Page 48 of Marked
Ruin pulls the car right up to the manor and never even lets me touch the handle of my door before he is opening it and pulling me out. I squirm in his hard grasp.
There was something in that alley. Something he is trying hard not to show, and hard not to tell me about. But I heard enough of his call. He called his team. So whatever it was, it was bad.
That alone makes me stop fighting him.
He tugs me up the stairs and down the hall, not toward my room, but the opposite side of the manor. To the off-limits fortress style door. My heels dig into the wood.
“Ruin?”
He pushes open the panel like it weighs nothing and forces me to follow him into a concrete and steel fortified cavern. Most of the lights are on, leaving the room oddly inviting despite the lack of windows. Next to a long bar, a small nook of chairs waits, unoccupied. He pushes me into one and I bounce in place from the force of my drop.
“Stay.” The command is harder than the one at Underground. Fiercer. His dark eyes glint in the lights above.
“Okay ...” I hedge. “But why can’t I go to my room?”
His lips peel back to flash long, recurved fangs. “You’re lucky I don’t tuck you into the fallout corridor behind a cell door.”
I bristle at the snide tone. “What the fuck did I do?”
“What didyoudo?”
I nod.
Gold light shimmers through his eyes, and I rock back. “Your fucking ‘uncle’ is one of the largest purveyors of sin in Lock Lake. Blood, sex, drugs ... He dabbles in it all, sweetheart. And instead of you turning him in, you went to work for him. Now, his dealer is in the wind and I just found a dead waitress that looks an awful lot like you. So maybe you should ask yourself that damn question.” He storms off back toward the door.
It slams behind him and I jump.
But I don’t move from the chair. If I stand, I’ll fall. It’s like saying the earth is round. It’s a fact. A hard truth.
A dead woman that looked like me? I shiver and wrap my arms around my body.
I’m not stupid. I’ve known all along what Vic was capable of. What lengths he would go to in order to get me back. But killing an innocent? Just because she resembled me?
Even I never thought he would stoop that low.
Apparently, I don’t know him as well as I thought I did. My stomach knots.
And if Vic will kill at random, what will he do when he finds out Ruin is hiding me?
“What is eating you, little bird? Because it is not me.”
My head whips up.
Caine leans against the wall opposite me, arms crossed over a bulletproof vest.
I raise a brow. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Ruin and the others?”
His lips curve into a devilish smile, and he glances down at his manicured nails. “It seems I am being punished.”
“Punished? For what?”
He looks up, ruby irises gleaming under his thick lashes. “For my interest in you, little bird.” He pushes from the wall and prowls closer. His hellfire and amber scent fills my nose in a cloud.
“Interest?” I squeak.
“Though it seems I am not the only one.” He makes avoilagesture. “Hence, why I am here.”
My head shakes as he nears. “I don’t understand ...”
