Page 150 of Renard's Deliverance

This isn’t going to be your life.

You’ve had darkness. You’ve had dirty. You’ve had wrong.

And now you have beauty. You have kindness and hope and the sexiest fucking man on the planet.

Fight, Opal.

“You wantto know why you’re here? Why I’m doing this?” Barney screamed as he paced back and forth. “Because you have humiliated me day after day.”

Opal sat up to find him glaring down at his aunt who cowered behind her. Opal didn’t know how old the Grackle was, but she was certain that she could take more pain than the older woman.

“Bossing me around, telling me what to do, then picking on everything I did. I was never good enough, was I, Auntie!” he screamed.

Opal figured the fact that he wasn’t worried about screaming wasn’t a good sign.

Because it meant he knew that no one was close enough to hear him.

“But now who is in charge, Auntie? Me! Now you do what the fuck I say.” His face was growing red, almost purple.

Damn, was it too much to ask for that he have a heart attack and die?

Yep, seemed it was since he was still breathing.

“Why do this?” she asked. “Why not just disappear out of her life? Why come back every weekend?”

“I was going to stop. Tried to do it, but she kept calling and calling until I came. I had it down to once a month. But then you moved in across the road. And I just knew it was a sign. The universe was finally giving me what I deserved. You were meant to be mine, Opal. The perfect little slut for me.”

“What the fuck?” she snapped. “I’m not a slut!”

“Yes, you are. Crass and classless is what my aunt would call you. As I jerked off in the basement while staring at you as you slept, I knew that you were going to be my perfect little whore. So I kept coming back because of you.”

Oh.

Fucking awesome.

29

Renard was losing his mind.

He was sitting in a meeting room in the police department. Everyone seemed busy, rushing around, doing what they could to find a trace of his girl.

And he was sitting here.

Doing. Fucking. Nothing.

Screw this.

He stood. He was going to find her.

“Where are you going?” Saxon turned to stare at him. He hadn’t left his side since Duncan delivered the news to him that Opal was missing.

That was ten hours ago. It was now seven in the morning. And they had next to nothing. Christ.

“I’m going to look for her.”

“We have no idea where she is. We can’t just go looking for her,” Saxon told him.

“I can drive around. I might find something.” What, he had no idea. But there had been nothing so far. And he couldn’t take it anymore.

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