“Jesus,” he grumbles under his breath. “I should have fucking psychopaths crush my legs all the time if this is the kind of treatment I’ll be getting.”
“Oh, look at that,” I tease. “The offer just fell off the table.”
“Bullshit,” Blake says. “You wouldn’t do your baby brother dirty like that.”
I roll my eyes. He’s right and he knows it.
I get up off the couch and start making my way to the kitchen to get all the take out menus I know he’s going to insist on studying. I can’t wipe the smile off my face. I’m absolutely in love with life at the moment. I have my brother back home, I have Slade, my best friends are coupling up. Not to mention that Lucien and Marcus are gone, Maria is off somewhere licking her wounds, while Shay is making progress with her relationship with Ben.
I don’t know how we all survived this wicked bullshit but we did and we’ve come out the other end so much stronger. Hell, Slade came out with an offer to play at Lakeside University.
“Where are you going?” Nessa calls out, cutting through my thoughts and making me silently want to hate on her for destroying my little private moment of happiness.
“Kitchen,” I call back.
“Oh, so was that offer of food for everyone or just for Blake? Because I could do with a drink. We could start slow with a few cocktails and then hit the hard stuff.”
I look back at her. “You are not getting wasted here tonight. Go back to your own place and get fucked-up there.”
Nessa rolls her eyes. “You’re such a party pooper.”
I ignore her as I step through to the kitchen. She has a point. Blake is home. We should be celebrating, maybe not getting drunk but we should at least have a drink or two. Besides, it’s a Sunday afternoon. What’s the harm?
I reach up above the fridge and rifle around until I find the stack of takeout menus. Half of these menus have changed at least a dozen times while the other half are for businesses that closed down years ago, yet Bake refuses to throw out the menu and always insists on scanning over it. I never claim the kid was normal…
Reaching up to the cupboard, I find a few cocktail glasses and smirk to myself when I pull down enough for the boys. If Nessa and I are celebrating with pretty, pink cocktails, then so are the boys.
Laughter comes from the living room and I smile to myself as I go to find the cocktail ingredients. I push up onto my tippy toes, wanting to reach the bottle of Malibu at the top when someone presses into my back.
For the shortest moment, I think it’s Slade but the body is all wrong and considering the oversized breasts pressing into the back of my shoulders, I’d dare say I was wrong.
The overwhelming perfume hits me before the cold, metal blade at my throat does. “Make any sudden movements and I’ll end you right now.”
Maria.
Chapter 24
The knife pinches heavily against my neck as my body freezes. One wrong move from me and I’m a goner.
I thought all this bullshit was over.
How fucking naive.
“You won’t get away with this,” I growl low, keeping my voice down as to not alert anyone in the other room. I can only imagine how Shay would react to this and I can assure that her panic would have me dead.
The knife presses in harder and I feel the blade beginning to cut my skin. “I already have, princess,” she spits, mocking Lucien’s dirty little nickname for me.
I keep my mouth closed.
The only way to get out of this is by playing it smart and antagonizing the crazy woman with a knife who recently flipped out and shot her husband isn’t exactly a sure-fire way to make that happen.
I’m fucked. This woman is bat-shit crazy.
Maria had my parents killed, kidnapped us as babies, turned a blind eye to Lucien raping teens for who the hell knows how long, married me off to a millionaire rapist, and then finally lost it and killed her husband.
This isn’t a situation I want to be in. Not now, not ever.
My heart rate increases by the second, tripling when Maria leans into me, putting her face in beside mine as I stare at the cupboard. With the rapid way my pulse is racing, if she was to slit my throat, I’d bleed out in seconds. “You took my husband away,” Maria claims. “You need to make up for your sins.”
Okay…I’ll bite. I know I shouldn’t play into her twisted little game, but if she’s going to kill me, then I’ll be screaming out the truth until my final seconds.
“My sins? Are you insane? You’re the crazy one here. You were the one who stole the gun and you were the one to pull the trigger.”