Thousands (Dollar, #4)

by Pepper Winters

“So tell your little lap dog there to do his worst. He won’t break me. No one can break me even though plenty have tried.”

I think you’re mistaking me for someone who hasn’t lived with evil. Who doesn’t know true darkness. And someone who isn’t afraid of a little greyness inside you when you’re trying to convince me it’s the end of the world.” She leaned toward me, baring white teeth. “Newsflash, it’s not.”

All I cared about was him. The man I knew right here, right now. The man who could have nothing and no one and I would still love because I recognised his soul as one that I valued and respected.

I’d learned the darkest facets of myself and the lowest of lows. I knew what sort of human I was when faced with the purest of poison, and I knew how much I fought to survive. Not many people knew the answers to those lessons—through luck of an easy life or lack of broadening horizons—but I knew. I understood who I was in the worst of times. I only needed to know who I was in the best of them.

She was stronger than I’d ever seen and more broken than I could stand.

I’d never seen someone so beautiful or been so broken by it.