She was fucking tall, but I still towered over her.
She kept that fierce chin tilted up toward me, though I could feel her trembling all the way down to the bones.
“You want to run to the cops? Go for it. See what happens. But if you want to see to it that your brother makes it out of this with his head still attached to his shoulders, you’ll do exactly what I say.”
Each word curled out of me like a bullet.
A pure, blatant threat.
My voice hardened further. “You won’t stray from the boundaries of this compound without my approval and an escort. You’ll eat when you’re told and sleep when you’re told, and you’re going to show up at the shop at eight-fucking-o’clock in the morning like the good girl you are.”
Was pretty sure thatgood girlwanted to spit in my face.
Just to drive home the point, I lifted my hand and ran the tip of my index finger down the side of her neck.
Shock parted her mouth, and she stood frozen minus the shaking that wracked her body.
Outrage and something else blistered from her being.
Forcing a smirk, I said, “Paying off your brother’s debt at the autobody shop is a whole lot better than paying it off withthis body, don’t you think?”
Dick move, yeah.
But I needed this woman afraid of me. For her to grasp what was riding on this without her truly knowing a thing.
I didn’t give her time to answer before I turned on my heel and strode to the door, holding onto the knob as I turned to look back at her.
“I’ll see you at eight tomorrow morning.”
I snapped the door shut one second before the book she’d been holding crashed against the wood.
“Fucking wildfire,” I grumbled as I shoved out the main door and into the approaching twilight.
FOUR
BRINLEY
My heart beat violentlyin my chest, a thunderclap of blood thumping so hard I thought I could taste it on my tongue as I tried to keep my footsteps quiet.
Breaths shallow and jutted as I slipped along the outside of the building in the dark of night.
Trying to convince myself that the lightheadedness I was experiencing was due to the adrenaline and not the fact that I was shaking in my literal boots from fear.
But I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn’t allow the fear to hold me back.
Okay, fine. This wasn’t exactly correlated to the promise I had made to myself. It wasn’t like I’d sworn to go looking after trouble for the sake of proving that I hadn’t been broken.
But I couldn’t stay put for a second longer.
I tried, but by nine o’clock, I was crawling the walls and feeling like I was going to come out of my skin.
Locked in that room that looked like a girl’s dream retreat, complete with little designer shampoos and soaps in the bathroom.
Someone seriously had to be playing mind games with me.
That and the sounds of the clubhouse reverberating through the floorboards and the hatred for a man I had just met seemed to drive me to madness.
That’s what this had to be.
