Highest Bidder Collection - Lauren Landish Page 0,259

my flower.

I need to live for her.

Without another thought, I pull the trigger. The bullet whizzes through the air, hitting her in her throat. She falls off the bed, the gun leaving her hand and falling with a thump onto the padded carpet.

I’m quick to go to her side, now that she’s unarmed. I kick the gun to the side as both of her hands press against her throat, trying to stop the blood. My initial reaction is to save her. I kneel on the ground; she looks at me with wide eyes filled with fear. I press my palm to the wound in her neck even as she tries to helplessly push me away. The woman has fight, but there’s too much blood. It pains my heart. I didn’t want this.

“I’m sorry,” I barely get the words out as her hot blood covers both of my gloved hands and soaks into the cream carpet.

I stare down at the dying woman. Her innocent blood on my hands as I try to stop the wound from gushing blood. The pumps of hot liquid become weaker and weaker as her heart slows, and the life falls from her eyes. One deep breath leaves her, and she’s gone. Another victim. I don’t know who she is, but her death is on my hands.

The sick fuck that my father is, he had to tie me to a chair before he did it. I struggle against the blinds at my wrists, but it’s useless. My ankles are bound and my thighs are strapped to the chair beneath me. So is my chest. I scream until my throat is raw and hoarse. For the first time in my life, my cheeks are wet with tears.

He’s punishing me, for not doing his will. For disobeying an order. I was trying to do what was right. I was trying to save the woman he wanted me to torture. And now I have no choice but to watch as he beats my mother in front of me. I look up at my brother pleading with him to help.

“He’s killing her!” I scream at him. Mother isn’t even crying anymore. At first, she tried not to scream. She didn’t want to see me upset. She told me it was okay. She told me she loved me. Even as my father slapped her across the face with the butt of the gun. But as he continued, his brutal hits coming with more force, she couldn’t hold it back any longer. She begged him just as I am now.

My brother looks back at me with the same look that my father’s always had. Eyes filled with malice. The breath leaves my lungs and my voice is lost as a shrill bang echoes in the small room. I hang my head low.

I was only 12, and that was the last time anyone called me little sparrow. And the last time anyone told me they loved me.

I look down at the woman one last time, wiping her blood on the sheets as I stand, towering over her and glancing back at my father. Her eyes are closed and she’s covered in blood. My father’s eyes are opened and cold and that's how they always were, staring at nothing. Beneath him blood pools into the mattress. The sheet soaks up the dark red liquid.

She may have died because I came tonight. To finish this.

I almost leave without heeding Zander’s words. That I need to check the closet. My eyes dart to the double doors, and I take cautious steps to see what lies behind them. My body heats, knowing I’m trusting him. A man I don’t know.

The door squeaked open slowly, the only sound in the room other than my own shallow breathing. The blood rushes in my ears drowning out all other sounds as I stare at the monitors and video recordings of every inch of this house. Some areas I don’t recognize. The screens flicker and move to rooms I’ve never seen before. It’s surveillance, of this house and of somewhere else.

I watch them for a moment, each second passing, my body chills and my heart pounds. I remove the tapes, one by one. There are eight of them and I stop the recordings before leaving. Had Zander not told me, there’s no doubt in my mind I would’ve gone away for murder this time. The hard evidence is undeniable.

I walk to the door stepping over the poor woman’s dead body and turning