Chapter 28 – Bellamy #2
“It’s finally time to make him pay,” he hisses against my face, his lips practically touching mine, his hot, rancid, alcohol-soaked breath making my stomach roll.
“For three years I could not reach him in this palace. Then you came along.” He smiles cruelly, his mouth on the corner of mine now, and he licks the seam of my lips.
I shudder, stifling my cry. “You chose him instead of me. She chose him instead of me. It’s always been him, him, him!
He deserves to know what it feels like to have something he loves taken from him by someone else.
He deserves to live in that sort of pain the way I have.
I tried to do this the easy way. I tried to make you mine, but now I have no choice. ”
The pain and pressure on my neck dissipate as he pulls the knife back, and just as I suck in a relieved, much-needed breath, his hand swipes out, and the knife slices across my throat. Right over where the bruise had been those weeks ago.
Pain bursts through me, a blinding white jolt of lightning to my system, and I cry out from the shock of it.
My hand clasps at my neck while sticky, warm blood immediately coats my fingers, but it’s not deep.
A gash, he didn’t hit anything vital. I’m still standing and breathing, and my vision is all over the place and fuzzy, but that’s from the adrenaline, not the wound.
He’s letting me know it wouldn’t take much. Another slice, a bit deeper, and I’m finished.
So maybe now isn’t the time to let my mouth get me in trouble the way it’s prone to do.
“You always have a choice.”
“Do you love him? Truly?”
“Will it change my outcome if I answer truthfully? Yes, I love him, Samil. I love him very much. You are the prime minister. What happens to that now after this?”
He smirks, grasping my free hand and bringing me toward the window. “Look down there.”
I follow the tip of the blade as it points out the window. We’re on the third floor of the palace, but the earth on this side of the palace isn’t even. It’s rocky and sharp, the trajectory of the ground pitching drastically downward. Almost like a cliff. It has to be a hundred-foot drop at least.
“A fall like that could kill someone.”
I close my eyes and release an uneven breath. “You’re going to make it look like I killed myself?”
“Or an accident. Either way. But hitting rocks that massive and jagged from this height…the body will be unrecognizable. Pulp.”
“Samil, no one will believe that. Certainly not Sebastian. They’ll know you were here with me.”
“How? My car left half an hour ago. Right after he slid that pretty pink rock on your finger.” He taps it with the knife.
“Did you know that there is an entrance off the side of the kitchen? An old root cellar that is always unlocked and never guarded? It leads into the kitchen through a forgotten door. I found it once on one of my stays. One of my favorite hobbies here is wandering about, searching for weaknesses in the palace. In the blind spots of the cameras.”
Fabulous. Speaking of the cameras, he must have done something to them because no one has found us yet and we’ve been gone long enough.
Then something occurs to me. Something that could save me.
“They might suspect foul play, but it won’t be from me. Poor Sebastian,” he mocks sardonically. “He’ll be ruined in grief. His perfect girl couldn’t handle the pressure of becoming queen. They’ll say a hundred different things. The beast king who hurt her. Who forced her here against her will.”
“Sebastian will know the truth.”
“But he won’t be able to prove it.”
My hand reaches into my hidden pocket, gripping my phone.
I have a panic button on there. Tracking.
All the things Javier installed on my phone that I gave Sebastian grief over.
Unfortunately, I can’t take my phone out without alerting Samil to it.
I’ll have to try this blind, but I need to buy myself time.
“You don’t have to do this.”
He slams me into the bookshelf, the knife playing with the skin of my chest until he loops it under the chain of my necklace and rips. The diamond goes flying, clattering somewhere on the ground, the chain along with it.
My fingers move, pressing in what I hope is my code. The panic button is at the bottom of my apps, stored on my main window. First, I have to get there.
“Are you saying you’d like to negotiate a swap?”
“A swap?”
“Him for me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He licks me. My cheek. My neck over my cut, tasting my blood. My lips. His thumb follows, rubbing over all of it, smearing my lipstick and blood. “I could let you live, Bella. I could let you be mine. But you’d have to let the beast go.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he’d have to die.”
“Yeah, no thanks. And stop licking my neck like some deranged, non-hot vampire. You are not part of my paranormal fantasy and I do not want to think about all the antibiotics I’ll require after this.”
I shove him away from me and punch his face.
The giant diamond on my hand catches the corner of his eye, splitting his skin open and instantly causing him to start bleeding.
I was hoping to stun him and grab an extra second, but this is so much better.
Before he’s able to react, my heeled foot flies, kicking at his middle and knocking him back another few paces.
He oomphs, snarling and growling out a curse.
Fury locks his face, and he’s about to charge me.
With a terrified shriek, I grab a book off the shelf behind me and hurl it at him, hitting him in the forearm and flank, causing the knife to clatter on the ground and slide behind him.
A lucky break. One I hadn’t planned on but will happily take.
It’s now or never, and the knife is too far away for me to lunge for it without him grabbing me.
I start to run, the phone in my hand, and I unlock it with my face.
But before my finger can press the distress button and before I make it even two steps, he takes me by the shoulders, swirls me around at light speed, and slams me down on the floor so hard the wind is knocked out of me.
Worse yet, my phone tumbles from my hand and slides across the floor straight to Samil.
He lifts it just as it starts to ring and smashes it on the floor, the sound dying immediately.
Fuck.
Samil’s face twists with a sadistic grin as he climbs right on top of me, reaching for the knife while pressing me down with his weight and size.
I thrash, scratching and hitting at him, screaming at the top of my lungs.
A punch to the side of my face dazes me making white crackles of light dance across my vision and pain explode through my cheek.
I wheeze out a breath, tears pouring from my eyes.
He lifts the knife and presses it right up against my neck, over the cut he already gave me. “Like I told you, Bellamy. The body will be unrecognizable after it falls. That doesn’t mean I can’t play with it before that time comes.”
With a sinister smile, he moves the knife down my neck to the top of my dress, cutting and ripping at the fabric before he presses the tip directly over my heart, and I know there is no way I come out of this alive.