Page 39 of Not Her Day to Die

“They’re draining her. They’re hurting her. We can’t just stay here and do nothing!” Axel turns his wrath on Grayson. “You saw what happened when they took our fucking mother, she turned into a husk. What if the same happens to Sunday?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Grayson yells back, a vein pulsating in his temple. “Do you think I don’t see it? That this isn’t tearing me apart too? Do you forget you aren’t the only one suffering!” He breaks away, pacing the room instead. After a few tracks, he pauses to glare at Axel. “I fucking love her too. But we can’t stop her! You know how many fucking times we tried to? She’s actually trusting us, what were we supposed to do? Lock her in a closet and never let her out?!” Grayson heaves in and out.

“Yes,” Axel says. “We should have locked her away.”

“Because that worked so well to stop the loops before.”

In the very beginning, Axel had made them try it, but it hadn’t worked. She’d somehow still managed to die.

Grayson falls onto the bed, his head in his hands. “Why? Why does it have to be like this?”

Axel’s fury leaves him in an instant. Grayson isn’t the enemy here. “We told her we would give her a week. In three days we start part two of this plan. And then if nothing changes, I am going to break down the Thorne’s door myself.”

Axel pictures the gun in his mind. Where he put it. Where to find more.

“Agreed.”

18

October 4th

“Wave goodbye.” Sterling bites into my ear as he tugs me into the back of an SUV.

I do as requested and plaster a smile across my face. Even as the movement causes my shoulder to ache.

“You said I would see him today,” I murmur once the door shuts.

Sterling sits across from me, his arms crossed over his chest, his glasses perfectly straight.

For all intents and purposes, he appears a prefect part of society, but I know better.

He unfolds his arms, leaning forward he places his hands on my bare knees and I flinch.

Since he kissed me when I first woke up, he hasn’t crossed any other lines, but I am on edge. Never knowing what to expect next.

“You will. I was just waiting for the bids to come in.”

Anxiety expands in my lungs. “Bids?”

Sterling’s eyes swirl, his fingers stroking my bare skin. Disgusting tendrils.

Before, I likened Maxwell to the devil, but I realize that isn’t true.

This is a devil. Pure evil.

Maxwell is a shell of this man.

I want more than anything to slap Sterling away, to spit on his face, to cut off his hands, to end him once and for all. To not have this man touchme, or anyone else, ever again, but I refrain. He is the one that holds all of the power.

Currently.

“Yes.” His lips curl cruelly. “Darius will find you this evening. You are to go with him.”

He offers no other explanation as we drive back to his home. To my prison.

I have been locked away in a room upstairs, mostly left alone.

When we arrive, my head shifts to the right, further into the woods.