Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“How long is this going to go on? You must be bored of it. You learn nothing.”
“This is not designed to teach me,” he smirks. “It’s designed to teach you. And when you are sufficiently trained, we will know all we need to know.”
When he lays his plan out that way, it’s obvious how he intends to break me. And he’s so confident in it working that he’s not even concerned about naming what he’s up to.
I have to convince him otherwise. And I have to do it before he succeeds, because there is part of me that is absolutely starting to crack under the pressure.
“My parents died when I was eleven,” I say.
“Ah. Another orphan,” Aiden says. There’s no awkwardness to his response. Usually when I tell people that, the person I’m talking to either feels sorry for me or wants to head for the hills to avoid the conversation. Aiden knows exactly what it’s like. Everybody here does.
“They died because BP had them killed,” I say. “He took me in, on the condition that I made myself useful. I was given jobs to do. Mostly runner type jobs. He didn’t let anything very bad happen to me, but nothing good happened either. I learned a lot working for him. He was his version of kind to me. He paid for a boarding school, even. It wasn’t a good one, but it was somewhere to be.”
I told Luke that I went through foster homes. It’s not entirely true. I didn’t want to tell him the whole truth of things right away. I didn’t want him to think I was a pawn of BP through and through.
Aiden is watching me the way a mongoose watches a cobra. He’s still, but ready to snap at any time. I know he won’t feel sorry for me. I’m giving him information he will probably use against me. Maybe I should stop talking.
I don’t like sharing my story. I don’t want to be known.
“Anyway,” I say, pushing through. “All of that help came with a price, you know?”
“I bet it did,” Aiden replies.
“I met Ted at a mixer,” I say. “And he was nice to me. Really nice. He was the first person I met who really didn’t seem to want anything from me that I didn’t want to give. He was cute, and his smile…” I trail off. “But they wanted to kill him, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”
Aiden
It’s a pretty sad story, and I don’t know that I entirely believe it. In this life, it’s rare to encounter a perfect victim, someone who isn’t also guilty in some definitive and tangible way.
This meeting at a mixer glosses over a great many sins, I’d wager.
I have no doubt she was used as a honeypot. And I am sure that somebody else would have been used to lure him if she was not. She does not understand that these stories she is telling me have little bearing on my plans for her. I care less about what happened in the past, and much more about what I am going to do to her in the future.
“You’re going to hate me forever, and the moment they can grab me, they will. I belong to him. That’s what he thinks.”
“BP is dead.”
“Is he? Are you sure? A lot of people try to kill him. I tried to kill him when I was thirteen. Right before I went to boarding school.”
I smirk. “How did you try to kill him?”
“I poisoned him, but I didn’t use enough. I was working in the kitchen and I put rat poison in his coffee.”
“And what did he do when he realized what had happened?”
“He killed the chef.”
“So he didn’t know it was you.”
“He knew. I thought I got away with it. He said someone had to die, and he chose the chef. But that now I owed him a life. I believed him.”
“And now?”
“And now I’m just… fucked up. And around more fucked-up rich men who think what they want is more important than what’s right or kind, so…” She shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? I can’t seem to get away from people like you. I thought Teddy was my way out, but BP got him, and the rest of you are all the same.”
“We are not the same.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re exactly the same.”
I crouch down in front of her naked, fucked body, and caress her cheek lightly. “You are our sole captive, Ella. We are not here with dozens of girls. We do not take advantage of the innocent, and we do not traffic in flesh. If our brother had not been killed by the same man who corrupted you, then you would not have known a day in captivity. We followed you because we wanted to know who was responsible for Theodore’s passing, and while you have experienced some unique approaches to interrogation, we would never have touched you if you weren’t so involved.”