Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
“You’re on the run,” I say, sassy. “I’m along for the ride.”
“You’ve really got to stop with the attitude,” he growls. “I feel like I need to thrash you until you settle down and learn how to behave yourself in this new form. That medical treatment definitely did something to you.”
“Yeah. It made me fun. I’m sorry you got attached to the boring bookworm who spent all her time looking up old chat logs about shifters, but I’m interesting now.”
“Interesting,” he snorts, indicating to change lanes. “You’ve always been interesting, Calista. You don’t need to act like a criminal on a binge to be interesting.”
“I’m not trying to prove a point,” I tell him. “I am just different now. Because of what your family did to me. So maybe lay off the fucking judgment.”
He gives me a brief, sharp look before his eyes return to the road, and I know I’m going to pay for that later. I really don’t care. This isn’t about behaving properly, even though he’s going to make it all about my manners, or lack thereof. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to be nice and good and polite the way most people are. Half of being human is constantly policing yourself.
I wasn’t doing anything for attention. I was just doing what made sense, what my instincts told me to do.
“What if…”
“What?”
“What if we didn’t run? What if we just went back home.”
“They’d try to come for you.”
“I’m very rich, Gray. I don’t need to run. I need men with guns, and I have enough money to pay for a thousand men with guns if I want. I could have a man with a gun in every single corner of every single room in my house if I wanted.”
“That is a good point,” he agrees, reluctantly.
“And you tell your father the experiment didn’t work and if he comes anywhere near New York I will lock him up in one of my many, many warehouses and… you know what? I’ll tell him myself.”
“What?”
Gray glances over at me, and then back at the road, and then back at me again. He didn’t notice when we were wrestling around, but I stole his phone at the time. I thought it’d be funny. I didn’t realize it’d be this funny.
I hold the phone up to his face when he looks at me the second time, and it unlocks. From there, not hard to find Orion in his contacts list and make the call.
“Son?”
“Hey. It’s me,” I say. “The girl you had locked up and experimented on.”
“Calista Hart,” he says.
“Yes. Good for you for remembering.” I do not even try not to sound condescending. “Anyway, just wanted to let you know that if I ever see you again, I will kill you. Okay, sweetie?”
The last part is a little passive-aggressive, but I’m trying that on as an alternative to the more outright aggression.
He laughs.
“You couldn’t kill me if you tried.”
“I’ve killed a lot of people,” I say. “You’d just be another one. Hell, I might kill you and not actually notice I did it until later. Or, I might never notice it. That’s what people like me do, Mr. Gray’s Dad. We kill people and it’s barely a thing. I have a friend who drowned six male strippers in a party bus and it’s considered rude to bring it up. I cannot tell you how irrelevant you would become if I ended you.”
He’s not laughing anymore.
I have spent a lot of time trying to not be evil, but now feels like a really good time to start.
“That’s right, motherfucker,” I growl. “I’m coming for you. And when I find you…”
The car lurches to the side and Gray grabs the phone out of my hand before throwing it out of the driver’s side window, and into a swamp where it’s immediately grabbed by a snapping turtle who bites it in half and spits out the remainder.
“You cannot talk to my father like that,” Gray says.
“Well, I can’t now. I don’t have his number.”
“Stop being a smartass,” Gray growls. “You don’t know who you’re talking to, or what he’ll do to you if he feels disrespected.”
“What’s he going to do? Imprison me in a laboratory and have them experiment on me even harder?”
“Yes! Yes, among other things,” Gray says. “Callie, I think the treatment they gave you…”
“You mean the illegal and immoral experiment they performed on me.”
“Yes. I think that might have changed your temperament.”
“For the better, right? I used to be so lame. I used to let men stalk me and burn my research,” I say pointedly. “That wouldn’t happen again. I would never be disrespected like that again.”
“This is a tense situation,” he says.
“Maybe for you. Not for me. I’m very relaxed right now.”
I’ve never felt so clear. I used to be anxious about all sorts of things. I’m not anymore. I’m not afraid of Gray’s dad, and I’m not afraid of mean people who want to hurt me in general. Something has shifted in me. Or maybe I’m just seeing something inside myself that was always there, hidden. Maybe some of my weakness was a choice I don’t actually have to keep making.