Page 56 of Cracked Ice (The F*cked Up Players #1)
twenty-three
W hen he said he wanted to test me, this is not what I was expecting.
Eyes bore into me from every angle as the crowd grows, an audience of bystanders that crave chaos and get off on violence, but this time it’s not me being pushed to the back of the group, on the outer edges of the entertainment.
I am the entertainment. Centerfold. They’re watching me .
Several slabs of plywood are braced between me and the tree at my back. The jagged rings that I’m guessing were once painted red have now faded into a deep maroon.
Every muscle in my body is locked in place, unmoving as Lucien instructed, though I don’t think I’d have minded so much if he chose to strap me down. Human target practice is a little macabre for my tastes, but I suppose that is the whole reason he called it a test.
Despite my better judgement, in only a few short hours I had grown to trust Lucien in some capacity; to believe he’d rather fuck me than kill me.
So, when he’d asked me to stand here while he disappeared back inside the house, I obeyed without a second thought, lost in that desirous gaze of his.
As one would imagine, I’ve caught the attention of everyone on the back lawn. People stopped their beer games and bonfire make-out sessions to leer at the girl in front of the target: me.
Then everyone on the inside who shared those same morbid curiosities joined them.
I recognized some of them, and deep down I knew a few even recognized me.
But I wondered if they knew what I’d done, what happened earlier today?
Maybe they were standing here tonight hoping I’d receive justice, that’d I get what was coming to me.
Maybe I would.
Goosebumps rise to the surface of my skin and jackhammers go off in my stomach. The dirt beneath my feet tickles as it slips beneath the toe strap of my heels and the heat of heavy stares starts to boil me alive. It’s an uncomfortable, heady mixture of anxiety, fear, and arousal that’s all for him.
My ears ring when the microphone interferes with the impressive karaoke speaker they’ve rolled out into the backyard.
“Alright, alright, alright. You know the drill. You wanna stay, you gotta pay. Phones in the bucket. And bets on the table. What do we got? What do we got?” announces a familiar voice and an even more familiar face, his drunken smile and chestnut brown hair the same as it was some hours ago.
Asshat .
“Well look who it is. Seems we have ourselves a challenger, folks!”
He’s a lot less blue, but equally obnoxious. Same as before.
“Morrow versus . . .” He prompts me to give him my name, and though it pains me that he’s the one emceeing this catastrophe waiting to happen, I reluctantly provide it.
“Sydney,” I supply stoically.
“Morrow versus Sydney ,” his amused voice calls over the mic, a crooked grin on his lips that’s all teeth and charm.
My skin crawls with the way he says my name, like he knows he’ll be using it again.
I’ll be long gone before he gets the chance, but the thought isn’t providing much comfort.
His words about Lucien’s ‘leftovers’ come flooding back and I feel sick that I’m only one of many who’ve tried and apparently failed to win Lucien’s affections.
It dawns on me with troubling clarity that this might be how Asshat secures his conquests; by comforting the girls who chicken out of Lucien’s so-called tests.
As if able to read my thoughts, he grins at me, his arm thrust out in a display of showmanship. I toss him the fakest smile I can muster, full of sarcasm and snark, but he blows me a kiss all the same.
I inwardly recoil.
“Aww, don’t be that way,” he announces over the airways for everyone to hear. “We go way back, don’t we neighbor? My money’s on you tonight.”
His face twitches in what I think is supposed to be a wink.
“I highly doubt your money would serve me well here,” I state. I’m pretty sure he’s betting against me.
The crowd snickers and murmurs, but he only riles them up further when he says, “Perhaps, Sydney . . . but I’m rooting for you, neighbor.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t.” I roll my eyes and his face breaks into another self-assured smirk, an enigmatic twist of his mouth that annoys me as much as it makes me want to laugh.
But then it changes, morphing into one of horror.
It was a split second, a whistle of wind that I heard more than saw, but I witness the moment it registers to us both exactly what just happened.
Asshat’s eyes slowly peel from me to his sneaker-clad feet. Next to his foot, in a patch of uncut grass, sticks a long blade, the hilt an obsidian black with silver skulls on it.
He slowly lifts his foot away, going two-shades paler when he sees the knife pierced through his shoestrings, pinning him to the ground. He stumbles out of his shoe, crawling backward on his hands like a crab, his eyes wide as he looks around, settling on Lucien’s smug expression.
“Let’s get this started shall we,” booms Lucien.
It’s my turn to smirk. I won’t be losing.