I was lost in my head eating a strawberry yogurt when he joined me at the large mahogany table. His fitted black shirt gave me pause. He looked fucking delicious, but I was more concerned with the fact his jeans were black too.
Didn’t Brianna say they wore these colors in case things got bloody?
“If I ask what’s going on again, will you tell me or will you go back to hiding yourself away somewhere in this house?”
“I was busy. I would have rather been fucking you. As much as I love your pussy, it can’t help me make phone calls or send emails.”
“You love something about me? Who would’ve known?” I quipped with dry sarcasm.
“It’s always going to be you.”
“What?”
“I love you, and if I’m ever going to fall in love, it will be with you. Never forget that.”
He could have told me the sky was on fire and I would’ve been less caught off guard. A girl dreamed of the moment the boy she loved to say it too. This situation was far from normal, though, just as Judas and I were.
He’d made the clear distinction between loving someone and being in love. I was tenuously clinging to one and trying like hell not to fall victim to the other.
“If?” I babbled for lack of response.
He smiled slightly and stood, sliding a piece of paper that I hadn’t realized he’d been holding face down across the table.
“Meet me outside at the car. There’s somewhere we have to be.”
I waited until he was gone before I flipped the piece of paper over and for the second time in a matter of minutes, I was thrown off kilter.
He wouldn’t explain how it was possible for me to be granted a diploma I for damn sure hadn’t earned. I got no explanation for why we were in a large truck that I’d never seen before.
And he’d been tight-lipped about where he was taking me.
If the dirt road and surrounding trees were a hint, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out anymore. The thought of getting out and running crossed my mind a few times until the smell of death began seeping through the air vents.
“Where are you taking me?” I questioned, careful not to inhale in too deeply.
“We’re going to meet Marcus.”
I did a double take on that one. “My dad? Way out here?”
“Where do you think he keeps the girls? There’s no place for this kind of operation in Crudele. The girls have to be held somewhere before being sent to whoever is responsible for breaking them in.”
I couldn’t pretend I had no clue what he was referring to.
He was the one who’d told me about my parents’ sickeningly true nature.
I didn’t want to believe him.
I’d wanted to see my father and make him tell me none of this was true to my face.
“Then why does it smell like that?” I asked, looking around to see if I could find any sign of Dad.
“They have to dump the dead somewhere.”
I didn’t have a reply for that. “Why are you bringing me out here? What the hell is happening, Judas?”
He slowed the truck as we drew closer to a massive sized building that closely resembled a red barn.
“You’re the pawn I’m using to get rid of someone useless.”
“Did you just call me a pawn?”
“You haven’t figured that out by now? You’re my favorite piece of all.”
He stopped the truck a few feet away from the barn’s entryway and through the gearshift into park.
“We have to go inside,” he explained quietly.
“Why do we have to, why can’t just you? There isn’t even anyone else here.”
“Marcus is, and you need to come with me because he believes his precious baby-girl was stolen on her way home the other morning.”
That’s why he sent that text.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“Are you going to get out and play your part or do I have to make you be my victim?”
I leaned away from him, his cold gaze and indifferent tone a stark contrast to the one I’d heard at the table a few hours ago.
“What are you going to do to him?”
“I already told you everything I do is for the better good of your family.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
He sighed heavily and took hold of my upper arm, dragging me across the truck’s bench seat as he got it. I struggled as much as I could, but Judas was stronger than I was.
Cries and whimpers filled the air, the stench of death grew more potent now that I was exposed to the air. Judas tightened his grip to the point I think circulation was caught off.
“Ouch. Let go of me!” I protested, dragging my feet.
“Good. Keep doing that,” he cruelly praised, hauling me through the barn’s entryway.
I spotted my dad right away. He stood taller and looked between the two of us, his jaw ticking in anger when he saw the way Judas was holding onto me.