Damn, he’s so hot.
Thoughts of letting him pull my jeans off and put those lips to work between my legs make me almost squirm under his observation.
But I’m not weak enough to cave to those urges.
“I’m going to kill that sonofabitch.”
Oh goody.
With that, Asher marches from my room, and a few minutes later his motorcycle roars outside my window.
Sighing, I grab my phone and click on mail.
I have an email from the Anonymous place.
Dear Alice.
My name is Ebony, I’m replying to your email to Anonymous to follow up. I’m your support provider and ready to listen if you ever need to unburden your soul.
I hit reply.
Eleven
Chapter
ERIK
Knowing she’s lying above me in slumber is a cruel torture.
I hate that the Asher guy, her stepbrother I’ve deduced, just allows himself into her room like it’s his space.
He’s too comfortable here.
My heart strums steady in my chest as I listen to her breathing from beneath her bed and try not to focus on the quiet around me.
I know she saw me earlier when I passed the bathroom door.
I was hidden upstairs when I heard a commotion.
She came running up the stairs before I could make it back to her room.
She didn’t seek me out however, because she likes the thought of me watching her.
Don’t you, Alice? You little tease.
The man who laid his hands on my Alice will pay a high price.
Asher will do no killing
A soft thud of her phone falling to the floor makes my heart skip.
The emptiness around me screams for me to fill it with noise, fear, pain, but it’s not the time.
Shuffling out from under her bed, I wait to make sure she hasn’t awoke before I get to my feet.
She’s curled into the fetal position, cradling herself in her cocoon.
Her youth shows when she’s sleeping.
A pale complexion, not a line marring her soft skin. Dark lashes fan out over the hills of her cheeks making her appear like Sleeping Beauty.
“Are you waiting for your dark knight to wake you?” I whisper.
When she doesn’t move, I can’t help but reach out and stroke the hair from her face.
She groans from my touch and moves into it.
Her face turning, yearning for my touch.
That’s when I see the risen mark on her other cheek.
White, hot fury saturates my psyche.
Motherfucker.
It was painful to leave Alice’s room, but I know I can’t risk staying there when Asher could show up any time.
So I’m waiting outside, hidden within the trees beyond her yard.
It’s unbecoming of me to be hiding like some sort of peeping Tom, but I have a plan that just can’t wait.
As the moon creeps over the darkening sky, I count the hours until Alice’s stepfather returns home.
As if thinking about him summoned the fool, his car comes swerving up the street and pulls in at an odd angle onto the drive.
A silhouette of Alice’s petite form casts a shadow in her window before her curtains close suddenly.
Her stepfather looks up briefly to her window as he wobbles up the path and disappears into the house.
My muscles coil with the need to go wrap a belt around his neck as he sits in his fucking armchair and flicks on the TV.
I wait for the cold a.m. air to snap at my skin and the TV to turn to darkness, and then I go to his car.
Keys sitting in the ignition.
What a fucking fool this guy is.
I slip inside and pull the hand break, letting it roll down the drive and a small way down the road before I kick the engine over, making sure not to wake them with the noise.
I take the long way to my destination, detouring for a specific reason: to avoid any cameras.
As the warning yellow lights begin to blink in the distance, I know I’m approaching road work.
Energy zaps through my body, adrenaline beginning to fuel the blood pumping around my body.
My foot slowly increases pressure.
It’s like fate lit the bastard up for me.
Arms waving maniacally, Richard, wearing a bright, orange vest, gestures to the temporary traffic lights installed for a one-way traffic system while he paints lines on the road.
I add pressure to the gas and swerve with his body as he attempts to jump out of the way of the steel machine coming at him at seventy miles per hour.
The impact is loud and satisfying, skin and bone crunching as his body hits the hood and flies over the roof, landing with a gruesome thud.
No other workers are out here, no cameras.
I don’t stop to make sure he’s dead.
If he survived that he won’t be a whole person.
I’m sure his brains are stuck in the grill of the car.
I pull over a few miles away and use the half empty bottle of cheap liquor left discarded in the passenger seat to clean off some of the blood, flicking the piece of hair and scalp wedged into the headlight off.