Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“Come near her again and I’ll gut you,” I growl.
“But I already did,” he mocks. “I let her feel what I felt after you left me. At least hers will continue to return in time. The drugs I injected right after the accident should be out of her system in a matter of weeks.”
I shoot without thinking, instinct, pain, rage. He drugged her after almost killing her in that wreck.
He dives behind a column, bullet ricocheting. He moves fast for a man with a wound. Too fast. The hall flickers in and out of darkness as the backup lights glitch.
Out of nowhere, the noise he emits startles me. He begins to hum and then to sing.
Low. Uneven. Something from the barracks in another life. An old cadence to keep Marines awake when waiting on the next command.
My stomach turns.
“Stop,” I snarl.
He keeps going. “Oh, Ledger Masters,” He taunts, “always chasing ghosts, always chasing purpose.”
Rage twists my vision red. “SHUT UP!”
He laughs. “You hate when I sing. You always did.”
His voice echoes in the darkness of the room.
He moves, running toward me. He barrels out of the dark, tackling me into the wall hard enough that air blasts from my lungs. Pain explodes across my back. My gun skids across the floor.
Greene’s blade slices my arm, shallow but fast. Blood drips.
Everything becomes instinctive.
I grab his wrist, slam his hand against the wall. He grunts. I knee him in the stomach. He counters with an elbow to my jaw. Stars explode behind my eyes.
He hooks his arm around my neck—I twist, slamming him down onto the concrete.
He wheezes, flipping over, kicking my knee.
We separate.
Breathing hard. Bleeding. Stalking each other.
Darkness flickers again.
“So angry,” Greene muses. “So predictable.”
“You almost killed her,” I growl.
“No,” he corrects gently, “I did kill something, just not her. I did what you did to me, I killed your future.”
A sound tears out of me, something raw, something animal.
He smirks. “Even when she didn’t remember you, I could see it. The way she looked at you. The way you looked at her. Pathetic.”
I charge him.
He ducks.
We crash into the wall. Fists. Elbows. Knees. Blood. Concrete. Rage.
“Ledger,” he whispers, lips splitting into a grin, “you’re bleeding.”
“So are you.”
“Maybe.” He wipes his mouth. “Maybe not enough.”
He lunges again, and we go down hard. He grabs my shirt, yanking me close enough to smell the metallic stink of his breath.
“She screams pretty,” he hisses. “Kelly cried out when I approached her car, metal crunched all around her.”
Something snaps inside me. Not breaks. Not cracks.
SNAPS.
I flip him with a guttural roar, slam him onto the ground, straddle his torso, and punch.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
His head whips back, blood splattering.
“DON’T YOU EVER SAY HER NAME!” I shout, voice ripping from my throat.
More footsteps. Shouts. Kings yelling down the hall. But I can’t comprehend them. I only hear Greene’s chuckle. Even with his face swelling, blood bubbling from his nose, he grins up at me.
“You’re not going to kill me,” he wheezes.
“Try me.”
“No,” he rasps. “Because she’s watching.”
I freeze.
Cold slices down my spine.
I turn to where he is looking. Slowly, painfully, I look to the desk where a small tablet has a screen with a video call active, It’s there I see a small figure on the screen.
Kelly.
Eyes wide with horror and something else—Fear.
“Kelly,” I breathe.
She doesn’t move.
Greene laughs under me. “See? What did I tell you? You can’t hide what you are from her.”
My hand trembles.
He sees it. He feels it. And he presses on the wound.
“She sees the monster, Ledger.”
“STOP TALKING!” I roar.
A hand clamps down on my shoulder.
I flinch, snapping my head up, Mellow is here.
Shaft. Stunt. Chux. Nitro.
They are all here circling me and hiding Kelly from seeing the monster I am more.
“Riot,” Chux says sharply, pushing through the others. “Off him.”
“He hurt her,” I rasp.
“And we need him alive,” Chux barks. “Move.”
I don’t move.
Not until Kelly whispers, voice cracking through the tablet, “Riot, please.”
My vision tunnels. Not because she’s scared of me.
No.
Because she looks heartbroken. I push off Greene’s body like it burns.
Mellow drag him up, cuffing him with reinforced zip-tie style restraints, then binding his legs. He spits blood, smiling a broken smile.
He thinks he won. He thinks I’ve lost her again. He doesn’t know Kelly at all.
But I don’t move toward the tiny screen. I can’t. I don’t trust myself.
I stay planted, breathing hard, wiping blood from my mouth, trying to shove back the darkness clawing through my ribs.
“Riot,” she whispers. “You didn’t scare me.”
My lungs seize.
“I know you. I remember you, every bit of it,” she continues, her voice getting stronger, “What I know and who you are is a man who would burn the world to protect me. A man who loves harder than he knows how to explain. A man who will withstand the storm in order to protect me from the rain.”