Audrey rushes toward us.Marilyn spots her and shoulders her door open, but my baby doll anticipates the attack and uses her momentum to shove it closed again.
Rich bitch’s head flings backward as the window slams into her face.
“Fuck this,” the driver spits before bailing.
Audrey skids to a stop and grabs the first part of me she can reach as she climbs into the van.
“Are you hurt?Can you stand?We need to—”
The sound of a handgun cocking freezes us both.Marilyn presses the muzzle to Audrey’s temple.
“I could kill you right now and no one would care, but that would be too easy.Not now that you’ve ruined my face.”
Blood trails down her cheeks from several lacerations, and her chin and nose swell from their run-in with the door.
“Put these on.”
She tosses handcuffs at Audrey, waits for her to close them around her wrists, then tosses another pair at my hip.
“You too, pookie.”
Despite the disgust curling through me, I secure my wrists and train my gaze on Audrey.
“Step out of the van and pull the driver out of the other car,” Marilyn demands.
Audrey complies in slow, exaggerated motions.
“This is fun.I’m glad you decided to tag along, whore,” the clingy rich bitch says.
My baby dolls flinches and hunches her shoulders as she opens the driver’s door.
“That’s right, Donald told me everything,” clingy rich bitch goads.My father’s name on her lips shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is.“He told me how you tried to seduce him.He wants you gone just as much as he wants my pookie killed.”
My father couldn’t control me, so he plans to use Marilyn’s obsession to get rid of me.
“But we can’t have that.No, I need him too much.I’m going to keep him.He’ll be my favorite toy for many, many years to come.”
She only half watches Audrey settle my driver onto the concrete as she spills all her secrets.
“The only loose end is that advisor bitch, but I’ll take care of her.She’s obsessed with you, Brennan, but she’s not good enough to have you.Only I am.”
I stiffen as she swings the gun toward me.Audrey calls my name.I brace for the worst, terrified she’ll put herself in danger for me again.
Fury twists Marilyn’s bruised features as she turns back toward my baby doll.
I jerk to a sitting position and use the chain connecting my cuffs to knock her arm upward.The gun fires.Feminine screams ring through the blast.
Cuffed wrists swoop down out of nowhere, passing between my face and Marilyn’s and yanking Marilyn out of the van by her throat.
Light streams in through a hole in the van’s roof.The gun slides to a halt near the back door.
I scoot toward the opened slider door and lower my feet to the ground, but a wave of dizziness sweeps through me.
Audrey’s face fills my vision.Her cold, shaking hands frame my face as the chain of her cuffs digs into my chin.
As the ringing in my ears subsides, the sound of her voice matches the movement of her lips as she repeats the wordsplease be okayover and over again.
I capture her wrists and kiss her knuckles.
