Chapter 100
reston checked his watch, the sleek black dial glowing faintly under the dim car lights. Silence stretched between them before he shifted his gaze to Georgia, his expression unreadable
“It’s quarter past ten,” he said, his voice low and even. “You have less than two hours left to transfer the money onto the card.”
His words landed like an iron blade between her ribs. Georgia’s breath caught, and she stared at him in horror. Realization surged through her veins, cold and sickening. He didn’t want the cash she’d scraped together, nor the check she clutched like her final lifeline. He wanted the money in that card, exactly as he had demanded from the start–a million dollars transferred without deviation.
“You can’t do this to me!” she cried, her voice raw with disbelief, bordering on hysteria. Her pulse hammered in her temples, and every beat felt like a countdown to execution.
“Yes, I can.” Preston’s lips curved slightly, though there was no warmth in his smile. A glimmer of dark amusement flickered in his eyes, as though her desperation entertained him.
“You bastard!” she screamed. Tears stung her eyes, blurring his coldly beautiful features. ‘He’s playing games with me.” she thought bitterly, rage shaking her small frame. Twisting words just to crush me deeper.”
“Let me down!” she demanded, her voice trembling with panic as she writhed in his hold. “Charlotte, drive to the bank. Take me to the bank!”
Preston’s grip tightened painfully around her waist. He pinched her chin with his calloused fingers, forcing her gaze upward until she met the flat, merciless darkness in his eyes. His face hovered inches from hers, so close she could see each fine bristle along his jawline, smell the faint spice of his cologne laced with his clean masculine scent.
“The hospital or the bank?” he asked quietly, but his voice corned the weight of a death sentence. “I’m giving you a choice, Georgia.”
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She swallowed hard, her throat burning as she forced her words out. The bank,” she said, stubbornness bracing her spine despite the tremor in her voice.
His gaze hardened further. “Do you want to die?”
“I want to go to the bank!” she shouted back, her eyes wild with a desperate finality that made his chest constrict.
His mouth flattened into a displeased line. “Even if it costs you your life?”
“Yes,” she answered softly, her tone stripped bare of fear or pleading. There was only weary indifference there, like someone too broken to flinch anymore.
Inside, she whispered to herself, “It’s not the first time I’ve risked my life. And besides, I only had a few sips of whiskey. I’l survive this too.” But despite the numbness blooming in her chest, her trembling hands reached out and clung to the lapel of his tailored suit jacket, fingers curling into the fabric as though seeking something to ground her before she fell apart entirely.
Preston stared down at her, his eyes hooded and opaque. Memories rose, unbidden and cruel: images of her as a bright- eyed girl, always hovering near him with silent hope lighting her gaze. Back then, he’d felt her happiness whenever he glanced her way, like a silent sunbeam warming his indifferent world. When had that changed? When had her eyes stopped looking at him with longing, and started looking past him as if he were nothing?
His chest ached with something he refused to name. Was she really that desperate to escape him, that she would die just for a chance to slip from his grasp?
He tilted his head slightly, studying the tear–streaked determination carved into her pale face. “Are you really so eager to go to the bank?” he asked again, quieter this time, the question directed less at her than at himsell.
In the silent corners of his mind, Preston called out to Luca. “Is she truly so desperate to leave me?”
Luca didn’t answer. The wolf retreated deeper into silence, its sorrow folding in on itself like a dying flame. Preston felt the emptiness echo within him, and rage rose to fill it.
< Chapter 100
‘No,‘ he thought violently. ‘No way. Only I get to decide when this ends. Only I can release her.”
He yanked the check from her trembling hand and waved it lightly before her eyes. “Even if I take you to the bank,” he said, his voice laced with cold mockery, “it’s too late. They’re already closed.”
Her mouth fell open, her pupils constricting in horror as she stared at the check dangling between his fingers. Her thoughts screamed in silent anguish. This check all that suffering, the degradation, the humiliation was for nothing? Just a worthless piece of paper?
She lifted her face to him, tears spilling down her cheeks as her voice cracked with a pleading despair. “Mr. Hill, please. I’m begging you. A million dollars is a million dollars. Does it really matter where it sits for a few hours? Tomorrow tomorrow I’ll transfer it onto the card. Please. Just say it. Let me be free. Let me leave this place… please…
Preston’s eyes remained frigid, empty of any mercy. He flipped the check once between his fingers before letting it fall like a slap across her cheek. The paper drifted down her chest and landed limply in her lap.
“Isn’t freedom the only thing you still have?” he sneered softly.
Inside him, a storm of rage and fear roared with no outlet. “She wants to leave me. She dares to want to leave me. Why does that thought drive me insane? I don’t know why… but I won’t allow it. I won’t let her slip away from me. Not now, Not
ever.”
Her shoulders crumpled under the weight of his gaze, her skin paling to chalk.
“Remember this, Georgia. His voice was as sharp and cold as the night wind slicing through the car. “Only I can grant you freedom. You will never have it without my permission.”
Charlotte gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. Preston’s words reverberated in her chest like an earthquake. “Why?” she thought, grief and fury choking her throat. ‘Why does he hate her so much that he needs to destroy her piece by piece?
“Charlotte,” Preston commanded without looking at her, “drive faster,”
He reached out through the mind link, his tone clipped and ruthless. “Simon. I’m on my way to the hospital. She had
whiskey.”
Simon’s voice snapped back instantly. “Who?”
“Georgia.”
“WHAT?” Simon’s mental voice roared so loudly Charlotte flinched in her seat. “Why the hell would she do that? Does she
have a death wish?”
“I’m taking her there now. Meet me.” Preston severed the connection before Simon could respond.
In the back seat, Georgia sat silent, staring at the check in her lap. Her vision blurred with tears that no longer fell. Slowly. mechanically, she picked it up, her fingers tracing the ink lines that symbolized every sacrifice she had made her body, her dignity, her dreams.
A bitter laugh bubbled out of her lips. ‘Preston, she thought with scalding fury and sorrow, ‘do you have any idea what I went through for this scrap of paper?”
“Charlotte,” she said suddenly, her voice eerily calm. “Open the window.”
Charlotte hesitated, her eyes darting to Preston in the rearview mirror for silent permission. He flicked his gaze at Georgia, then gave a short nod. Charlotte pressed the button, and the rear window whirred open, letting in the cool night air.
Georgia inhaled deeply. She held the check in both hands, feeling its crisp edges cut into her fingertips. Without blinking. the tore it into pieces. Tiny fragments fluttered from her trembling hands like broken feathers. She leaned out the window and released them into the darkness, watching silently as the wind swallowed them whole.
Charlotte gasped, eyes wide. “Georgia are you insane? Do you even remember what it took for you to earn that? How can you just throw it away like that?!”
Georgia turned her head slowly. Her face was ghostly pale, eyes shadowed and lifeless. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered
coldly
Charlotte fell silent, throat burning with unshed tears. Watching her, Charlotte felt a deep, aching grief twist through her chest. “Thate this,‘ she thought, her vision blurring Thate Preston I hate this world that forces her to shred her own hope just to survive another day‘
But when she looked into Georgia’s dead, caliri eyes, admiration rose bitter and sharp in her chest. People call her weak But no Georgia Cooper is stronger than any of them the endures. She carries pain that would destroy anyone else, and
till she tines to meet the dawn‘
