Never Far Away (The Never #2)(91)
She watched as Kyle came into the living room, the gun still in his hand but no longer trained on her. He paced in front of the coffee table, running a hind through his greasy blonde hair.
“You’ve always been more trouble than you were worth, you know that?” He looked over at her and she remained silent, not wanting to give him any ammunition to use his gun before she was ready for him. “When we started dating, you were cute enough, and inexperienced enough that it was exciting. You were so trusting and you never questioned anything I did. You were so stupid,” he said with obvious disgust.
She continued to listen to him, or at least look at him, trying to pretend like she was taking in his words. He rambled and she tried to free her hands. He could say whatever he wanted about her. It didn’t matter. She just needed to get loose.
“Why’d you stay with me if I was so stupid?” She asked to keep him talking.
“Well, Ella, that’s a good question. How else could I continue to embezzle money out of Poppy if I wasn’t dating you?” She froze at his words and looked up at his eyes. He smiled at her, his mouth turned up on one side, smirking, as if he’d just said something particularly clever.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the tens of thousands of dollars I siphoned out of your business while I was distracting you with our pathetic relationship.” Her heart hammered in her chest and her mind raced, trying to connect the dots he laid out for her. She blinked at him, her mind blank and empty. He walked over to her and bent down so his face was only a breath away from hers. “You never even noticed the money was missing. It almost became too easy.”
Her breath shuttered out of her, anger starting to take precedence over any other emotion she was feeling at the time.
“You were stealing from me? What the f*ck is wrong with you?” She screamed at him. Immediately she felt the contact of the gun hitting her against the cheekbone. The contact sent her reeling back, the sound of the gun meeting her face cracked throughout the room. She was stunned at first and then slowly she pulled herself back up to a sitting position. She shook the hair free from her face and was relieved to feel that she still held onto the knife. She looked at him with what she hoped came across as steely resolve and she resumed her efforts to cut the rope loose with the knife as she felt a trail of blood slide down her face.
“You were so stupid and trusting Ella. If you hadn’t walked in on me and that stupid bitch Tiffany, all of this would be different. You’d still be at my side, working your ass off, and happily ignorant to everything around you. I’d still be happily milking your business for all it’s worth, f*cking every chick I got ahold of, and continuing with my master plan, which you royally f*cked up by growing some balls and walking out on me.”
She wasn’t stupid enough to ask what he was talking about. She continued to try and cut through the rope on her wrists, hoping she was making progress. She would never be able to over power him without her hands. It would be useless to try and take him on with her hands still tied behind her back. She knew if she kept quiet he would continue his rant, giving her some time to get free.
“A few months before your birthday, I was getting real tired of dealing with you every day. I liked the money enough, but you weren’t doing it for me anymore. I had a buddy of mine help me take out a life insurance policy on you. It took a few weeks to get everything squared away, to gather all the information we needed on you and forge your signature. But just before we were supposed to go to the beach, it went through.” He got a far away and dreamy look in his eyes, and he began to look a little crazy to Ella. She had never seen this side of him before and almost couldn’t believe that he was the same man she had loved for so long.
“That week, at the beach, someone was going to break into this house and kill you. I was going to be lying next to you in bed and watch you bleed until you were empty,” he said with a fire burning in his eyes. He said it with such passion and strange longing that it made Ella’s stomach turn. “You were supposed to die and I was supposed to collect the five hundred thousand dollar paycheck.”
At that moment she felt the rope finally break free, It took every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep the elation from her face. She slowly unwound the rope from her wrists and turned the knife so that the handle of the blade was fixed in her hand, ready to use it to protect herself.
“But you went and f*cked everything up,” he continued. “It took a little bit of planning and strategizing, but I managed to coordinate another hit on you that night at your store. The stupid kid had lousy aim and only hit your shoulder. Imagine how lucky I thought I’d gotten when you were in a coma with a brain bleed. Maybe things were looking up for me again. I hoped your body would give up and die already, but no, you still lived, which pissed the hell out of me.” She watched him pace back and forth in front of her. She knew she couldn’t go after him, especially if he still had the gun. Moving towards him would be a death wish at this range. She had to get him to come after her. She nearly laughed at herself, and perhaps that was a sign of how much stress she was under, but it was almost funny to her that at this moment she was trying to figure out how she was going to get her royally f*cked-up ex-boyfriend to come after her with a gun.
“Then, when you woke up with amnesia and couldn’t remember a damn thing, I almost let it go. I was so close to just f*cking walking away from all of it, but then that pompous * you were dating just rubbed me the wrong way. He’s a real piece of work, Ella. I can’t believe you spread your legs so quickly for him – both times.”