Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
“Not particularly. Just not sure I believe everything I’m hearing.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear she was having a similar thought process to mine.
“What’s with the cynicism? Don’t you trust us? At the very least you should trust me.”
She scoffed and planted a hand on her hip. “Trust you? That’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard. I have a small inkling that you know exactly why we’re in here, which means so does your band of merry men.”
“You could give us a better moniker than that,” Maverick objected.
“I know more than you think I do,” she stated, still staring at Ciaran.
I wondered if she was referring to the photos she’d found. I still couldn’t make sense of those.
“I doubt that baby, and no matter what you think you know, I can promise you it isn’t the truth,” he replied, his tone soft.
“You mean the truth you don’t seem to wanna share?”
We all stood and watched, no one else saying a word. Since I couldn’t exactly come out and say her suspicions were unfounded, I bit down on the inside of my lower lip, concealing any emotions that may give me away. It was a skill I had honed from years of dealing with my socialite mother. As I thought back on our interactions and relationship, it only made me more conflicted. I loved my parents, despite their outdated beliefs, and it hurt to think they would put me in such a dangerous situation and even place bets on whether I would survive.
It was a betrayal I never could have imagined from them. That was starting to feel like a running theme. If this show didn’t tear us apart, our secrets would.
“We need to focus. We’re running out of time,” Ciaran stated evenly, ignoring Lana’s accusation entirely.
“When we go back out there, they’ll have the highest bounties on our heads.”
“How is that any different than before?” Mel questioned.
“Because before we were hunting you.”
“Don’t take that personally. We had an image to uphold,” Charon added.
“And?” Lana pressed,
“And we’re doing this together,” Ciaran replied. “For someone to get to you, they’d have to take all of us out first. And that’s not going to happen.” There was an unspoken sincerity in his words that Liliana surprisingly didn’t object to.
“None of you seem too concerned about your new position in this,” she speculated.
He grinned. “Why would we be concerned when we’re still going to win it all?”
Her lips slightly pursed, a palpable tension stretching between them.
I could tell she had more to say but decided to hold back. I didn’t know whether to be troubled by their bizarre relationship or relieved. Honestly, I had no room to judge. Ky and I had done things behind closed doors almost from the moment we were confined by them. I had yet to share with her and Mel the kind of relationship he and I had, though one could wager they were already well aware.
As for Ciaran, his methods may have been a bit twisted, but he had protected Lana since we’d gotten on that shuttle bus together. It seemed he intended to keep doing so and I was in full support of that—for now at least. I rubbed the back of my neck, wondering how to bring up one subject that hadn’t yet been mentioned. I had a growing list of questions about this person, specifically. It seemed eons ago now that Selena was with us.
I was certain the guys had their reasons for it, but I couldn’t say why Mel and Lana hadn’t breathed a peep of her name.
“What--?”
“What is it?”
Lana and Ky asked at the same time, his voice overshadowing hers.
She looked at him bemusedly, but his attention remained trained on me.
“It’s not important,” I replied to both of them, unsure how to ask what I wanted without making things more confusing than they already were. I lightly tapped the tabletop, bringing the focus back to our current dilemma. “The games are preplanned, right? And there are cameras everywhere. How will we go off course and make our own path?”
“The cameras are necessary for broadcasting the slaughter,” Kyrous explained with zero connotation.
I smiled at him even though he failed to answer my question. There was a momentary lapse of silence and then Brody slightly shifted on his feet. “Uh, but you are partially correct about the games. Each challenge presented has a definitive answer.”
Charon nodded once in agreement. “Only, survival isn’t guaranteed or contingent on you figuring it out. If that were solely the case, the betting system would be less effective.”
“Well, that part was obvious. The challenges crafted by complete fucking psychopaths weren’t enough. They had to add in the whole kill or be killed spin too,” Melantha remarked sarcastically. “By the way, how did you all pull this off? Us being here right now and the cars as a distraction?”