I just need my cock to get the memo first.
It’s as hard now as it was when I watched her being fingered in the alleyway almost a year ago today, pulsating with an equal amount of desire and adrenaline. Its response can’t be helped. Roxanne’s paper-thin dress is pushed an inch above her tiny lace panties, and her thigh gap allows an uninterrupted view of a cunt I’m sure tastes delicious.
Although her eyes are shut due to the strength of the chloroform Clover used to subdue her, I don’t need them to be open to know they’re the same emerald green color of her dress. I’ve studied them multiple times the past nine months in the many surveillance images Rocco took of her. I know every speckle and every flaw.
I also know them well enough to know they’ll never be the same once I’m done with her.
I can’t believe it took me this long to place all the pieces of the puzzle together. She’s always been there in the background of every scene. At the restaurant Audrey was taken from, in the alleyway when I instigated my ruse to make it appear as if I were moving on, and on the very ramp that led to the airstrip that ripped my daughter away from me for another nine long months. I just stupidly saw it as fate instead of the intricate ruse it is.
My father left Roxanne’s punishment to me. He never does that. If he has the opportunity of watching the light in someone’s eyes be snuffed, he’s there with bells on.
This time around, he walked away.
That can only mean one thing. He doesn’t believe I have what it takes to kill her.
I’m more than happy to prove him wrong.
Chapter Thirteen
Roxanne
I wake with a groan, the punishing pound of my temples as noticeable as it was when I woke up in a hospital room with life-threatening injuries several months ago. Although my eyes have yet to follow the prompts of my brain, I am aware I’m in the backseat of an expensive ride and that my hands are bound behind my back with a thick, scratchy twine. The coolness of leather upholstery caressing the back assures me of this, much less the sickening drone of four tires rolling over asphalt. They churn over the road surface as intensely as my stomach wishes to expel the contents weighing it down.
I don’t recall ever feeling this ill, and I’ve had some horrific hangovers. That’s why I rarely drink anymore. I’m not one of the lucky ones who wake up the next day feeling fine. For every drink I have, it takes me four hours to recover. That wasn’t a schedule I encouraged while endeavoring to keep my scholarship afloat.
Sadly, I haven’t had to worry about that the past nine months, meaning I should have had more than my share of drunken benders.
I couldn’t be ‘me’ if I were a drunk like my father.
My eyes sluggishly open in just enough time to see the shadows of a city on the horizon. We’re surrounded by sandy plains and overgrown bushes—an ideal spot to dump a body.
As my throat dries with worry, I divert my focus to the vehicle churning out the miles despite the bad conditions. Instead of the middle row of seats in the large SUV facing forward, they’ve been fixed to a privacy partition shielding the driver from the main section of the cab.
The configuration of the cab ensures I have no trouble locking eyes with the dark-haired stranger when I raise them front and center. He sits across from me with a tight smile and balled fists. He doesn’t need to tell me where we’re going. I can reach my own conclusion. I told them I had called the police, so it makes sense they’d move my murder away from their business premise. No one will find me out here.
Well, except the vultures, and that’s only if they make my grave shallow.
If my death is anything like Eddie’s, there probably won’t be much of me to bury.
I stop praying for a quick, painless death when an accented voice ripples through the air. “You shouldn’t waste your breath on him. He didn’t mention you at all.” When confusion crosses my features, the man with the evil, yet somehow appealing blue eyes says, “Eddie.” He smiles at the widening of my pupils, loving my unease. “Or Eduardo Emanuel Cordova as he was known to us.” When he says ‘us,’ he nudges his head to the men seated each side of me. Their shoulders are butted against mine like I’m the princess of their realm, and they swore an oath to protect me. “He didn’t mention you once. He merely groveled for his own pathetic life, so why are you wasting your last words on him?”
Tears prick my eyes. I don’t know if they’re for Eddie or because the man glaring at me as if I am gum under a park bench just admitted I’m moments from my death. Eddie got what was coming to him, but still, the stranger’s confession is a hard pill to swallow.
“I wasn’t praying for Eddie,” I force out through the sob sitting in the back of my throat. “I was praying for my death not to be as painful as his.”
Humor flickers through the stranger’s eyes like ambers in a fire. “Who said his death was painful? There’s no body, so how would anyone know that?”
My nanna always said my mouth would get me in trouble, which it does precisely two seconds later. “They said he was cut up into little pieces. That he was tortured for hours.” I lick my quivering lips before asking, “Is that true?”
He nods without shame, angering me further. “Why? What did he ever do to you?”
“He took my daughter away from me.” The expression on his face turns menacing when he spits out, “As did you.”
I balk, suddenly sickened. “I did no such thing. I don’t even know who you are, much less know you had a daughter.”
“Have. I have a daughter!”
Since my hands are bound behind my back, I have to use my legs to kick him away when he suddenly lurches to my side of the cabin.
Although I give it my all, his hand curls around my throat a mere second before his hot breaths batter my neck. “And if it weren’t for you, she’d be snuggled in her bed. Instead, she’s been bounced state to state, or worse, country to country.”
When a dangerous gleam darts through his eyes, the reason behind their familiarity smacks into me. He’s the stranger who stood outside the alleyway, the man who toppled me into ecstasy even faster than Eddie’s hand. It was rainy, and my mind was blitzing about what we were doing, but I am confident he’s the same man.
The already tight squeeze he’s clutching my throat with doubles when a horrid thought enters my mind. Did my stunt that night prompt the kidnapping of his daughter? He was watching me as intensely as I was watching him, so there was plenty of time for his enemies to undertake a well-planned attack. It takes less than a second for evil to launch.
Oh, God, I feel sick.
“I didn’t mean any harm. I was just fooling around. I had no clue about the controversy it would cause.” He firms his grip around my throat for every word I speak. His hold is so fierce, I feel seconds from blacking out, but I push on, determined to make peace with my guilt before my life expires. “I liked you watching me, but I wouldn’t have done it if I knew what would happen to your daughter. I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.”
My apology seems to anger him more. His face goes red as the candor in his eyes fades to black pits of pure rage. “My wife is dead because of you. My daughter is missing. I should kill you now.”