“Stupid girl!” he growls, forcing me to my knees, enjoying the sheer look of terror that plagues every part of me.
“You stupid worthless cow! You’ve embarrassed me in front of everyone, now they want your blood. Do you know what that means?”
I know exactly what it means. It’s the fate I’ve been begging for since the day my sister died, when a part of my soul ruptured and never fully healed.
“Fuck it! I might as well get my lot out of you before I end your pathetic life.”
His hand keeps me in place as his other fumbles with his zipper and top button.
“Be a good girl and help Daddy.”
Daddy.
I hated the word and all of its fucking meanings.
The Daddy who helped create my DNA was a pompous asshole who wrote me out of his will the second I spiraled. Now he doesn’t even acknowledge he had two daughters, just one. Just Pippa. Not me. Not the girl who was bound for Ivy league schools and had dreams of being a lawyer someday. The one that ended up in the gutter after her twin killed herself and her best friend moved out of the country without a second thought. Now I’m just nothing.
Nothing but Arturo’s little pet, a sad little waif for him to use and abuse whenever he sees fit.
My hands fumble with his jeans then gently slide them down his legs, bracing myself for his wrath.
That’s when the numbness takes over. The dark place my head shifts into every time this has happened before. I don’t feel the angry thrusts or the violent slurs that leave his lips.
I just take it.
Block it out.
Be a good girl.
But nothing will change what I did.
I not only betrayed Arturo, but I betrayed his whole club… and now they wanted me dead.
Well, good riddance. I’ve been nothing more than a blip in this world since Pippa passed away, and I’m tired of running from my grief like it’s not the poison slowly killing me.
He flips me on my stomach, arms pinned behind my back as he takes me violently from behind. If there’s pain, I don’t feel it. Not his fingers that curl around my throat and pierce my windpipe. Not the furious fists that batter and bruise my body between his vicious, punishing thrusts.
I’m just numb.
Ready to let the Reaper take me and save me from this miserable existence.
My vision starts to spot and blur, his grip on my throat strengthening.
At one point I gasp for breaths I can’t even hear, every sound dulled as I lay on the sword that’s edging down my spine.
“You’re going to pay for betraying us,” he whispers into my ear, the heat of his breath hitting me like thorns instead of roses. “I could’ve loved you,” he reminds me. “I could’ve healed your broken heart. But instead, you betrayed me!”
His voice is hollow and faint, almost as if it’s coming from the other side of the world, instead of from right behind me.
“Your death will haunt me for centuries,” he breathes against my ear just as the world fades into internal darkness.
Frigid water engulfs me as my body is flung over the side of a boat and into the cold murky waters of Pyramid Lake, my bodysinking into the forgotten graveyard below. It isn’t until I feel the water seeping into my lungs that my eyes pop open and the fight in me breaks loose.
The bastard had strangled me to the point of unconsciousness but didn’t finish me off.
That was his first mistake.
The second was not bounding my hands or checking my pockets.
