Read Online Bullet to the Heart by Lea Griffith - Free Book Online Page A

world.
    Her skin felt stretched across her bones and she was so damn cold she knew she was feverish. The floor above her creaked and vibrations translated into the sound of footsteps headed her way. The door squeaked and she opened her eyes though she trained her gaze on the ceiling.
    Rand Beckett walked toward her, settled down on his haunches, hands relaxed as his gaze looked her up and down.
    “You’re awake,” he said needlessly.
    She didn’t answer. It hadn’t been a question.
    He chuckled, and the sound made her stomach jerk. “Who shot you?”
    “You were there, surely you remember,” she managed to get out from her dry throat.
    Silence reigned. She’d surprised him.
    “No way you knew I stayed,” he bit out.
    Yep. He was surprised. She would’ve shrugged had she not been tethered. She had her pride. She kept quiet.
    “Why did you come then? Why not just finish what you started?” Curiosity and something else threaded through his tone.
    She waited long moments trying to determine if his question necessitated a response. She looked at him, gave him the full force of her gaze, and when their eyes met something rearranged in her chest. She panicked for a split second, the feeling so foreign, so very alien, that she had zero capacity to deal with it.
    She wanted to tell him, this man she’d been sent to kill but hadn’t. She swallowed hard. “If my luck holds, it will not be finished until they are all dead.” Her voice trailed off, a mere croaking gasp at the end of her sentence.
    Surprise flickered in his gaze, pupils going wide for a split instance as his nostrils flared. He looked away, his gaze moving down to her chest before flying back up to meet hers. Red tinged his cheeks, and his indigo colored orbs flinched. Was the sight of her so distasteful then?
    She pulled back her thoughts. It couldn’t matter. What he thought of her absolutely could not matter.
    A hard mask settled over his handsome features. He sneered. “And who is ‘they’?’
    “The same ones who had Lily and Anna killed.”
    He got in her face, breath hot, but a benediction on her freezing flesh. His fury flew and she let it fan the flames of her own desire to kill them. What he’d suffered was the same as many, yet different, because it was his. When his pain had become untenable for her, she didn’t know.
    When had his grief burrowed into her soul to fester with all the other myriad wounds of her life?
    He grabbed her head, and his finger tightened on her scalp, pulling hair. Her eyes watered—a physical reaction only because that tiny hurt was nothing; too insignificant in comparison to the others.
    “You don’t speak their names,” he whispered as he lifted her head to him, tilted her neck at an odd angle, placed his thumbs over her trachea. The threat was implicit. “You don’t ever speak their names again. How fucking dare you?”
    “They deserve that much. They are a mark on my soul,” she responded and his eyes widened.
    His pain had a smell, a flavor and it cut into her, taking her breath and leaving devastation in its wake.
    “You?” Guttural, full of everything that was loss, his voice broke.
    Remi steeled herself against the question. She closed her eyes, unable to bear the naked agony in his.
    He took her silence as she wanted him to. “You fucking bitch!” he spit out, and she felt the prick of a needle in her thigh.
    He dropped her head as if she disgusted him. She probably did, and that, too, was as it should be. Her skull thunked against the hard floor and stars flashed. He stood over her, the danger emanating from him in great waves of aggression. Would he kill her?
    She deserved it.
    “ Bayu-bey , Vse lydui dolzhny spat´ po nocham ,” she sang softly to herself. All people should sleep at night.
    The darkness was there and welcoming as it swirled around her, lovingly brushing over her mind. Then, blessedly, it rushed forward and carried her to its bosom.

    “It was her?” Ken asked from the