Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 70525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“It’s not important right now,” he says, calming the heated man. “Tell us where she is and everything goes much smoother. You know we’ll find her no matter what.”
We each glare back at him silently, taking in the whole situation very slowly. We’re each fully confident the others will not speak a word, and Archibald knows it. Edwin doesn’t quite get the hint.
“Where the hell is my daughter?” Edwin screams. He’s very clearly coming unhinged. Nobody says a word in response. His face screws up in a grimace of unbridled anger that’s befitting of someone who so desperately wants power, but has none.
He turns his gun to Justin and fires it into his leg. Justin grimaces but doesn’t say a word or scream out in the slightest. Rage begins to cloud Edwin’s face and he swings over to me. He shoots again, and the bullet connects with my foot dangling off his own chair. The pain sears through my foot, but I don’t break eye contact with Edwin, not giving him an ounce of satisfaction. Edwin’s eyes go wild with fury and he starts firing randomly into the ceiling and walls of his own study.
“TELL ME WHERE SHE IS YOU STUPID GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKERS!”
Archibald sighs and walks over to Edwin’s security system. “You do know you have cameras for a reason, right? Idiot…”
He begins to pour over the display screen, searching for Caroline somewhere within the house. Every few moments he clicks to change to the next camera display.
In obvious frustration, he starts to click thorough more rapidly, then suddenly stops short and clicks back a few.
His eyes grow wide as he realizes where the camera he’s looking at is pointed: directly at the outside of the doorway to this very room.
“I’m right here,” Caroline says from the door.
Everyone in the room whips their head around, wide-eyed in surprise. Caroline has a gun raised and is pointing it directly at her father.
Edwin screams and points his own gun at her.
My heart nearly stops and time seems to slow down as he pulls the trigger repeatedly, firing wildly at his own daughter.
But fortune is on our side as Edwin shrieks in frustration at the realization that his clip was emptied into the dead space of the room only moments prior.
Chapter 31
Caroline
Five minutes earlier…
I'm in hiding right where the guys told me to stay, tucked away within the mansion that I once called home. No one will think to look for me in the maids’ quarters. I try to crouch down and remain silent, but fear is coursing through my body.
I'm concerned less for myself and more for my seven protectors. These men have become everything to me. When life knocked me down and when my father totally abandoned me, it was they who picked me back up and allowed me to live again. They’ve taken me to the heights of ecstasy, to the stars and beyond, and our connection grows deeper still by the day.
I know they feel it too, each in their own way. That’s why I know I can’t stay here a second longer, hiding from my pain, my past, and most of all from Archibald Cox, the man who’s become a threat to my very existence.
I creep away from my spot in one of the maid’s rooms and down the hallway towards the voices that are becoming increasingly threatening. I have to find out what's going on in there. I pick up a handgun from one of the dead bodyguards and listen in.
I press my back up against the wall in the hallway at the back of the house. I can hear my dad and Archibald confessing everything. They say how this whole thing has been a setup to kill me and the men I love. And then they mention my mother.
I reel back against the wall as I listen in, barely believing what I’m hearing. There’s no way my mother was a crime lord. There’s no way my mother is dead! Tears well up in my eyes as I grip the gun tight in my hand.
So many random, out of place details of my life suddenly fall into place. The meetings, the codes, being shuffled around so I never saw certain rooms at certain times. I never thought much about it because it was just the way life always was.
Thinking back, I also realize something even more important: My mother trained me for this. In her own way, she made sure I was prepared for this day. She told me I would one day have my own throne. That one day she would be gone and I would sit in her place. I always thought these were just stories she would tell me to calm me down as a child, but it all makes sense now.
Today is the day I strike down false demons. Today is the day she told me about. The day I take back what’s rightfully mine. I lower my eyes in renewed resolve and grip the gun tight in my hands.