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Chapter 31 - Willow
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Amatucci Family Chapter 32 - Ryker
I fought to clear my head. To clear her perfume from my nose. To forget the feel of her body in my hands. I was on the edge and I wasn't willing to screw it up again. "Ryker?"I bit the inside of my cheek as her soft voice trailed fingers of velvet over my skin. "Not yet, Willow." I struggled to keep my voice even. Quiet. After a moment, I felt the tension ease from my body. Felt like I had full control over my emotions. I relaxed my hands, flexed my fingers. Pushing the button to start the engine, I checked my surroundings and pulled into the street. This late in Oldtown, there was no traffic. "Are you okay?" she asked, her voice still soft. I exhaled. "Yeah. All good now."As if I could see it, she came out of her shell. Blossomed right next to me. I could feel the questions sitting on her tongue. Bet myself how long it would take for her to ask it. I would have lost. She lasted about a minute. I'd given her no more than thirty seconds. "Want to talk about what
Amatucci Family Chapter 33 - Willow
I watched his car's lights disappear around the corner. I still couldn't believe that had just happened. One of the best days of my recent life-minus that whole suicide part-had crashed and burned like an A-bomb had gone off. I limped to my car, fished around in my purse for the keys. Asshole. He could have at least taken me home. A soft scratch on the pavement to my left brought my head up. A rush of sound. A quick pinch at my neck and the world floated away.
Amatucci Family Chapter 34 - Ryker
Seething as I drove the rest of the way home, I talked myself out of going back for her a dozen times. She obviously didn't need me. Or my help. She would be fine on her own. I zipped into the underground garage, slid into my parking spot. I sat there for long moments after I cut the engine. What the fuck had gone wrong? I still couldn't wrap my brain around it. Our conversation tripped through my head on repeat. She'd been coming over. Letting me take care of her instead of her chosen family. Me. She'd come to me and continued to turn to me. But I guess what I offered wasn't good enough. Not in the long run. Tough shit. That's on her. You would have treated her like the little pain princess she was. Her loss. Get your fucking sorry ass out of this car, my inner voice goaded. Yeah. I needed something. Some kind of way to numb everything back to the way it had been before. Before she tripped into my arms.Alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.Nodding, I got out of the ca
Amatucci Family Chapter 35 - Willow
Someone slapped my face. Not gentle taps either. I struggled to pry my eyelids open.Dread soaked my brain as the unforgettable feeling of sedatives dragged my body's responses to a soul-shaking crawl. I knew this feeling. Hated this feeling. Adrenaline surged through me for a brief moment, making my neurons fire like they were supposed to. My eyelids flew open as I tried to take in as much information as quickly as possible. I had to get out of here. "You won't be able to escape this time, Willow," he said. Ethan Embry Errington. My ex-husband. The serial killer. "What do you want, Ethan?" I asked. The effort to form the words already taxing my slowed system. "What I've always wanted, Willow. For you to help me heal people. You remember my work, don't you?" He moved over so I could see him. He had a prepped syringe in his hands. He looked so normal. So earnest. How the mind of a monster lived behind that mundane mask never failed to amaze me. I nodded. "I
Amatucci Family Chapter 36 - Willow
Something buzzed against my chest. My eyes flew open. The sedative was wearing off and I could feel my hands and feet. I had maybe a half hour before Ethan came back in here. Thirty minutes to try to get to safety. Buzzzz buzzzz buzzzzI startled again. What the hell was that? This was new. He'd never attached electrodes to me. Not that delivered stimuli. Only ones that read biological information. I looked down. My shirt trembled as another round of buzzing vibrated against my boobs. Correction. My left boob. A foggy memory of me sliding my phone into my bra when I went to answer the door at the shop slid through my mind. Lifting my hand that felt like it weighed at least a hundred pounds, I fished the device from my clothing. Ethan was either getting sloppy, devolving, or had been too excited to get his psycho hands on me to frisk me for a phone. I stabbed at the screen as the name TALI flashed with strobing lights. The phone went quiet as I finally hit the glowin
Amatucci Family Chapter 37 - Ryker
Water splashed in my face, pulling me from the bottom of the drunken well I'd climbed into last night. "You've got one chance, motherfucker, before we tear you a new one. Where is she?" a low whispered voice said. I blinked away the water to try to identify the speaker. The face that belonged to the voice was on the edge of my mind. The name that belonged to the face was on the tip of my tongue. "Where is who?" I asked as I fished around for the name. A husky chuckle. "Wrong answer."Bright, shocking pain tore through my brain. Ripped it open and poured gasoline on it before someone lit a match and tossed it in there to set the whole thing on fire. I tried to move. Tried to evade that all-consuming pain. I was stuck. Unable to move anything but my head as my vocal cords tried to escape the fiery pyre of my scorching body. As quickly as it started, the pain vanished."Where is she?" the man with the broken voice asked again. I blinked, tried to push the pain asi
Amatucci Family Chapter 38 - Willow
The sedative was working too fast. The slowly encroaching blackness of oblivion pressed on my mind. Taunted me with more failure. More death. "Willow, you're not trying hard enough," Ethan said. His eyes were so full of disappointment. And something else. Something I'd never seen before in all of the five years of our marriage. Enjoyment.Somehow, someway, in the last eighteen months of being divorced, he'd found some kind of sick, twisted fun in torturing these women. He spent more time playing with his subjects this time around. Less time recording his precious data. I wasn't the focus of his attention. Or at least not completely. There were moments, longer spans of time than I could ever recall previously, that it was like I wasn't even in the room with him. I blinked once. The bastard had been right about the new serum. I could function better with it than any of his earlier concoctions. But that didn't mean I would be able to save this poor girl. When he'd left fo
Amatucci Family Chapter 39 - Willow
I clicked back into the room around me. Whimpers ghosted through the room as Ethan shoved the smoldering rebar into the girl's abdomen. His back was to me. I wasn't the object of his focus. He was fully involved in his torture. I forced the cold analytical side of me to the front, demanded she watch, learn. Anything and everything she saw, I wanted to know about it. I spoke with the emotional side of me while she was busy. We're going to do this. We're going to get out of here. We're going to stop him. Even if it kills us, this ends now. My conscious ripped open as the colder side of me thrust me back to the forefront of our mind. Ethan was watching me, a calculating look on his face. "You're still watching, aren't you, Willow? I'd hate to think that you were working against me in these experiments."I blinked once. He smiled. It was sweet-one of the first features I'd fallen in love with all those years ago. A mischievous little boy who just wanted me to join him in h
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