Free Delivered (The Monster Trilogy Book 3) by Marissa Farrar Page B

to be in the same space as Jess right now for suggesting such a thing. Though she wanted to help the other woman—felt responsible for her, for some reason—she couldn’t allow Jess to bring her down, too. Already she could feel the depression clawing at her limbs, and weighing on her heart, as though it were a living being that literally wanted to drag her down to the floor.
    She pulled the door partially shut behind her and took the bowl to sit on the side of the bed. The food was tasteless, but warm and filling. She ate quickly, and in less than a minute she was scraping the bowl clean.
    Exhaustion swept over her, weighing down her eyelids. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night, and she needed to rest.
    Placing the bowl beside the bed, she curled up on her side, her hand beneath her head.
    Within seconds, she was asleep.

 
     
    Monster (Present Day)
     
     
     
     
     
    Someone was shaking his shoulder.
    After the shaking, the pain made itself known, throbbing through Monster’s collarbone and down his arm. He forced himself awake and tried to focus, though the memories that had been resurfacing of his childhood clung to his thoughts. Why had his father been so insistent Monster should have been taking care of their ‘property’ and treating it with respect? He’d never been a man to give a shit about respecting women before, or even people in general. Had his father’s reaction been more to do with Sophia’s mother than anything else? Sophia had said she’d believed her mother to be in love with his father, so was it possible his father had thought of Sophia as a daughter—a beautiful child to replace the hideous one he had locked away in a bedroom? Was that why he’d sent Sophia and her mother to belong to the Gonzalez family instead of just casting them out, or having them killed? After all, he knew his father was perfectly capable of killing women he didn’t want to keep around. Wasn’t that exactly what he’d done to Monster’s mother?
    Sophia’s voice, hissing at him, dragged his attention from the past. “I can hear movement from upstairs.”
    Monster grunted and sat up. “What?”
    “I think our friend upstairs is awake. What are we going to do?”
    He shook off the last residual cobwebs of sleep and rubbed his hand across his face. “How long have I been out?”
    “About eight hours. Your shoulder is looking better.”
    He nodded. He felt better, though guilt filled him at the idea he’d been sleeping all this time when Lily had been in danger. If something awful had happened to her in that time, he’d never forgive himself. “Are you sure you know where Rodriguez will be keeping Lily?” he asked Sophia.
    She nodded. “It’s always the same place for his new pets, as he likes to call them. It’s a place out in the desert where he knows they can’t escape.”
    A creak of floorboards came from upstairs, and they both glanced toward the ceiling.
    Monster got to his feet, testing out his limbs. He needed to know he was stable enough to be able to fight if needed.
    “Here,” Sophia said, pushing a glass of water toward him. The color was cloudy, and he frowned in suspicion. “It’s just a combination of salts and vitamins, to help rehydrate you, and some pain medication for your shoulder. It will help, I promise.”
    He didn’t have much choice but to trust her. After all, she could have killed him, or simply let him die, any time over the past day, but she hadn’t. And part of him still felt like he knew this woman. Even though years had passed since they’d last spoken, she didn’t feel like a stranger to him.
    Monster drank the concoction down in a couple of large gulps, and set down the glass on the counter.
    More movement came from upstairs.
    Sophia snatched up a set of keys, which he assumed Rodriguez’s man must have left, and then tugged a light-weight, zip-up jacket from the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Here, put this on. We need to go!”
    The floorboard