Diamond in the Rough by Skye Warren

Author:Skye Warren [Warren, Skye]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, romance
Publisher: Skye Warren
Published: 2020-07-06T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Holly

Footsteps coming down the stairs.

It’s the next morning, and I scramble to get up, but Elijah doesn’t move—not even when I jostle him to stand. He won’t want to be caught unawares.

He won’t want to be lying down to face Adam.

A match strikes.

Except it isn’t Adam who comes down the stairs. It’s the man from the forest, the one who held me down. Peter. His face looks less swollen now. There’s a white bandage covering one eye. Adam did that damage. He beat the man for hurting me.

From the look in one dark eye, he’s here for revenge.

Elijah doesn’t move. Not an inch. Terror jams my heart. What if his heart stopped beating during the night? Was he cold, even as I held him? Is he dead?

And then I realize—no, he’s playing dead.

This is the plan for escape, the improvisation that’s our last bid for survival. “Please,” I say, running to the gate. “You have to help him. He won’t wake up.”

A sigh. He sounds genuinely sad. “I wanted to be the one to kill him.”

“He can’t be dead.” My voice is rising, turning supersonic. “Please, you have to do something for him. Get a doctor. Help him. Something.”

Peter cracks his knuckles. He tilts his head until there’s a sound, and then tilts it the other way. It’s like he’s gearing up for a workout. “Adam doesn’t have the stomach for this work. Thinks you can sell guns without hurting anyone.”

My blood runs cold. I assumed they were trying to steal something. More diamonds, probably. Some other kinds of art, at a stretch. Selling guns? That’s something else entirely.

“And that kind of weakness, it can make you hesitate. Someone like me, I don’t hesitate. You know why that is, pretty girl?”

My stomach crawls. “No. Don’t. I want Adam. Get Adam.”

“Because I like to hurt people.”

Peter opens the gate, and I have the sick realization that Elijah wasn’t pretending to play dead. He’s actually dead on the floor a few feet behind me. He doesn’t move even as the man stalks into the cell. I back up, tripping over him by accident. I scramble up from his cooling body in horror. Everything has turned upside down. Elijah isn’t going to help. I’m all alone again, all alone with a tree through the roof and a storm raging outside. There’s no one else.

This storm has a single dark eye and hard muscles.

He holds up the match between us as it burns to his fingers. Then darkness.

He’s on me in a second, before I can suck in a breath, before I can scream. His weight buries me, and I struggle against an avalanche of dirt. I can’t move or breathe. My kicks and punches are useless, useless, useless. He grasps my breast and twists, and I cry out.

Alone. I’m alone with the dead and dying. It’s my greatest fear, my secret horror, and I lash out, a wild woman, dangerous and strengthened from pure rage.

I reach into his right eye, claw it with my fingers and feel something warm and wet.

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