Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“Or do you truly believe your sister is better off in the hands of a psychotic murderer who has already killed twenty people?”
My eyes stung. No, I did not believe Dora was safe in her captor’s hands, but neither was I safe in mine. The door may be unlocked, and my body may be free of cuffs and chains, but I only had to look into Radu’s color-changing eyes to know that it didn’t matter if I escaped hell and went back to the living world.
No matter how far I ran... he was never letting me go.
I SAT UP IN BED, READING a rather fascinating book written by a vampire author named René Boudin. And before you believe I had the strength to do either, you’d have to know that I was only sitting up because Radu propped me up against the pillows, and I could only read the book because he was holding it and turning the pages for me. Thanks to the greedy jerk, I was still weaker than a newborn kitten.
Even so, the book he suggested for me was more engrossing than I was ready for. It was a dark tale of a young painter who became enamored with a beautiful noblewoman. He was content to just watch and paint her from afar, but it turned out he wasn’t as subtle as he tried to be.
She had her guards drag him and his sketchbook to her. She was going to have the stalker peasant punished, until she saw his paintings. The artist didn’t paint her as a pretty, delicate object of male attention.
He painted her reading, writing, laughing with her friends, learning how to make pastries, and even playing with the village children. She didn’t even look flattering in half of them. The paintings were just her—living her life.
In the book, she thanks him with tears in her eyes, saying these paintings will be the most precious things she’ll ever own. Then, she offers him a king’s ransom—truly an obscene amount of money for the time—and tells him the money is his as long as he takes it and runs. Runs far away, changes his name, and never paints again.
The painter wanted to refuse, but the book said the look in her eyes when she begged him to leave... was terrifying.
He took the money, packed his things, and left that very night.
Years later, he was happily living over three hundred miles away with a lovely wife in a small, but welcoming community. He was so content, he only ever thought of his first love once in a blue moon.
But his first love hadn’t forgotten him.
I had just finished the chapter where her guards hunted him down, killed his wife, and dragged him back to her, chained up and pleading.
“What the hell?” I cried. “Why’d she do that? She was the one who told him to leave!”
“Are you asking me to spoil it for you?” Radu picked up my teacup and pressed the rim to my lips.
I slurped it down without hesitation. Why not? It wasn’t like the guy was going to poison his food.
“Yes, spoil it,” I replied, “and if it’s an insane reason, throw the book across the room for me because I can’t do it myself.”
He chuckled. “The reason she had him brought back is the same reason she sent him away. Our dear noblewoman had always been wealthy and beautiful. The two things men coveted most in her world. Ever since she was young, she’s been stalked, harassed, degraded, and seen as nothing more than a priceless object.
“And then, one terrible day, she was kidnapped and raped by a drunken, loutish count who thought that defiling her would mean that no other suitor would want her, thereby forcing the girl’s father to give him her hand in marriage.”
“My goodness,” I breathed, heart twisting. “Did her father...?”
He shook his head. “Her father killed the brute. Ran him through right where he stood, but unfortunately, the count had powerful friends. No amount of money could make the incident go away, so her father was arrested and executed,” he said. “After which, the title passed to her little brother, who was no more than a year old. As long as there was a male heir, the noblewoman’s homes, position, and wealth were safe. She had no need of a husband to smooth her way.
“Which is why the other bastards who desired her and her money schemed to kill her baby brother.”
My jaw dropped. Who knew the oral tale was just as captivating as the written version? “They were so obsessed with this woman and her family’s money they plotted to kill an innocent baby?”
He tipped his head. “They didn’t just plot. They hatched a plan and carried it out. One day, her mother and the nanny took the baby out for his daily stroll through the square, when a carriage driver suddenly lost control of the horses and crashed the carriage into them.