“This is how it should be.” He presses his palms harder against my windpipe, “women beneath and men on top. We will always dominate.”
“Fuck. You!”
He doesn’t restrain himself has he tightens his hands. I don’t fight him either.
My lungs cry out at the sudden lack of air flow and my throat burns with the pressure, but I don’t stop staring at him, right into his eyes.
Murdered in an office full of people.
Dark fog starts to crawl in at the edges of my vision. My throat aches, burns, my lungs trying and failing to breathe while my heart pounds like a rampaging bull.
This was it.
I don’t fight it.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Tobias suddenly releases my throat and I gasp, sucking in air, eyes streaming. “We’re going to get up, and you’re going to follow me.”
“Where!?” I rasp.
Tobias leans forward and wipes away a tear, “Well I can’t be mixing business with pleasure, can I?”
“I’ll scream.”
“I thought you might say that,” he grabs me by the arms and hauls me to my feet, dragging me towards his desk where his laptop lay open. I have no strength to fight him. He presses a couple of keys, and a video pops up. It’s dark and grungy, but I can just about make out the people in there. Two.
One tied to a chair, a man behind.
Tate.
“All I need to do is call him, and he’ll slice her throat from ear to ear, so you’re going to come with me, and it’ll all be over.”
I stare at my best friend. She was in good shape, some aged marks on her face but nothing too extreme and while she was dirty, she was alive. The man I realize is Garrett. He says something and she spits at him.
She was alive.
“Fine.”
We walk through the office, his hand tight and bruising around the top of my arm but to everyone else it looks casual. My face is red, my throat burning, but if it’s noticeable no one seems to care. They look away, leaving me to my fate. They ignore the blood on my mouth, the bruising on my face.
Even in the elevator, he doesn’t let go and keeps that vice like grip on my arm the entire way through the foyer and out into the street, towards an idling car at the pavement.
“Get in, Eleanor,” Tobias orders.
But I don’t. Not because I don’t want to but because I can’t. I’m frozen. This can’t be right. Directly across the street I see Ace, he looks furious, but next to him…
No, this can’t be right.
His eyes pin me in place, he was livid, the icy blue of his eyes burning me. He breaks my stare to look at his watch and then back up at me. His lips curl, but then he mouths, “see you soon.”
Kingston was alive.