it still smarted.She hated being punched in the fucking face.It had been a long time since she last got hit.
“You don’t want to talk?”Ava asked.
When she was a kid, she would not have talked back.She’d have done everything she could to be invisible.
Ava knew she had to give Knox time.He had to remember the GPS he installed in her.Completely harmless, at least to her, but hopefully, if he got that thing working, it would save her life.This was not going to end well.Knox needed to make it here.
“You’ve got a smart mouth on you, don’t you?”
“I flunked high school.I’m not smart,” Ava said.
She wasn’t about to tell him that Knox was already ten steps ahead of him.
He started to laugh.“You’ve got that right, you decided to work for Knox, and trust me, that isn’t smart.”
She tilted her head to the side.It irritated her that he would insult her man.Knox belonged to her.The smart thing would be to keep her mouth shut and just let the time slip away.
“So, tell me, if Knox isn’t smart, and he didn’t rely on a woman’s pussy to get where he is, what does that make you?Because, you, I’ve never heard of,” she said.
In the back of her mind, she was screaming at herself to just shut up.Ava was not known for making her life easier.She had made a few bad decisions.Yet, they had also led to great ones.Sure, getting drugged at a bar and being kidnapped by a rapist and serial killer were not her finer moments.However, looking at the glass half full, without that, she would never have met Knox—the one and only man that had saved her life.The man she loved more than anything in the world.The same man she still hadn’t told how she felt, which she did regret.
He slapped her three times.She felt the sting of her lip, and she didn’t need to look down to know that it was split.Shit.
“You think you’re so smart.I wonder what Knox will think when I gut you and feed your entrails to the fishes.”
“Go ahead, you wouldn’t make it out alive,” she said.“You can kill me, but that is just signing your life away.”
“You’re sure?”he asked, coming in closer and crouching down in front of her.
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with.You’ve kidnapped me for petty revenge, because he took away your meal ticket.Knox is the real deal.”She pointed her head toward the dead man.“You think that is supposed to scare me?I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse, and I’ve watched him do even more to a man who only intended to do me harm.I bet you’ve bruised me, and these chains are cutting into my body, so I know there is going to be more damage.”
She didn’t even know what she was saying anymore.All she could do was talk and hope to distract him.
Knox would come.Of that, she was certain.He would never allow her to be hurt.This was her Knox.
She stared at her opponent and waited, hoping he would take her words seriously.It no longer mattered.He was going to die.Knox was going to kill him.Even if he left and allowed her to live, Knox would hunt him down and kill him, because he dared raise a hand to her.He was going to die.
She only wondered if she would live long enough to see it.
****
“What’s the plan?”Marshalasked.
