Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Maybe Daddy Dearest doesn’t care if I smell for his visit. More thumping boots and voices echo into the room. I don’t bother straining to listen. They never talk loud enough to hear unless they stand right outside the heavy steel door.
I won’t be here much longer. Either I’ll figure out how to get free, or Kai and the others will come for me. We don’t leave our own to face capture and torture for long. My friends are probably already hunting for me.
Would they figure out what happened? Check the security tapes in the casino and mark the lovely prostitute who hasn’t shown up for her shift since then as the culprit? Not to mention, Kai already knows some things since we spoke on the phone before they took me.
I just have to wait it out and see what happens. It takes time for me to calm the rage boiling under my skin. More time than usual, which should worry me if I didn’t fucking care who bears the brunt of it.
The noises outside continue until they grow louder and stop outside my door. Visit, I think. But I didn’t think they’d try to talk to me again after I shut them down the last time. As if I’d betray the people I care about, the people I love. Just because they haven’t figured out the meaning of loyalty doesn’t mean that the concept doesn’t exist.
The heavy door slides open, and I blink against the light flickering on. I have to open and close my eyes a few times to let them grow accustomed to the glare overhead.
Arthur Capri saunters in, leaving the guards in the hall, and closes the door at his back. No doubt wanting to mitigate the risk I might escape somehow.
I don’t speak to him. If he wants something from me, he can ask me. I won’t prompt him or give him some kind of opening he thinks he can manipulate.
The man spins the chair to sit as gracefully as he did the first time we talked. I watch him carefully. One of the best things about everyone assuming you’re useful for brute strength and nothing else…they often spill their secrets, thinking I’m too dumb to grasp their significance.
I hope he’s dumb enough to give me something I can use to take him down so forcefully that his entire family name is wiped from existence. Doubtful, but I need something to latch on to until I’m free of this hellhole.
His gaze sweeps over me indifferently. “How are you feeling?”
I settle against the cold rock at my back. “I can’t wait to rip your legs off like a daddy longlegs when I get out of these restraints.”
If my threat scares him, he doesn’t even blink. “Graphic, but I expect nothing less from you, at least by what I’ve seen so far.”
“Insulting me won’t make me want to prove myself to you. Let’s just get on the same page here. Your usual integration and manipulation techniques aren’t going to work on me. It won’t work on any of the five. You should just know that now to save you some time.”
He waves his hand and shifts subtly in the chair. “I have no interest in your friends. I wanted you, and I got you, didn’t I?”
“To torture? Did I spit in your cereal or something? I haven’t done anything to your little obscure offshoot of the Capri family. Your brother or whatever, and his ilk, I can’t say the same for them. Hell, I didn’t know you even existed until you decided to show yourself. You could have stayed obscure and off our radar.”
Something passes in his eyes, but it’s too fast for me to catch. “It would have only been a matter of time before Kai found me. He’s relentless when it comes to wrongs perpetrated against him. I knew my days in the shadows were numbered the moment I learned the councilwoman used my drugs on him.”
I sigh aloud, letting it echo in the small room. This is why I’m not the brains of our operation. My patience is finite. “What do you want, Capri?”
He blinks, and it’s his only sign of discomfort. “I want to know what it will take to make peace between Capri and Doubeck.”
“And you thought I’d be the best person to ask? Why not contact Adrian directly?”
“I’m not an idiot. He’d skin me alive before I even said a word, just for knowing my family name. I don’t have any illusion that Adrian means to wipe my entire family out of existence and his five plan to help him.”
I keep my face slack, neutral, to hide the glee inside me at the thought. “And once again, I ask, why did you choose me for this conversation? I’m neither politically savvy nor beautiful and charming to the ladies. You’d have been better served capturing one of the others.”