“Why would you want it so badly?” I asked.
“He knows the details of the slave resorts I’m involved in. They’re supposed to be secret and exclusive. He knows all the information, including our supply lines for the slaves. Just let me go…” His voice broke at the end.
Jordan and I stared at each other. He nodded and turned away.
“Goodbye, Malcolm.” My gun pressed against his head and piss splashed on the floor at my feet.
“I fucking hate when they do that,” Jordan said in the background. “Ruins a perfectly good pair of boots.”
He didn’t deserve to live. He’d ruined the lives of God knew how many young men and women as he dragged them into his perverted world.
The only thing I regretted was the waste of the bullet in his head. Other than that, he could rot in the depths of hell and atone for his sins there.
***
Chapter Eleven
Cassandra
All my clothes were on one side of a massive walk-in wardrobe. My colourful kitchen utensils sat around the kitchen as if I’d left them there while making dinner.
If I wasn’t so relieved he found me in time, I’d be pissed at Xavier right now. He took jealous and possessive to a whole new level.
My phone rang in the living room and I padded in wearing just one of his shirts because it was loose, and I needed to feel close to him.
“Hey.”
“You want me to pick up something for dinner?” Xavier’s voice was deep and sent heatwaves down my spine.
“I would love Thai right now.” Now that he mentioned food, I was famished.
“No worries, I’ll be there shortly.”
“Zee?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I have spring rolls as well as the sweet chili noodles?”
His chuckle made me smile. “Why don’t I get an assortment and you can pick through it?”
A smile tugged at one side of my mouth as I wandered to the window to look out over the city. “I’d like that since I don’t need to worry about my waistline anymore.”
“You need anything else?”
“Just you.” I stared at my reflection in the glass. It was true, I’d tried to walk away and was miserable. The only place I wanted to be was with Xavier. Now that I was pregnant with his child, I knew he’d never let me go.
“You’ve already got me, baby. See you soon. Love you.” The line went dead. He said the words I’d always feared with such ease, as if they didn’t hold any repercussions for the people who used them.
Everyone I love had died and I was left to try and live without them. The pain never really went away, it just festered in the background, waiting until you were having a bad day to jump out and slap you in the face with a random memory that had faded.
I stared around his apartment and viewed it through his eyes instead of my angry, independent ones. He hated cushions and all my colourful utensils that didn’t match. I used to laugh when he bitched about them. But he’d gone and collected all my stuff and left them in his designer apartment to make me feel at home. I wasn’t annoyed that he’d been through my stuff since we’d been practically living together for the past few months. It was because I was a control freak.
Suddenly, everything I’d tried to suppress in a box broke free. I went from being an emotionally distant professional woman to someone crying over a freaking cushion.
“You okay?” Xavier stood staring at me, his gaze darting around the apartment after he made sure I was okay.
“I’m putting all this down to pregnancy hormones.” I sniffed.