“Come on, where the hell are you?” I murmured to myself. I searched the sugar for a very specific kind before my eyes dropped to the bottom shelf. “Aha! There you are. Come to mama.”
I bent down to pick up the sugar, and the next thing I knew, I couldn't see. I tried to draw in a deep breath, but all I got was a mouth full of cotton. I felt my body being lifted from the floor, and I kicked my legs out, listening as the sugar went tumbling to the floor.
“What the—Is—!”
A hand clamped over my mouth and I felt myself moving. I tried to get my feet to touch the floor, but I was much too high in the air. I wiggled around, trying my best to slither away from the person who had blocked off my ability to scream or see. And as I stumbled around, trying to catch my footing, I heard a door slam open.
Before it closed behind us.
“Israel!” I cried out.
I heard a man chuckling before my body plummeted to the floor.
“I’m gonna get paid so big for this,” he said.
I growled. “Over my dead body.”
Even though I couldn't see, I started to fight. I threw punches and tackled the man to the ground, using everything Israel had taught me. But nothing worked. Every time I moved, the man had a counter-attack. By the time I finally got the damn hood off my head, the room was so dark I couldn't see anything anyway. I felt something wrap around my neck. I raked my nails down the man’s arm, and he grunted in pain before releasing me. I crawled around on my hands and knees, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. But the second he gripped my hips, I felt the man flip me over.
Before pinning me to the ground.
“Gotcha,” he hissed.
I stared up at the man and watched his deep brown eyes smile back at me. The smell of blood and freshly-sliced meat made my lower lip quiver once I realized where we were. Holy shit, this man had dragged me into the back of the butcher shop the grocery store always advertised. I couldn't move my arms or my legs. I couldn’t wiggle away as the man brandished the biggest knife I’d ever seen in my fucking life. My eyes widened at the jagged edges. I watched his tongue lick the shining metal before he held it to my throat. And as I felt that sharp metal press against my artery, my life flashed before my eyes.
A life I thought I might have lived with Israel.
I saw myself in a beautiful white gown with him on my arm. I saw my belly, swollen and pregnant with his many sons. I felt him on top of me, his hand in my hair and his cock buried between my legs. I felt the love he had for me, even if he never said it. Even if he refused to utter the words, I felt it in the way he looked at me. The way he made love to me. The way he protected me.
Then, one brief thought passed through my mind.
Your uncle wants you dead. So why not live just to piss him off?
“You’re mine now,” the man sneered.
As I laid there, with my legs spread and my hands pinned to the ground, I realized something. I realized that vengeance wasn’t about killing my uncle but living long enough to see him fall to ruin. I realized that vengeance against Pava wasn’t about slaughtering his empire or his workers or his hitmen. No. It was more than that. It was deeper than that.
True vengeance on a man like that was living a life he never thought possible for me to live. A life with the man he’d groomed me to kill. A life with his biggest enemy.
A life with the man I loved.
“I’m sorry, Israel,” I whispered.
And as I closed my eyes, readying myself for death, I felt that knife dig deeper into my skin.
Before I felt the weight against my chest relieve itself almost immediately
20
Israel
“Get off of her. Now.”
Seeing that man on top of Bonnie filled me with a rage I’d only experienced one other time in my life. And while I didn’t have time to stop and process those emotions, I knew to use them to my advantage. I saw that knife piercing her skin. I saw the blood tainting her clothes. I saw that this man already hurt what was mine.
And nobody—I mean, nobody—touched what was mine.
Hearing Bonnie whimper pierced straight through my heart. Watching her struggle made me grind my teeth together. I charged the man in the back of the butcher’s shop and tackled him to the ground, but I certainly wasn’t finished with him.
I heard Bonnie take a long, deep breath, and that told me the knife hadn’t penetrated too far into her skin. That wouldn’t help this man, though. It was dying today, whether he planned on dying or not. I took the brutish man to the ground and wrestled with him, getting him onto his stomach. And when I reached for his knife, slipping it from his weakening grip, I held it to the back of his neck.
“Are you ready to die?” I felt a bombastic urge to murder this man. “Hmm? Because I’m ready to kill you.”
I heard the man gurgling beneath me as I clamped down on the back of his neck even harder. He could bleed out or suffocate. I didn’t give a shit what happened at this point. Ten minutes. That’s what she’d told me. Ten minutes was all she needed. And it was all this man needed to rip her away from me. I didn’t know how long this man had had her in his claws, but she hadn’t even been gone five minutes before a shiver had worked its way
