Page 5 of Ricochet

“That’s the deal.” I sniffed. “No renegotiating. You know it’s this, or Lithium, for me—either way, I’m casket-bound.” I rubbed my hand down my face in frustration, the same argument rearing its ugly head the closer we approached D-day. “You got my back, or not?”

“I always have your back, Nick. Are you ready for this shit?”

I took one more look out the window and strapped the gun across my chest, knocking Alec in the shoulder as I passed him on my way out. “I’m ready.”

CHAPTER 2

Aubree

My father once told me, of all the delusions in the world, that hope was the most dangerous follower of insanity.

I’d have liked to believe that, as a widower, he saw something in me that refused to be torn down by the death and suffering that surrounded me as a kid. Or that, as a father, he prided himself on the tenacity he’d instilled in me.

After all hope, once ignited, was impossible to extinguish. I knew that firsthand. Because hope was all I’d clung to, for the last five years I’d been married to the bastard Michael Culling.

Looking back on his words, I think my father feared early on that I would always have too soft a heart, too strong a mind, and that my desire to seek out the good in others would ultimately destroy me in the end.

How right he was.

Hope allowed the serpent to breach the wall my father had spent decades constructing for our safety, and hope turned that slick devil into my husband.

Too-white teeth stole my attention, as I entered Michael’s home office with the trepidation of a mouse that’d unwittingly landed in a snake’s pit. His eyes were always warm, inviting, in spite of the blackness deep within their depths. Even then, as quickly as I’d seen them turn cold, it made sense how they might lure someone with a first meeting. The smile happened to be his best feature and his greatest disguise, while his eyes very effectively concealed the slippery killer buried behind them.

To the public, Michael was calm, logical, soft-spoken, as a psychopath should be. That same impassive, fluent speech, devoid of emotion outside of the pedantic points of inflection, was precisely what made Michael dangerous.

I took a seat across from him, my throat suddenly in need of cool water. In silence, we stared at one another, but the subtle tracking of his eyes told me he was analyzing my face, like a robot that could pick up on the slightest disruptions in the universe.

Those dark brown, almost black eyes trailed down to my arms and the corner of his lip kicked up into a half-smile. “You’re nervous, darling. After five years, I still make you nervous?”

A bright flash of his perfect smile drew my focus away from those evil eyes, while his fatherly tone had me stifling the urge to curl my lip. I imagined smashing my knuckles into those teeth, reveling in the crack of veneer as his perfect mask crumbled to the floor. After all, it was that flawless face, with his smooth, shaved skin, and those warm inviting eyes, that allowed him to survive. Without it, he’d have starved. A psychopath’s diet consisted of domination, power, and control. The only way Michael could achieve such a thing was with charisma—something he only understood on a superficial level.

“I’m cold,” I replied, because why give him the satisfaction, even after all those years, of thinking he did anything more than make me feel dead?

I hated those kinds of interactions with him—his attempt to assert himself, to remind me that he still had the power to make me feel as meek as the girl he’d met years ago. As much as he’d laid me out like a specimen beneath his microscope, though, I’d also watched him in return. Studied his behaviors to the extent that I could, in most cases, predict them.

Charming and calm happened to be two red flags.

“Perhaps I might offer something warm.” He rose from his chair, undoing his belt as he rounded his desk, and leaned against the front of it. With his palms planted on either side of him, he tipped his head, a movement I only happened to catch out of my periphery.

An upward glance showed him staring down at me, anticipation dilating his pupils like a cat high on catnip. He loved to think that I craved him as much, that I couldn’t control myself at the yanking of his dick from his pants. Right. The mere thought of his cum in my mouth made me want to wretch.

A dryness hit the back of my throat and I desperately needed to swallow, but he’d mistake that for my mouth watering. Maybe it was. Maybe I’d become like Pavlov’s dogs, or a lab rat, knowing that if I performed well, if I got him off, I’d be one step closer to the illusion of freedom.

Hope, you delusional cunt.

I should’ve been broken after all those years. Torn open on the inside, thinking of ways to get him to love me, because men as powerful as Michael Culling offered two options when it came to relationships: submit entirely or die—neither of which held any more appeal than the other. He’d told me a number of times, the only path out of his heart lay along the edge of a blade.

The game was what kept the sadistic bastard going, though. The cat and mouse and the uncertainty that he’d conquered me.

“If that’s what you want, Michael,” I said.

I should’ve felt stuck. Helpless. As beaten as the bruises that marred my body. I’d known freedom once, and every day since I gave my vows, I’d fought for it, would do anything to have it once again—even pretend I could take his dick in my mouth without the urge to gag, or smile in front of the camera and act like I didn’t dream of blowing his head clean off his shoulders.

Cage a bird born in captivity, and it’d happily die with clipped wings.

Cage a bird that once felt the wind through its feathers and the world beneath its feet, and you’d find that insane glint of hope in its eyes that enticed it to escape every time the door swung open. Even if it could no longer fly, it’d never stop vying for its freedom, and neither would I.

It was such stubborn hope that kept me alive.