Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
“Oh, but you have all the time in the world, don’t you?” His tone is teasing, but he’s mocking me, and we both know it.
I stare at him in silence, and he gives a small nod.
“Your father will let you go with me. All you have to do is agree.”
“You clearly underestimate my father.”
“And you clearly underestimate the dealings of his and my father’s relationship.” There’s an edge to his voice that I don’t like, but I don’t call him on it. “Agree to come and you’ll have a night out.”
“I don’t want a night out.”
“Of course you do.” He grins.
Okay, correction. “I don’t want a night out with you.”
His eyes narrow. Very slowly, Oliver licks his lips, stepping toward me, so I straighten my spine and do the same, beating him to the punch.
“Before you decide to say something you will regret, and you will regret it one way or another, I suggest you back the fuck up.”
“And I suggest,” he whispers, “that you get on board a little faster because, eventually, you will be … one way or another.” He throws my words right back at me, a shadow building over his brow.
“How is your foot feeling?”
“Better than your heart, I would guess.”
My brows snap together before I can stop them and he chuckles in my face, leaning even closer until I can smell the mint on his breath.
“There are a lot of ways that I could bring you to your knees, sweet Greyson, but I’m trying to give you a chance to stay on your feet. I might not be able to force your hand, but your father can, and he will.”
“My father thinks your family is beneath us because they are.”
He nods, not denying the common fact. “We might be, yes, but not so low he was against coming to my father for a little help way back when. The kind my father specializes in.”
I’m not exactly shocked. My father uses all resources available to him. Who wouldn’t? But the way Oliver says this, as if using the information to get me in line, isn’t missed. “What good is a lackey if he can’t be used from time to time?”
“You have firsthand experience with that now, don’t you? How is your little lackey boy, hmm? Or did Daddy run him off too? Or maybe, just maybe, he got exactly what he wanted from the little rich girl and he has no use for her anymore.”
Rage bubbles inside me. How dare he speak of him or mutter that nickname, but I channel the rage.
Forcing a low laugh, I shift the smallest bit, stepping closer until my chest is pressing to his and his pupils dilate, the pathetic boy he is. And he is a boy. He might be strong and smart, we wouldn’t have pulled him into the Greyson Society if he wasn’t, but he’s no wicked man worth running from.
His gaze holds hard on mine, waiting for me to relent, to give him exactly what he came for. Me.
I do give him me, but the version I choose.
I grip his biceps, giving a small squeeze, and his lips twitch as if he’s won, but then I’m throwing us both into the water, his shout cut off by a mouthful of water.
He grabs my waist as I kick him beneath it, spinning quickly to put him in a headlock and wrap my legs around his middle until my feet lock into his inner thighs, preventing him from meeting the pool’s bottom.
We begin to sink, and he struggles, his stubby fingernails digging into my forearm until the water grows discolored with little bits of blood, but I don’t feel it and I can hold my breath for a really, really long time.
Oliver, on the other hand, never did take swimming in school, opting for double training instead, and he wasn’t prepared, so he didn’t get to take a single breath, whereas my lungs are nice and full.
Or as full as they can be after being beaten up for an hour or so.
I hold him until he grows frantic, reaching back and gripping my hair, tugging at every part of me he can reach, and then I hold him for ten seconds longer.
Only then do I release him, kicking close to his spine as I dart away, flying up and climbing the stairs before he has a chance to poke his head above the water.
He gasps and chokes and sends murderous looks my way before he points a horrified look at the precious family heirloom around his wrist. I hope I fucking destroyed it.
“Double the training didn’t seem to teach you much about the element of surprise, did it?”
Oliver spits into the water, slowly making his way back to the stairs, his backpack floating above the water while still stuck to his back. “You will be going with me to that fundraiser, and if I have to take things into my own hands and away from your father’s and mine, I will.”