Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
The woman smiles brightly. “Hi,” she greets. “I’m Candace, Savage’s wife.”
“Wench Alana,” Savage says, “meet Wench Candace.”
“Wench?” Candace queries incredulously. “Seriously?”
“I mean it in the most complimentary of ways,” Savage assures her.
She rolls her eyes, and I like her already. She’s beautiful and sweet, and I feel so oddly comfortable with her already. “I hope you have a good nickname for him too, Alana,” she says.
“I wanted to go with Little Bitch,” I say, “but he forced Twinkles on me. Did you leave me any coffee, Twinkles?”
“I drank it all,” he says. “Little bitches do that.”
“I made another pot,” Candace offers. “It just finished brewing. You slept late. I was afraid it would taste old.”
“How late?”
“Okay, not late,” she laughs. “It’s only seven thirty, but I think Damion put the pot on at five thirty.”
Only seven thirty, and Lana has called me several times. Or maybe she called last night. I don’t remember, and I don’t reach for my phone that is stuck in my waistband. “I need coffee.”
“I need to check your vitals first,” Savage says. “Come sit.”
I let out a heavy breath, laden with stress rooted in the memory of that concrete room with stupid fake windows that haunt my mind and make no sense to me. Why were there windows? Did they create them to mess with my mind? Were they already there? And if so, why? I sit down, and Savage gets to work. When he’s given me a clean bill of health, I endure yet another flashback of the needle in my neck.
“What about the drug test?”
“Date rape drug,” Savage replies without hesitation. “It’s a drug that isn’t common in the US, which is logical considering we know the people who took you were Russians, probably Russian mob.”
A rush of terror overwhelms me, sickening me, my hand pressing to my belly. “Russian mob? How do you know?”
“We captured one of them, and no, he’s not talking. He’s low on the totem pole. A nobody.”
“What are we doing with him? Do we go to the police? Did we go to the police?”
“We didn’t,” Savage replies. “When you involve the police, things get complicated and messy in a way that limits our actions. But if you want to—”
“No. No, I do not want to go to the police,” I say quickly, but what I don’t add is, why would I go to the police when I want that man dead? I just don’t want Damion to go to jail for doing it. I can’t say that out loud, though. I’d sound too callous and cruel. I would sound like I’m becoming a West. Then again, maybe I’m just becoming my mother’s daughter.
I’m officially queasy.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alana
“You’re sure?” Savage presses, watching me closely.
“What do I say? I was kidnapped, and I think it was West Senior who organized it all, but I have no proof? I think there is a point where I start to look crazy. I think it might pull the attention away from him and place it on me.”
“You’re a smart wench,” he replies. “It might.” He runs his hands down his thighs. “I brought Candace because there are a lot of similarities to what we went through, what she went through, to what you’re dealing with. I think you might find talking to her helpful. I’m going to leave and give you some time.” He pushes to his feet.
Candace, who’s been out of sight, walks him to the door, leaving me really no choice but to accept his plan for me and his wife to talk. I decide to head to the kitchen to finally snag my coffee, my mind remarkably blank. Almost as if my body is shielding me, protecting me from traveling back to the events of the night before. I wasn’t hurt, though, I tell myself as I fill my mug. I was fine. This was all a mental war game, constructed by a vicious man trying to break me. And he will not succeed. I’m fine. And I’m not done fighting.
Candace joins me in the kitchen and claims a seat at the kitchen island. “We were in love,” she says. “We met at a coffee shop, and we fell in love so very quickly. He was a surgeon, and my father was a general. It’s a long, emotional story, but he ended up in the Army, and thanks to my father, involved in a world he thought made him unsavory and bad for me. So, he left me. And destroyed me. And years later, when he came back, there were people who tried to use me to destroy him. I was kidnapped, too. It was a long road to happiness, but now we’re there.”
I blink, stunned by the similarities of our stories in so many ways. “How did you get through it? And shut down your enemies?”