Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 84446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
“Yeah? How’d you do that?” Dav asked, smirking despite the seriousness of the situation.
“Luckily, all you men are the same,” Cinna said. “Come on,” she said to me. “He has a camera right on the corner.”
With that, unstable hope rising in my chest at a possible lead, I ran across the street with her.
We moved through the crowded aisles of pawn shop shit covered in a fucking inch of dust, heading toward the back room, a claustrophobic space not even big enough for two people, let alone the owner who tried to stay inside even after bringing up the feed on the cameras for me.
“Give us a minute, handsome?” Cinna asked, voice purring.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard Cinna adopt a flirtatious attitude to get her way. But it never failed to shock me how well she pulled it off when I knew she was mentally imagining castrating someone.
“Sure, honey, sure. Be right out front when you’re ready for me,” he said, rubbing his stomach some more, his tongue flicking out to press against the toothpick, then moving out into the front of the building.
Cinna slammed the door closed. “Gross,” she grumbled, coming back behind the desk with me, both of us standing shoulder-to-shoulder. “What time was this?” she asked, reaching for the mouse.
“Two hours. No, closer to three or three and a half now,” I said.
Cinna jumped back the footage, and we watched everyone moving around, living their lives, both of us scanning the faces for Lore.
“She was wearing my leather jacket,” I reminded Cinna. “Holding two frozen coffees.”
Cinna made a noise in the back of her throat, but said nothing as she kept jumping the footage back, trying to catch sight of her.
“There,” she said, stabbing her finger on the pause key as we saw Lore walking up toward the corner.
Her gait was stiff, like each step was an effort.
This had to be directly after I’d talked to her. And she’d been walking fine then.
Strange.
The pawnshop might have been a hellhole, but the owner had clearly invested in some good cameras, because Cinna was actually able to zoom in without losing clarity.
And there she was, staring out at the street for a second, before her gaze moved toward the pawn shop, looking at something in the distance.
The apartment building, maybe.
Her gaze flicked up, and I saw it when it broke across her face.
Just… devastation.
“I’m gonna talk to you like an old friend, not your capo right now,” Cinna said, voice tight. “What the fuck did you say to that girl?”
“I… I told her I couldn’t talk to her right then and to go home,” I said. But the memory was sharper now. How she went from beaming at me, all sizzling excitement at seeing me, at whatever she was going to say to me, to looking like I’d struck her.
“You told her? Or you barked at her?” Cinna asked, knowing me too well.
“Probably the latter,” I admitted. “Rico was hurt. Dav was struggling to hold onto the guy. I… I needed to get in there.”
We both watched as Lore’s haunted eyes stared off for another moment before looking down at the coffees in her hands. Before tossing them.
And rushing off in the direction away from the cameras. Her pace just short of an actual run.
“Where is she going?” I said, thinking aloud.
“To the subway,” Cinna said, looking over at me. “Congratulations,” she went on, making my gaze lift to find fire flicking in her eyes. “You finally did it. You finally broke her. Honestly, I’m surprised it took this fucking long,” she said, suddenly wrenching away from me, like being too close to me sickened her.
“Hey,” I growled, rushing through the store, following her, both of us ignoring the owner asking about his ‘payment.’ “Hold the fuck up,” I snapped, grabbing Cinna’s arm, yanking her back.
Only to have her whip around, arm raised, slapping me so hard across the face that I jerked back.
“The fuck?”
“That was for Lore,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“How are you this fucking blind?” she raged, not caring that she was drawing attention from people passing by.
“Blind to what?”
“To, I don’t know, everything involving your goddamn wife,” she seethed. “How is it that Elian can see it? And I can see it? But you are so fucking clueless?”
“Cinna, for fuck’s sake, say something that makes sense.”
“That girl is, and I can’t understand for the life of me why,” she said. “But she is in love with you. And you treat her like she doesn’t even matter. Like she’s nothing. Just, what, fuck her when you feel like it, and forget about her all the other time?”
No.
No, that wasn’t right.
I thought about her fucking constantly. It was frustrating, actually, how I could never seem to fully concentrate on anything anymore without thoughts of her invading my mind.