Free Gone Black by Linda Ladd

that, can you? You will stoop to anything that will get you what you want. You have proved that many times, no?”
    Black only stared at her. Then she squatted down in front of him and got up close to his face, her dark eyes intense, almost glittering under the ceiling lights. She continued to chat, as if they were friends out having a drink in a neighborhood bar. “Oh, dear, your eye is all swollen up now, getting black and soon you won’t be able to see out of it. I suspect that you have one very terrible headache, too, no? Perhaps even a broken nose. And all that blood on your nice clean white shirt. Poor Nick. My sap is very heavy, is it not? You should not have fought us so hard, and we would not have hurt you at all. We didn’t want to hurt you, you see. Not really. Not then. Our orders were not to hurt you, not a hair on your handsome head. But alas, you left us no choice.”
    â€œWhere’s your daddy, Jaxy? He sending a girl to do his dirty work?”
    â€œOh, he’s watching, don’t you worry about that.”
    â€œWhy am I here?”
    She stood up and smiled, her glossy red lips glistening under the blinding light. “Why, we want you to suffer, of course. We want you to suffer as no other human being on earth has ever suffered before. And forever, I might add. Until we watch you draw your very last breath on this earth. And that moment is many years away. Many long, torturous years ahead.”
    She stood up and poked the screen a couple of times on his cell phone. Then she smiled again and turned the screen toward him. He saw that it was on FaceTime, and she was calling Claire’s number. He would be able to see Claire when she answered, and she would be able to see him. The phone kept ringing without anyone answering. Were they really going to let him talk to Claire? Why would they do that? After going to all the trouble to put out the false news about his death? Or would they hang up before he could say anything? He wondered if the phone had been rigged with electricity to shock him when they put it up to his ear. Like that poor boy’s shock collar. That would not surprise him. They had torture down to an art. They were known for it. Psychopaths, one and all.
    He waited. Jaxy waited. She smiled down at him the entire time, while the phone continued to ring.

Chapter Two
    Claire still huddled in the corner of her bedroom, her wedding gown bunched up all around her knees, the soft silk fabric cold from the air conditioning. Oh, God, the taped music was playing “Unchained Melody” again. Damn it! Why didn’t they just turn it off? She could hear it but it was very low. Black had said the words of that song to her on their last day in Tahiti, and she had promised him she wouldn’t back out of the wedding. And now he was gone and everything was over. Her life was over.
    She should’ve known this would happen. Everybody that she had ever loved had been taken away from her, all her life it had happened, one person after another, her loved ones had been killed or murdered or died horrible deaths and usually because of her. Dead and gone, here one minute, gone the next. And now Black was dead, too. She shouldn’t ever have let herself fall in love with him. She knew it when she first met him and he pursued her. She had fought very hard at first to keep him at bay. It had been a mistake from the very beginning. She’d told him that, told him that terrible things happened to people who loved her. He should have run in the opposite direction, but he wouldn’t listen. And now it had happened again. Anger began to rise up deep inside her breast, rising and rising, until it was hard and brutal and pure pain.
    Furious in her grief, she scrambled to her feet, kicking the stupid silk skirts and petticoats out of her way, ready to scream and rant, and make the music go away. She ripped off her wedding dress, struggling with all the tiny buttons and lace