The Blood Debt

I spit, but it doesn’t hit him in the face. Instead, it lands on the ground right in front of his bare feet. “Fuck you.”

He smirks. He never used to smirk. “If you want to … I’ll let you.”

My cheeks turn rosy red, and I hate it. I hate it with every fiber of my being. “You wish.”

He laughs, but it’s not how I remember. It’s in a roaring way. Almost beastlike. And it makes goose bumps erupt on my skin. “We’re far beyond wishes now, Jasmine. You’re here now …” He leans in to grab the rope, and he pulls me closer. “Which means you read the note I left.”

I can smell his breath, the stench of blood, whose blood I don’t know, but the thought that he could be a cold-blooded killer makes my heart thump in my throat.

“I came to finish what you started,” I growl back.

His face darkens, his jaw tensing. He sucks in a breath, letting it out slowly as he looks down at me with disdain. Suddenly, he grips the rope and gets up on both feet, hauling me behind him like some big, lumbering giant.

“Wait! Stop!” I try to grasp onto something, a twig, a tree, a piece of moss, but the sheer force he applies to drag me along prevents me from latching on to anything at all.

But worst of all, he treads on as if it doesn’t even faze him. As if he doesn’t even notice I’m trying to stop him.

Panic fills my bones. “What are you going to do to me?”

He glances at me over his shoulder, a wicked glint in his eyes like he’s become the devil himself. “Everything I’ve ever wanted.”

Chapter 6

Liam

* * *

Finally, after all these years of waiting, I have her in my clutches. The one girl who always managed to escape my grasp. The one girl who never wanted me … but I wanted her more than I could ever handle. So much it felt as though I was suffocating just like I was the day I almost drowned.

I’ll fucking make her pay for denying me all these years ago.

I swallow hard as I drag her along the pine cone–covered ground, her grumbles and moans a nuisance to my ear. Because they’re moans and grumbles of pain and anger instead of desire.

But I will hear them soon enough.

I don’t fucking care how long it takes or how much I have to do.

I will fucking have what I want, and what I want is her, and she knows it.

I look at her over my shoulder, but my glance is only met with hatred. The same kind of hatred I felt for her sister before she died. I’m not surprised.

Nor am I surprised she brought a gun. As the daughter of a mobster, I would’ve expected nothing less. But I didn’t expect her to lose her grip so quickly. Or that she’d bring such a tiny one.

I snort to myself at the thought of Jasmine trying to kill me out of revenge.

It’s almost poetic. The killer murdered by the victim’s sister. I’d almost call it justice.

But I’m not ready to die yet.

And she’s not ready for what’s in store.

I left a lure in her little box of treasures … and she bit just as I knew she would.

Now she’s here and all mine.

And I’m not fucking letting go.

Jasmine