Page 105 of A Girl and HER Prince
Now he stared into the screen with a hard expression. “Still here? Admit it—you’re just as bloodthirsty as the rest of us… you only hide behind your screens and keyboards as cowards. It gives you the façade of control in a world you will never conquer. You can’t even manage yourselves. How about you show some initiative and get out of your parents’ basements?”
Livvy rolled her eyes. Deedee’s fans were mostly young professionals, but whatever.
Turner pushed the phone back at her, still going off on how he’d been wronged. “What do you know of what is really out there?Nai,nai, but I’m just a victim of an oppressed society; you would fix me by deprogramming me—get that man some therapy! Is that how you say? Ha.Den xéreis típota! You know nothing of who we are, because you’ve never come up against an unstoppable, unbreakable force like we’ve become.”
Livvy gulped. What happened to that “ray of sunshine after a heavy storm” talk?
The hatred in Turner’s eyes gave her a little bit of an idea of what evil lurked outside the protected fringes of society; the civil rules she’d lived by were the equivalent of throwing her fingers into a cross in front of her to keep her safe from the boogeymen. He disregarded her boundaries easily.
His fingers found her hair. He twirled a strand around his finger. “I can’t wait to show you exactly how little power you have.Weare the rulers, not you.”
She took a deep breath. Throwing his words back into his face in this cramped area would only make him try to prove how ruthless he was, and she’d already had a taste of his brutality. She just hadn’t guessed the monster behind the mask.
The cable car jerked to a halt when it reached the mountain’s zenith. Turner reached for his radio. “She’s here.”
“Hurry!” Atreus Mnon ordered him. “The Greek officials are landing. We need to get outnow. Take her to the helicopter. I want my collateral against Venice.”
Fear flooded her. What happened now depended on how much fight she gave. Livvy braced for the struggle of her life.
Before Turner could get to the door, the compartment unexpectedly trembled violently like a spider clinging to a cobweb in a sudden gust of wind.
Something strange had just happened outside.
Turner swiped up the rock he’d deserted earlier, his other hand locking over her wrist. He knocked his elbow into the button to open the door. Nothing happened.
They’d lost electricity—someone must’ve tried to stop their ascent.
He shoved the door open with his shoulder. She held back. He glared at her and hooked her neck with the crook of his bulky arm, bringing her with him. “No funny business,” he shouted outside. “You come any closer, and I break her head.”
Some ruler of the universe—he’s a caveman.
He hauled her out of the cable car. The courtyard was virtually empty. No one was out here. “Show yourselves!” he cried. “Den boreíte na krýpsete! I can hear the rapid beats of your scared rabbit hearts. Come up against the wolf and I will crush your bones to dust.” The eerie silence swallowed up his voice. He was shouting at ghosts… and Deedee.
A flash of her red hair streamed behind a pillar.
Livvy hid her gasp, feeling the muscles of Turner’s torso go rigid. “I see your little redheaded shadow,” he whispered into Livvy’s ear. “What shall I do to her? I’ll drag both of Venice’s little lady friends to him and let him choose which to save.”
The cruelty of the suggestion made her grit her teeth with anger. She screamed when Turner whipped around the pillar and crushed the rock against an empty pillar.
Deedee wasn’t there. Livvy’s back had gone so stiff it felt like it would spasm and go out.
Turner let out a roar. “You think to hide from me?” He stalked through the garden, past statues of Aphrodite, Zeus, Hades. “Tell your people what we do to those who come up against us. Tell them of our power.”
The sadistic attention seeker was actually enjoying this—Livvy might’ve kept the camera on to show her rescuers exactly where she was being taken, but Turner wasn’t getting a second more of his fifteen minutes of fame.
Shouting out her resistance, Livvy chucked the phone as far as she could throw it. The plastic covering clattered next to a shed with a cupid fountain.
Roaring angrily, Turner tossed her over his shoulder.
Her stomach knocked against his thick shoulder. “What are you doing?”
He rushed for the phone. He’d turned into a teenage girl with her first WooWoo tech original! Livvy hated every bit of her role in this, but this distraction was also keeping Turner from taking her to the helicopter. Could she play her part without getting Deedee hurt?
She punched at him. “Let me down, you coward!”
And he did! He dropped her next to her friend’s phone. Her hip slammed the fountain on her way down. Shouting, she scrambled away from him until her back hit against the stone foundation.
“You cannot silence our message!” She flinched as he leaned over to grasp the pink glittery phone.
