Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
If she’s dead… what?
What was he gonna say?
“No,” Cash finally responds. “No, we can't have her hurt." Then, quieter, "We need that fucking inheritance."
Inheritance.
What the fuck is happening here?
Is this about my dick inside their sister? Or… something else?
Cash and Wyatt walk out of hearing range, their boots crunching on gravel, voices fading.
There’s something off here. This isn’t concern for a cherished sister. This isn’t brotherly protection.
This is just dollar signs where a heart should be.
The sound of horses being mounted carries through the thin walls. Hoof beats drum the earth, growing distant.
Then it’s me and the wilderness.
I keep still, thinking. Trying to sort out all the information I just learned. It doesn’t add up. Yet. But it will.
If I can get the fuck out of here.
Mercy.
My sister’s name hits like a bullet to the chest. Is she still at the trailer? Did she wake to find me gone? How many times has she already been left? I close my eyes, see her small frame curled on that new bed, BB gun clutched to her chest like a teddy bear. Nine years old and already knows better than to sleep without a weapon.
Did she try calling? Did she think I abandoned her again?
The rope gives another fraction. I twist harder.
Don't give up on me, Mercy. I'm coming home. I swear it.
Savannah's at the north ridge cabin. Marcus is keeping her there. Cleaning her. The words twist in my gut like a rusted blade. I've known men like Marcus my whole life—men who think money buys the right to break things. Rich boys who smile for cameras and keep trophies of their sins. Not like normal people. Normal people hurt each other in simple ways. Men like Marcus make art of it.
I pull against the rope, feeling skin tear. Blood trickles warm down my wrists.
What is he doing to her right now? What has he already done?
The rope gives a little more.
Three weeks. That's how long I've been out of prison.
Three fucking weeks of trying to be a man who keeps promises.
Who stays clean.
Who builds instead of burns.
"Never going back to prison," I'd told Mercy. Told myself.
But if Marcus touches Savannah again—if he's already done what Cash implied—I'll kill him slow.
I'll take my time. I'll make sure he feels everything.
And I'll go back to Whitefall with his blood still under my nails.
Another twist. Another tear of skin.
I test the tension in the restraints. Feel the fibers starting to give.
I'm going to walk out of here.
The only question is how much blood it'll take.
Mine. Theirs. Everyone's.
There's a storm building in my chest—not thunder, but something older. Something patient. The kind of violence that doesn't need to announce itself. The kind that simply arrives, like dawn.
Inevitable.
Silent.
Mine.
CHAPTER 3
The late afternoon sunlight filters through blinds like dirty prison bars, casting tiger stripes across knotty pine walls that have seen too many men's secrets. I blink against the glare, my head pounding with the kind of ache that feels like someone reached inside and rearranged everything.
The first thing I notice is that the discomfort and fullness of the catheter is gone.
He took it out.
This thought makes me want to throw up.
The invasion.
The violation.
My wrists burn. The zip ties have carved red valleys into my skin while I was sleeping, raw and angry from hours of desperate twisting.
I try to swallow but can't. My tongue feels like sandpaper glued to the roof of my mouth. Whatever drugs Marcus has been forcing into me have left me desert-dry, like all the water's been sucked from my body.
The cup with the bendy straw sits on the nightstand—it's empty. So I must've drank—he must've helped me drink—but I don't remember him returning.
He's been here while I slept. Watching.
The thought makes my skin crawl beneath the restraints. I force myself to push the image of Marcus 'cleaning' me out of my mind.
That's a trauma for another time.
If I get out of here alive, that is.
He's not going to kill me, right?
Surely, he will let me go.
Won't he?
I'm not sure. This isn't the man I knew. That I dated. He's a stranger to me now.
Which is why I can't rely on him being rational. I mean, does a rational man kidnap the Little Ashby Princess?
No. Crazy people do that.
I need to get out of here. I test each binding methodically, starting with my ankles. No give. Left wrist—still tight. Right wrist—
There.
A give. The tiniest weakness in the seal where the ridges lock together.
I freeze, not wanting to damage it further until I have a plan.
The cabin settles around me with familiar creaks as my gaze travels up to the photographs Marcus has arranged like some sick shrine.
They are all watching me now. All these versions of me, trapped behind glass just like I am.
Don't think about that. Focus.
I turn my attention back to the tear in the zip tie. It's small, but it's something.