Private Princess

Chapter 119

Jack Morgan didn’t see Flex open fire, but he heard him well enough, the pistol’s reports crashing around the small space of the elevator as the bullets went zipping toward Morgan.

Who survived every shot.

Knowing that Flex would likely cut him down as soon as the doors opened, Morgan had stacked the elevator with tables behind which he could take cover. The five-star hotel had bought the best timber, and now Flex’s 9mm bullets flattened and died against it, protecting Morgan from the storm of steel that Flex unleashed his way. When he heard the click of an empty magazine, Morgan sprang up and punched out the revolver, ready to fire.

He saw Flex, red-faced and angry, the man he longed to kill, but he saw too the young woman that Flex’s left hand had gripped by the hair, pulling her close to him and using her as a shield.

Eyes went wide. Both men knew that, without using both hands, Flex would not be able to execute a quick enough reload to kill Morgan before Morgan killed him. Both men also knew that until Flex let go of the girl, Morgan would not fire.

It was a stand-off.

Flex began to back away. Morgan tracked him with the pistol, but he knew he could not fire and risk hitting the weeping girl. The revolver’s short barrel was not made for accuracy, and so Morgan would have to kill Flex up close.

“He’s out of ammo,” Morgan told the girl. “Be calm.”

“Don’t try and run,” Flex whispered venomously into her ear. “I can drop this pistol and draw my knife long before you get free. I’ll cut your throat like it was butter.”

“Why don’t you use that knife on me instead of a defenseless woman?” Morgan tried, as Flex stepped back toward the maintenance doorway that would lead them to the final flight of stairs, and the building’s thousand-foot peak.

“You know what I regret? That I didn’t rape that bitch of yours. That I didn’t smash her before blowing her brains out.”

Morgan needed every piece of his concentration to force down the black rage that built inside of his chest and threatened to consume him.

“I should have let the other lads have turns too,” Flex goaded, backing through the doorway. “Don’t follow me.”

“Fuck you, Flex. I’m the one with the loaded gun here.”

“What was your favorite part of her?” Flex asked, as Morgan followed him into the bare utility of the maintenance stairwell. “The tits? Her face? I didn’t see much of them, but I did see her brains, Jack. There was a lot of them. Made a hell of a mess on the floor, they did.”

Morgan willed his mind to shut out the words, but the cloud of rage was rising, trying to push him into recklessness.

“Your hands are shaking,” Flex laughed, seeing the slightest of trembles in Morgan’s aim. “You should be thanking me. You’d have got tired of her and chinned her off soon enough anyway. At least this way no one else gets inside her. Well, unless the guys at the morgue are a little—”

“You shut your goddamn mouth,” Morgan hissed, the veneer of his cool cracking, and revealing lava beneath.

“Or what, Jack? You goin’ to get this girl killed too, just like you did Jane?”

Flex was at the top of the staircase.

“Open the door,” he told the girl, who squirmed awkwardly to obey. Flex kept her body between himself and Morgan. The girl’s own frame wasn’t enough to cover the entirety of his muscular bulk, but it was enough for Morgan.

“Let’s just do this, you and me,” Morgan tried again.

Flex spat at him instead.

Then he backed out onto the top of Britain’s tallest building.