Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
I glare at him. “Speaking of, how are you alive when I did kill you?”
He turns forward, unbuttoning his cuffs. “Clearly, you didn’t.” His eyes slide to me. “I suggest you find a new line of work. You’re not very good at this one.”
Actually, I’m very fucking good. Just not when it’s you.
Seconds pass with neither of us wanting to break eye contact.
My heart slows.
I missed you.
“Are you going to tell me why I’m here?” I ask the first thing I can think of that won’t end with me in his lap, begging for forgiveness.
“That’ll make things far too easy for you.” His head tilts to the side. “Don’t you remember? I’d much rather you crawl.”
My mouth snaps shut and I turn away from him. No point pulling answers from him now. Not worth the risk of making a fool of myself. First, I need to process this, compartmentalize it, and then… and then what?
My finger drums against my thigh.
The car rolls to a stop at a traffic light.
My scalp prickles, and I scan the street. Convenience store, park, people everywhere.
Sweat slips between my breasts as I think over my options.
My phone is tucked away, but my only weapon lies at our feet. By the time this corset lets me bend to grab it, Asher will have me in a headlock.
Such a wholesome marriage already.
Maybe he’s distracted enough to miss it.
My eyes drift to him, and find him already focused on me.
Dark lashes fan over sharpened cheekbones, his features brutal against that perfect mouth.
And now I’m staring at his mouth.
“Go on.” He widens his legs and settles deeper into his chair. “Do it.”
“Do what?” I ask, feigning innocence. Only that never works with Asher. He reads between the lines and doesn’t care if he has to reach inside my chest and pull them out himself.
“Sinead!” he shouts, though his gaze never leaves mine. “Pull over.”
My pulse rattles through me, every second stretching into a lifetime.
He shifts his weight forward, resting it on his thighs.
“Well, go on then, Venom.” Sunlight catches the twitch of his lip. “Run.”
I could run. I want to. I’m definitely considering it…
His eyes darken. “I dare you.”
I sigh and lean back. There’s no point. He’d only chase me, or worse, allow me to think I’m free. There’s no running away from this, even if I was a runner. Which I’m not.
He nods at the driver through the rearview mirror, and the car once again pulls out onto the road.
“Are you going to answer any of my questions?” I’m stuck here. I may as well make it painful for him too.
He ignores me.
Perfect.
He flicks a wrist toward my vibrating phone, his other hand dragging down his face. “Might wanna get that. Your friends seem stressed.”
I scan every line of this man’s face like I carved them there myself. I know him like I do the Codex. I loved him. More than a human could love anyone, but I still shot him. I still watched him bleed out on the floor out of the sake of orders. I chose my loyalties in a split second, then s[ent a year regretting it.
I open the group chat.
Punk: I’m working on this. I have no idea what’s happened.
Has anyone heard from Nonna yet?
Jord: No, I think she’s on a job.
She was. I knew because she gave me this job midway through hers.
Anything, Punk?
Punk: There’s something I forgot to mention. When I began the process of clearing us out of databases connected to Parker, Asher, Camille, and his fuckass brother Atlas, I hit a bump.
Leon: Oh, she’s gonna love this...
What kind of bump?
Three dots appear and my gut twists. Punk doesn’t make mistakes. She’s a coding goddess, trained from the moment she hit Nonna’s doorstep to be exactly what we need. Other organizations would kill for someone half as good. She’s never dropped the ball, not once.
Punk: His fanbase. I can only keep things out of the media, away from prying eyes, but people still talk. Raking through hundreds of thousands of comments every day when they’d post on his page, asking where he was. It was taxing, but I managed to get it under control by creating an automated system that bypassed the likes of even Meta.
I wait for the reveal, painfully aware of who sits beside me.
Punk: It’s just, computers are great, but if they’re not overlooked constantly, things can slip through. Camille was easy enough, since she sincerely thought he had just disappeared on her. Mixed with the passive-aggressive quotes she’d drop every now and then, I didn’t have to do much on her account, but Atlas?
What? He stir the pot? Accuse us of killing him? What?
Punk: No. He fed into the story I planted, asking people to give his brother privacy right now as he lives off a bad breakup. I let his videos through every news agent because they helped us, right? But there was something.