Page 113 of Deadly Secrets

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One moment, Professor James Reed was shutting the cabin door, and the next, Maggie jumped into his arms, her legs encircling his waist. I might as well have been invisible because she kissed him like he was the only air her lungs needed, and he pressed her body against his while he moaned in her mouth and held her by her ass.

I was going to be sick.

“I missed you, love,” Maggie said.

“I missed you too, Lizzie.”

Wait a minute. Lizzie?

“Who’s Lizzie?” I blurted.

Maggie released herself from James’s embrace and placed her feet on the ground.

“Apologies. I haven’t introduced myself properly. Elizabeth Price, but my friends call me Lizzie. You can call me Elizabeth.”

“So your dad was Bob Price?”

“Bingo,” she responded with a hint of amusement. For her, this was a fucking game. Lizzie whispered something to James before she slipped into one of the rooms. I used the opportunity to convince James to free me.

“James, please. Let me go. You don’t have to do this,” I pleaded.

James crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared at me, with his upper lip curled, as if I was the most disgusting being in the entire world.

“Please, James. She’s going to kill me.”

“Not yet. I want to have some fun first,” Lizzie remarked as she entered the living room again. She held a small black leather pouch, which she placed on top of the kitchen counter. James blocked my line of view, so I couldn’t see what she was doing, but the moment she turned around, my eyes focused on the scalpel she held in her right hand. “Babe, do you think our Princess’s blood is blue or red?”

“HELP!” I cried out, feeling my lungs nearing exhaustion and my already sore throat growing worse. I wouldn’t die like this. I refused to. Ander, Zayn, and Noah would come looking for me, but how could I expect them to find me when I had no idea of our whereabouts?

“Cry and scream all you want; nobody’s going to hear your pleas, bitch.”

With the scalpel in her hand, she circled me.

“Mmm. Where should I begin? Any suggestions, love?”

“It’s your choice, baby. I’m sure you’ve already thought about a thousand ways of making it hurt.” James leaned on the wall next to the cabin entrance. He had his arms crossed and checked his watch, looking bored.

“Well, I think I’d like to mark her beautiful skin first. Leave a present if someone ever retrieves her decomposing body from the lake.”

I gulped.

“Please, Maggie…I mean Lizzie. Don’t do this. You’re my friend.”

“For you, I’m Elizabeth. You haven’t earned the right to call me Lizzie. And no. Maybe you’re fucking stupid. Maybe I hit you too hard. But let me make one thing clear: if you haven’t got the memo yet, we were never friends. I just stayed close enough and gained your trust with only one purpose. Finding an opportunity to make you suffer.”

Tears clouded my eyes.

“But why? I haven’t done anything to you.”

“Your father did, and I paid the consequences. You’ll pay for all those months of abuse, and I’ll enjoy every second of it. You were supposed to be on that plane, but I miscalculated your relationship with your family. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

“They’ll eventually find out it was you who killed them!” I yelled.

Lizzie started to laugh until it turned hysterical.

“That’s the beauty of our plan. I’ve left breadcrumbs so that your death leads back to William. He’ll go to jail for your parents’ murder, and I’ll make sure that when your body is found, it traces back to him, too.”

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