Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
But I keep my cool. For now. I walk up the driveway with my brothers behind and yes, I’m including Reed in them again. If I already didn’t consider him my brother, I would start that now because he’s the one who’s making this happen.
Before Reed became a part of our family and owned a garage that remodels and restores vintage cars, he used to work for his father. His father is a big deal in Bardstown, a rich asshole with tons of influence and backhanded dealings. And you don’t have backhanded dealings without private investigators and all sorts of shady characters on your payroll, people who can dig all sorts of unsavory things about you. Since I wanted a permanent solution for our problems, namely our parents, I asked him to enlist someone on his father’s payroll and look into them.
Turns out, there was a lot to look into. Not only are they swimming in debt with loan sharks beating down at their doors, there’s something even more vile in their background that’s making it almost impossible to not charge into their home and tear my father limb from limb. It wouldn’t even take much, not with his pedo drunk ass.
I knock at the door or more like bang on it until it snaps open and I see her mother at the threshold, fuming. As soon as she sees it’s me and my brothers, her face twists with anger and she opens her mouth to, I’m sure, run it in a way that’ll only piss me off. So I don’t give her a chance. I push past her and enter the house.
Which isn’t much better on the inside than it was on the outside. Dirty dishes litter the floor and sit in a stack on the table. Dirty laundry is scattered everywhere including the couch where I’m assuming she was parked on because there’s a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray on the arm, with TV running in front of it. It makes me want to pick up that bowl with crusty milk in it and throw it through the screen.
This is how she lived, didn’t she? Before she got out of the hellhole. No, she pulled herself out of there. She pulled herself and her sister out. She gave Snow the best life she could all the while wanting nothing for herself. Not one thing. No, that’s not true. She wanted something. She wanted me. She wanted me to want her back and I was the jackass who never saw it. Who never understood.
Focus.
I turn around and to her growing anger, one by one, my brothers file in. They walk in further, eyeing the space like I did and come to stand slightly behind me. Even Conrad. A silent message that I’m in charge here but they’re close if I need them. Fuck, I love my brothers. I love my family and I’m going to fucking take this bitch down.
“Who said you could come into my house?” she snaps at us but mostly at me because she gets it. She got it that night when I threw her out of our house. She knows there’s something between me and her daughter. Well, after that video the whole fucking world knows but she knows whatever it is, it’s here to stay. I’m here to stay. And stand between her and her daughter. Both of them actually. Because she isn’t touching Snow either.
“You came into our home uninvited,” I remind her.
She sneers. “I came looking for my daughter.” Then, her eyes go hard and she adds, “Who’s doing pretty well for herself these days. At least, she took one advice from me and stopped her bitching about men looking at her too much.”
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t hit her. She’s a woman, first and my mother taught me better than that. Second, it would be too easy for her. Getting punched in the face and bleeding a little. I have a better plan, which is why I’m here.
“You’re leaving town,” I tell her.
“What?”
I look at her a beat. “For a very, very long time. Possibly for life. But we’ll see what the judge says.”
She looks at me with confusion before glancing back at my brothers who are collectively standing in a battle stance. Coming back to me, she goes, “What is this? Some kind of a threat? Because let me tell you I’m not—”
“Not a threat,” I say, shaking my head, keeping my eyes steady. “Just a courtesy heads up. Cops are about ten minutes away.”
“Cops for what? What—”
I lean forward then. “For the fact that you have evidence against your husband that shows he’s a fucking pedophile. But you chose not to disclose it to anyone.”
At this, Reed holds up a file with all the photos that his guy found after he went through their house yesterday. Apparently, it’s extremely easy to snoop into the house of a drunk who’s perpetually passed out. Plus, she actually works for a living these days instead of hitting up her daughter and loan sharks for money.