Page 14 of Merciless
“Why Kane, Alana? I got it last year. He was working and you needed… a real man to help you out every now and then. But now? He’s out. He’s got a new life. Why the fuck are you still going after him?”
Another fucking shrug. That move makes my eye twitch.
“He’s a good fuck. Why wouldn’t I?”
“No wonder your own husband refuses to go anywhere near you. You really are nothing but a whore.”
“Judge me all you like,” she says, cutting me a look that I’m sure would affect anyone else. “But you don’t know me. You only see what I want you to see.”
3
ALANA
His heated stare burns into the side of my face as I force myself to keep my eyes down. I fear that if he were to look into them right now, he’d see the pain his words have caused instead of my usual bright blue eyes.
I don’t want him to think he’s affecting me in any way.
Everyone else might cower and worship the ground he walks on. But I won’t be falling in line.
That’s the thing when you no longer care. It makes everything so much easier.
He can hurt me, punish me, torture me.
What’s it really going to achieve?
He isn’t the one I want to hurt, but if I have to suffer his wrath to get what I want, the justice I deserve after years of torment and abuse, then so be it.
“I don’t judge, Pet. I base my opinions on cold, hard facts. Now, if you want to point one out that proves my opinion of you wrong, feel free.”
I keep my mouth closed.
“Exactly as I thought.”
Finally, he takes a step forward and moves into the cell. I swear he replaces the air as he does it. His manly scent is almost overwhelming as he comes to stand beside me, looming over the low cot and hoping to intimidate me.
“Here’s how this is going to go.”
At his words, and his assumption that I’m going to fall in line, I stare blankly up at him. Cataloguing his features. His rich chocolate eyes that hold the promise of more pain than I can endure. The fullness of his lips and the faint old scar on the underside of his jaw that’s mostly hidden by two-day-old scruff.
“I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and you’re going to answer them honestly.”
I raise a brow at him in question.
“I already know your medical records, Alana.”
My entire body tenses at his confession.
I knew he knew something. That much was obvious when he took that phone call down here earlier.
I expected him to launch into whatever he’d learned from the person on the other end of the line. But he didn’t say a word. All he did was tease me with that fucking switchblade that glinted temptingly under the harsh electric lights above our heads.
Naïvely, I assumed that maybe the phone call had nothing to do with me. After all, I’m not the only person he has to deal with. As second-in-command of the Hawks and Victor’s personal torturing machine, there have to be plenty of others who probably deserve a spot in that chair in the middle of his torture chamber.
But clearly, I was right to be suspicious.
“I know you’re not pregnant. I know you can’t get pregnant.” The words hit me right in the chest. But I fight it, continuing to hold his eyes, desperately keeping a tight hold on my well-constructed walls.
Do not let him see his words touch any broken part of you.