“I won’t go looking for the second shoe, no matter how expensive those heels were. And nobody cares how you look. You won’t need fancy shoes any time soon.” Not to mention that the girl looked like a sex bomb even in her ripped clothes. She’d probably still look like a fucking model in a potato sack.
Marcella smirked and came toward me, her hips swaying from side to side in the most mesmerizing way, before she stopped close to the bars. Last night when I’d caught Denver pissing against the hut, I’d seen behind her arrogant mask for a moment but now her expression was steel again.
“You care from the way you keep checking me out. I’ve been thinking about you all night…”
I raised an eyebrow. “I won’t release you for a quick fuck, no matter how fuckable you are. But nice try.”
Her lips thinned. “I’d rather sleep in a kennel with those dogs than fuck you. But I can tell you’ve given it plenty of thought.”
Her eyes held so much arrogance I had to resist the urge to shove open the door and jerk her against me to shut her up.
“Early in the morning, I realized where I’d seen you before. In the club a few weeks ago. You watched me like all men do, as if you would sell your left kidney for a night with me.”
I grabbed a bar, chuckling. “Damn, you are conceited as fuck. I was watching you because I was looking for an opportunity to kidnap you.”
Marcella grabbed the bar below my fingers, leaning forward, bringing our faces so much closer. The top buttons of her silk blouse had ripped off, giving me a view down her cleavage and the enticing swell of her breasts. I tore my gaze away but was met with her soul-crushing eyes. I’d never seen eyes as blue as hers, but with a darker ring around them, never seen skin so immaculate, almost pearlescent, especially against her black hair. It was as if she’d really materialized out of a fairy tale. A very dirty, adult fairy tale. Snow White indeed.
“But that’s not why you couldn’t take your eyes off me. I know the look you had on your face. You can deny it all you want, but I bet you fantasized about me after that day.”
I wished she was wrong. But the girl was right. She was so gorgeous, that even after a night in a kennel without any access to a bathroom, she made the dolled-up girls in the clubhouse look like gutter rats. “Your beauty won’t get you out of here, it won’t save you.”
Her smile widened as if she knew better, as if she was absolutely sure that she would be saved.
“Even your father won’t find this place if that’s what you hope for. He can’t save you,” I continued.
“My father’s going to save me. He’s going to kill everyone who stands in his way. Every man, every club girl, even your little brother. He’ll kill them as brutally as he’s capable of, and my father is the most capable man when it comes to brutality, Maddox. You’ll watch them all bleed to death at your feet, their bowels strewn about the floor like confetti. Gray will die, and in the last moments of your life, you’ll listen to his cries and feel guilty for bringing this upon him and yourself.”
Her words caught me by surprise, especially the vehemence and fierceness in them. This girl didn’t seem like she shied back from the dirty side of life, but I doubted she’d ever seen blood and death, certainly not like I had.
Her words also revealed how attentive she truly was. From seeing us interact for barely a moment, Marcella had already figured out that I felt very protective toward Gray and she was trying to play on my worry for him. She was good, and more dangerous than I’d given her credit for. I needed to be careful around her for more than one reason.
“You think you know everything, don’t you? But you don’t, Snow White,” I growled. Marcella’s eyebrows twitched upward. “I know how capable your father is. You only heard the stories, but I’ve seen him in action. I watched him dismember and skin my father and his men when I was only a little boy. I kneeled in their blood while your father kept hacking at their corpses like a goddamn maniac. I pissed my pants, terrified he’d find me and kill me too. I still hear the screams in my nightmares. And you want to tell me I don’t know what your father’s capable of?”
For the first time, my words broke through her cold beautiful mask. Her face softened with realization then understanding and worse, compassion.
Seeing the softer angles of her face hit me like a fist to the stomach.