Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
“Hawke has been teaching you how to shoot,” Anya says.
I roll my eyes. “He told you?”
“No, of course, he didn’t. I worked that one out all on my own. He’s been miserable since Ford made his relationship with Billie official, so I’ve been keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid while he’s bored.”
“Does Mom know?” I ask my father. I don’t think me using a gun is worse than dating a detective. She specifically warned me off, but it feels like a mountain of crimes is piling up against me.
He shakes his head. “It’s best she doesn’t know about this. To protect her.”
My hands are clammy, and I wipe them on my overalls. What is he talking about? What’s going on that I’m not aware of? And why is it taking so long to get to the point? Is it the glass statues? Do they know about them?
“Are you… mad at me?” I ask my father.
“No,” he replies at the same time Anya says, “Disappointed.”
I wipe my hands again. I fucking hate how much weight that word holds. They’re disappointed in me. I’m successful. I tried to be the perfect daughter. I tried to push away all of these murky and ugly impulses. Yes, I may be fucking a detective, but I’m not in a relationship with him. I don’t tell him any secrets. Granted, he knows how I like to be fucked, and that’s probably a secret in and of itself. But disappointed? It hurts more than it should because, for the last four years, I feel like I’ve been fighting an upstream battle, and now I’m drowning.
“Can one of you tell me why you’re disappointed?” I snap. I’m sick of this game, sick of them trying to pry without giving too much away in case I confess to something more.
My aunty reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone. She swipes at the screen a few times as she walks over to me, her heels clicking on the floor, and then she turns her phone around and shows it to me. It’s a man with a green mohawk; he’s dead. I try my best not to give her any reaction because I know she’s watching my every move. My clever aunty is always assessing everything.
“It’s a dead man,” I say and meet her eyes.
“I always wondered about you. I assumed you’d end up more like your mother than your father. But it seems, for the first time in my life, I’m actually wrong. And you’re a combination of deadly as well as beautiful.”
“Hope,” Dad says nothing but my name, and everything feels like it’s going in slow motion. Fuck. They know.
They know.
They know.
They see me! The dark little voice in my head speaks with glee.
“You never wanted to share this with me?” he says.
Everything stops. My heart. The airflow in the room. My existence. Everything I’ve built on lies comes crashing around me, and a twisted sense of relief and freedom comes with it. My shackles feel like they’ve finally been removed.
Somehow, someway, they’ve discovered my dirtiest little secret. It could’ve been someone worse that caught me, I guess. I turn and walk to my closet, which houses a safe. I bend down and enter the code to unlock it. I grab out a knife, then I turn around and show it to them.
My father once owned this knife, and I stole it from his collection when I was thirteen but never used it until I was sixteen.
“Amazing, really,” my aunty says, clapping her hands excitedly.
“You should have told me,” Dad says in warning.
“I didn’t know I’d like it so much,” I confess. I’ve kept this secret for so long that when I finally chose to act on it, I wasn’t sure if I could ever share it with anyone close to me. Yes, my family are killers. But they usually kill because someone is threatening the family or their businesses. I kill for the absolute adrenaline rush it gives me. I like it. I like it about as much as I like art. Or when Braxton fucks me. The way he fucked me the other night is probably top-tier with how it feels when I take a life.
It might’ve started with a knife, but I’ve experimented since then, exploring all the ways a soul can leave the shell of a body.
“It’s perfect, really. No one would suspect you.” Anya takes the knife from me. “But this?” She waves the knife in front of me. “Holding on to things that could easily get you caught when you have a detective in your space is very fucking stupid. I want you to think better. I want you to never keep anything from any kill. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I say quietly, still in shock that they know my secret.