Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 116046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
There was also a hair dryer with a diffuser on it and a can of high end styling mouse for curly hair. Whoever Judith Cordova was, she sure knew how to make a girl feel welcome. Top of the line cosmetics and girly stuff occupied the other half of the vanity, all sealed in small, sample sizes. If I wasn’t so eager to find out why my world had suddenly turned into an episode of the Twilight Zone, I would have had fun playing with all the luxurious girly stuff. There was even a new bottle of lotion in my favorite strawberry and peach pie scent.
After drying my mass of curls and brushing it as best I could, I sighed and stopped avoiding leaving the bathroom. When I fully opened the door to the bedroom, Judith and Leo were waiting for me. While Judith was as cool as a glass of ice water, Leo was a hot mess. His eyes were even more sunken in than normal, and blood stained his white dress shirt in irregular, drying patches. At the sight of all that dark red, my stomach lurched and I had to look away, breathing deep.
“Joy?” Mrs. Cordova asked, “Are you all right?”
“His shirt, the blood.”
“Oh…oh, of course. Yes, you would find that distressing. Leo, go clean up before you join us, please.”
He murmured something and the door clicked before I dared to raise my eyes again, a sickly sweat breaking out on my skin and erasing the temporarily clean feeling the shower had left behind.
“Was that Hannah’s blood?”
“It was.”
My pulse thundered hard enough that I could barely hear my voice over it. “How badly was she hurt?”
“They beat her rather severely.”
My knees wanted to buckle, but I made myself stay strong, my worry for Hannah so immense it cut me. “Did…did they rape her?”
“No, thank the Blessed Mother, they did not. Mark arrived in time to stop them from doing her any permanent damage.”
A shudder worked through me. “Who were they? They…the guy named Ray, he said he was going to slit me open from m-my vagina to my bottom and have sex with me in the cut while filming it. He said…he said he was going to make me a star.”
Judith stood so swiftly, the chair behind her toppled to the floor before she began to pace. “He said that to you?”
I nodded, shivering and totally freaked out by the intense vibe Judith was giving off.
“That animal. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.”
“What?”
“Those men were smut peddlers of the worst kind, evil men who pandered to the dregs of humanity on the Dark Net.”
“The Dark Net? You mean the hidden internet? That’s not real, it’s just in movies. And what do you mean, they’re dead?”
Abruptly stopping, Judith nailed me with a shadowy stare that was more than a little bit crazy. “Every myth is based on a kernel of truth. In this case, the Dark Net is very real, and the men who assaulted you catered to snuff film enthusiasts. Trust me when I say that, across the world, families are rejoicing that the killers of their sons and daughters have been brought to justice.”
“How did they die?”
“In your old apartment,” Leo said from the doorway in a broken voice. “They opened fire on Mark, and he had no choice but to shoot back in order to save Hannah.”
I turned to look at him, freshly washed but still looking like shit. His long dark blond hair was tied back and he’d dressed in a new, clean black suit, but exhaustion carved dark circles beneath his eyes. While it was obvious he loved Hannah with every bone in his body, he seemed to look at the majority of the rest of the world with disdain. I think he liked me, in his own way, but he would never be what I could think of as affectionate with anyone but Hannah. Between him and Judith, the dangerous, intense vibe in the room rose up by like a thousand percent. I tried to put some distance between myself and them, wandering over to the window with the pretense of looking out into the gorgeous desert garden illuminated by the early morning sunlight.
“How did you know we were in trouble?”
“There was some miscommunication and Mark, my bodyguard, was unaware Hannah had left. As soon as he found out, he went to your apartment to check on Hannah and instead found Manny Santiago and his men….”
His whole body shuddered and there was so much pain in his gaze that I couldn’t stop myself from going to him and taking his hand in my own, trying to ignore the traces of dried blood still trapped in the crevices of his knuckles.
“But she’s okay, right?”
“Yes.” He squeezed my hand briefly, then let go. “She’s okay.”