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“You’re yelling at your computer. Is everything alright?”
“Is everything alright?” I asked in a low voice. “Did you just really ask me that?”
His brows furrowed as he stared at me. “Um…I think so.”
I huffed out a bitter laugh. “Men. They always think they know best.”
“I…didn’t say that,” he continued, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.
Me! Like I could actually lose my mind. I was a writer. I got lost in stories and plots, but I would never lose my mind. “You know, this is the problem with you. You want to fix me. But this—” I tapped the side of my head—“can’t be fixed.”
Okay, I heard the crazy in my voice. I knew what this looked like—me yelling at my computer and then talking like this to my husband. It wasn’t a good look on anyone, but especially not on a woman. Soon, I would be called things like dramatic and emotional. Did men ever stop to think that women only got emotional because men drove us to the point of murder? Why did Cap think I wrote a woman for him who wanted to stick a grenade under his bed? It certainly wasn’t a form of foreplay.
“Giulia, I think maybe it’s time for a break. How about we go for a drive to clear your head?” he asked in that placating voice as he motioned me forward like a rabid dog. “You’ll see, a short drive will make everything better.”
I scoffed, crossing my arms over my chest. “This is so typical. I’m upset because of something that’s happening in my books, and you’re here to tell me I’m losing it and need a break.”
“Now, that’s not what I said?—”
“They’re the ones who need a break!” I jabbed a finger at the screen. “They think they can walk all over me, but you know what? I’ve had enough of their whining and their demands. I’m tired of them trying to run the show. This is my series, and if I want to end all of them, I’ll do that!”
I pulled out the chair and gave a wicked smile as I began to type.
We drove for hours searching for Cap, but he was nowhere to be seen. With my jungle lady by my side, I wasn’t scared in the least. I couldn’t say the same for Chance, Gabe, and Jackson. They seemed to think we were going to be attacked at any moment.
I spun in my seat, slinging my arm over the back. “You guys need to relax. Unclench,” I grinned. “This is paradise!”
A whirring sound had us all looking up.
“Oh, fuck,” I groaned right as a rocket fell out of the sky. “This is gonna hurt.”
“What? You can’t end it like that!” Oci yelled. “You just killed five characters in one blow!”
“Yes,” I said, satisfied with my decision. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s insanity,” my husband shouted. “Don’t you remember the fiasco of 2018? Readers abandoned ship after you killed Cassie. They won’t forgive you for this,” he warned.
“I gave Ryan a second love. Isn’t that even better than only having one love in your life?”
He scoffed in disgust. “You made them fall in love with her, and then you destroyed her.”
“Well, yeah,” I laughed. “Would they have felt at all bad for Ryan if they didn’t love her too? I mean, you can’t kill off an okay character and pull those kinds of emotions out of people. I made a pregnant woman—who never sheds a tear—cry!”
He widened his eyes and gave a slow clap. “Congratulations, you made an emotionally unstable woman cry. Are you proud of yourself?”
I glared at him. “I know that’s meant to hurt me, but it doesn’t. Anytime I can make someone cry at my book, I’ve done my job. There’s nothing you can say to make me change my mind.”
“If I can’t change your mind about Cassie, then at least consider how this affects everyone else at Reed Security. Think of all the women and how they’ll respond to losing so many men at once.”
He had a point there…
“Yeah, I’m okay with that,” I said cheerily, sitting down at my desk. “Now the real fun begins.”
39
ROB
I gasped, sitting upright as I sucked in deep breaths. What the fuck just happened? I looked around me and cursed. I was back in the jungle. The Jeep was on fire and bodies were scattered on the ground in little bloody pieces. I tried to move, but realized that my head wasn’t exactly attached to my body. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where my lower half was.