“I can’t kill you,” he snaps. “But he will. Either way, you die. Only the hands will be crueller.”
He laughs, the sound unstable.
Yeah, that bullet did more damage than he realises.
Darkness closes in, and this time I let it take me.
Chapter 71
Octavia
I look out the window as we pull up to the gates and start driving down the long driveway.
The house in front of me is massive. At least twenty bedrooms, maybe more, endless bathrooms, a ballroom, probably several. I can’t even fully process it because the territory alone stretches so far it disappears into the trees.
To the side, I catch sight of another building, likely the staff quarters, guard housing.
The number of armed men patrolling the grounds turns my stomach.
I know this place.
I have been here before.
Once.
And it altered me entirely and not for the better. I left fractured, and I have never found my way back since.
So in a way, my worst nightmare has come to life.
In a way.
I always intended to see that man again, the one who destroyed me. But I meant to face him in power. With a blade at his throat, a gun to his head.
I meant to be the one ending him.
Instead, here I am.
Again.
The helpless girl.
I still don’t understand his reasons. What does he want with me?
Was it not enough to destroy me once?
Why now?
Why did he not simply allow Yuri to kill me?
Though, in the end, I suspect I die regardless.
They didn’t even blindfold me. They let me see where we were going, whose house awaited.
They didn’t cuff me, no duct tape, or restraints of any kind.
Because they don’t need to.
Why blindfold someone you are delivering to her death?
