Page 26 of Wicked Duty
Callum stands in front of my door, still as a marble column, his features settling into his usual impassive expression. As if he can’t be bothered to give a damn about potentially destroying my biggest chance at a career.
Meanwhile, I’m all but foaming at the mouth.
He’s not going to concede, and neither am I. Iwillbe at that audition. If him holding onto my phone for the day will put a stop to this entire bullshit confrontation, so be it.
Incensed, I chuck my phone at him.
I regret my action as soon as the device leaves my fingers.
He snatches it mid-air with the speed and grace of a professional athlete, nails me with a wordless stare, and stalks back toward the kitchen.
My voice rises with concern as I scurry after him. “Wait! What are you doing?”
He stops by the stove and hovers his hand over the pot. I recognize his intentions a moment too late. By the time I shriek, “No!” he’s uncurled his fingers, and all I can do is watch as my phone plops into boiling egg water.
Horror roots me to the floor as my lifeline sizzles and dies, the empty black screen barely visible beneath a blanket of rising steam.
Callum glances back at me, stone-faced. “Oops.”
A nuclear bomb of fear and rage builds inside me. With a single careless act, he cut me off from my sister, my social media followers, and any semblance of independence I’ve established over the last few months.
Red seeps into my vision. “You sheep-fucking bastard!”
Then I launch myself at his smug face.
Chapter 9
Callum
I’ve been called a lot of things in my day, butsheep-fucking bastardis a new one.
Lucy flies at me like a rabid wildcat. She crosses the length of her apartment in quick, agile strides, pulling her right arm back to take a swing.
When she launches her fist at my head, I snatch her wrist before it connects. The power behind her limb ricochets through my body.
Little spitfire. If she’d landed that blow, my cheek would be throbbing.
Pissed that I stopped her, she swings for me again. She claws her nails down the side of my neck, tearing the skin as anguished whimpers gutter in her throat.
I release her, and she rears back. The next thing I know, this crazy woman’s grabbing my pot of boiling water, murder in her deep brown eyes.
Surely, she wouldn’t?—
I leap sideways as Lucy sweeps the pot off the stove. The thing flies far enough in the tiny kitchen to slam into a cabinet with a rattlingbangbefore crashing to the floor. Scalding watersplashes everywhere as the pot tips over, ejecting eggs and one dead smartphone onto the scarred wood.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly while she gapes at the carnage as if she wants to try to salvage her phone.
Bad idea. She’ll burn herself.
Before Lucy can brainstorm any more dumb or violent ideas, I catapult toward her. To restrain her, I grab her arms and cross them in an X over her chest so she can’t move or twist away.
“Let me go!” The high-pitched demand conveys her disdain.
“Not until you calm down, wildcat.”
She continues to fight and shriek like a demon. I pin her against the decrepit refrigerator until our bodies are flush, shackling her wrists overhead with one of my hands.
Basically, a repeat of this morning.
