My father left on a business trip on Thursday and wasn't going to return until Monday afternoon. It left me a lot of time to prepare for the lovely Sunday dinner with the Welch family without his interference. Certainly, I'd told him about my plan. He'd reacted with a chuckle and a raised thumb.“Good luck. Get the justice you deserve,” he'd told me then.My chest squeezed each time I recalled his words. Could a person who wanted me to fight for justice commit a crime as despicable as murder? I didn't want to believe that. Perhaps I was just fooling myself. Or perhaps I should have just confronted my father, told him I knew about the letter, and then demanded answers. I should have braced myself and done everything to find out the truth. I had done no such thing. Again—coward.Fortunately, I had no issues crafting a plan to get my revenge on Kenneth and his family. On the contrary, I was certain that I would enjoy every drop of its sweetness. There was only one problem: I needed to ac

“Congratulations on your success!” Callan exclaimed, raising his glass of champagne.“Thank you.” I clinked my glass with his and took a generous sip, savoring every drop.We finally went on our long-awaited second date, and I had to admit that the location Callan had chosen had everything I could have dreamed of. We were in a restaurant called Alberto's Heaven. Its owner, Alberto Dettori, was Callan's friend. The table where we were sitting was on the small patio, surrounded by plants and colorful flowers. Several dozen lanterns hanging high above our heads illuminated the space, forming a little bit of a starry night even on cloudy days. The soft tones of classical music blended with the gentle rustling sounds of leaves. The tables were placed some distance apart, granting privacy and what I needed most—peace.My poor muscles relaxed for the first time in a couple of weeks. I leaned back in my seat and let the sparkling liquid take away all my tension. Callan observed me with a soft

I had probably growled out every curse I had ever learned twice by the time I parked my car three blocks away from the club. Why did I park so far away from that damn club? The answer was simple: there was no empty parking place anywhere nearer, as if everyone living in New York suddenly decided to go for a ride and park in this area.I was dressed in clothes I had been wearing on my picnic date with Callan, which was simply the quickest outfit to put on after Tim's phone dragged me out of bed. Certainly, my light-pink dress with a bustier and flared skirt looked nothing like the outfits of those who waited in a long—extremely long—line to get inside the club… Yep. That line was yet another problem for me to face.“I'm going to kill Tim, and then I'm going to resurrect him and kill him again,” I hissed, trying to locate where the last people were standing. I went around the corner, and the end was still nowhere to be found. Air escaped me in a rush. It would take me hours to get insid

LILLYPain. Its intensity made me unable to tell where it was coming from. I could still feel his rage and hatred—Kenneth's hatred. He used his fists to imprint those feelings on my skin. I tasted that hatred as I swallowed blood—my blood. I heard it in the cracking bones of my shoulder and ribs. He said that he wanted to talk. He lied. He followed me around, waiting for the right moment to kill me. He almost did. He would have. I would have died if he hadn't been stopped.It hurt. It hurt so much, I wanted it to end. But then I heard a voice that didn't belong to Kenneth… I heard that I was safe. Darren saved me. He came for me. How did he know where to find me? How did he know that I needed to be saved? He turned out to be my guardian angel… again. I would have smiled if smiling hadn't hurt so much.I was slowly regaining consciousness… or so I thought. The pain now became dull, less overwhelming. I heard sounds and voices, but it was hard to distinguish them, so I focused on what I

I wasn't exactly sure what made me say yes to Darren's offer. Perhaps deep inside, I was begging for a change—a physical change as much as a mental one. There was also a chance that a part of my wicked brain wanted to see Darren more often—a covered-in-sweat Darren, possibly shirtless. What I hadn't realized then was that Darren wasn't going to be the one training me. He sent me to his trainer, Kaito Harada, instead. Mr. Harada turned out to be a polite gentleman in his late fifties. At our first meeting, he showed up wearing an elegant gray suit, which efficiently covered the fact that he had been honed to become a killing machine. We talked over coffee, and he warned me that the training would be hard and sometimes painful. I decided to trust him. I foolishly thought then that, after surviving Kenneth's attack, I could endure his training with ease. Well, he proved me wrong. After our first session at his gym, I could hardly move a muscle. Our second, third, and fourth sessions bro