Page 22 of Mayhem and Minnie

My heart pounds in my chest.

Tell me, Minnie. I need to know.

“I stabbed him.” She pauses. Glancing up, she watches me closely to monitor my reaction. “Ten times,” she adds in a low voice when she sees I’m not disgusted by it. Oh, if only she knew.

“Ten?” I repeat huskily.

My heart is about to fucking explode.

“Only ten?”

Her eyes widen in shock. And before she can help herself, she lets out the truth, “Twenty-seven times.”

A smile spreads across my face.

“And he still lived after that?” I ask, surprised.

She purses her lips.

Her hands reach for the hot cup of tea and she brings it closer to her body, blowing in the steam. My coffee is there, somewhere on the table. But I don’t have time to think about it. Not when my sole focus is this little slip of a woman with the courage of an Amazonian.

More. I need to know more.

She lifts the cup to her lips, but she doesn’t drink. She merely uses it as a cover for what I note to be the twitching of her lips.

“I didn’t want him to die,” she murmurs. “Now he will remember me for the rest of his life.”

God! Have I perchance gone to heaven and met an angel?

I lean closer to her, the pounding of my heart becoming an echo in my ears.

“Then you don’t regret it, do you?”

She takes a sip. How, I don’t know, since the liquid is scorching hot—I can tell by the amount of steam coming off it. But she makes no note of it, her features as serene as before.

“Do you?” she asks, her lips curving into a full smile.

I frown.

What?

4

“What did you just say?” I ask sharply.

She wets her lips. “Would you? Regret it?”

I narrow my eyes at her.

“No. I would not,” I answer slowly.

“I don’t either. He was a bad man.” She shrugs. “Bad things should happen to bad men.”

The tension exits my body and I lean back, chuckling.

“I can’t argue with you there.”

She gives me another one of those smiles that illuminate her entire face, turning her into…something else.

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