Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
And Rocky…
He’s the only one with murder all over his backstory. While I might never know my birth name, his is Brayden Wolfe.
The Wolfes.
They’re one of only three founding families of Victoria, and Varrick Wolfe conned his way into the Wolfe family, married into their dynasty, and decimated it from the inside out.
It’s hard to think about Rocky’s origins without picturing my mom and dad in their early twenties—younger than I am now—caught up in a con gone horribly wrong with Varrick. They trusted him until his plans took a sinister turn, so they tailed him one dark night in Connecticut. They saw him run the Wolfes off a bridge, the car plunging into the watery depths of the river below. Instead of driving away and dusting off their hands and consciences of this cruel malice, my parents pulled their car over.
My dad jumped off the bridge and into the water, attempting to rescue anyone he could from drowning in that river.
Out of a family of five. He could only save the one-year-old in the backseat.
The one-year-old they would raise as theirs.
The one-year-old that would come to be a vital organ in my life.
My big brother.
I know I shouldn’t offer my love to two people who were complicit in the demise of Rocky’s birth family, but it’s difficult to hate them. My mom didn’t have to stop the car. My dad didn’t have to jump into the river. And they chose to keep Rocky in fear that Varrick would finish off the Wolfe line.
It was to protect him.
In a way, I think most of their decisions—good and bad—have been to protect all of us.
As someone who constantly weighs pros and cons, who thinks about every variable in a job, I can understand when there are no perfect choices. Only ones that come with consequences we can live with, and they chose to live with these horrible lies.
My only wish is that they told us the truth sooner. Trusted us when we became adults and especially when we questioned their stories, but I think this was something they were willing to take to their graves until they realized it was going to cost their relationship with us completely.
Rocky will say they didn’t want to lose their pawns in the game of grifting.
But I’m not so cynical.
I truly believe my parents love me, and I’m not going to torture myself anymore by doubting that. I’ve seen how it’s chipped away at Rocky over the years. That won’t be me. Especially not now. The last thing I need in my life is stress.
Do not lose this baby.
FOUR
Phoebe
Fuck the bus. Fuck Rhode Island (sorry if you live here). And fuck my creepy fucking birth father, who’s making me check over my shoulder a hundred times a minute.
“He is so fucking weird,” I say harshly into my phone. “Not the interesting kind of weird, but the I-will-butcher-you-in-your-sleep type of fucked-up freak.”
“You want to drop another fuck?” Rocky snaps hotly.
“You plan to pick it up for me?”
“Fuck no.”
My scowl pinches into a smile, but my power walking stride never loses blistering heat as I trek from the bus stop to Briny Pearl. I’m very late to the lunch with the godmothers and Hails on account of my lack of forethought about how painfully slow the bus would be.
“Let’s return to the part where you said you saw him,” Rocky says, his voice deep and coarse like harsh sandpaper against my ears.
Him. “That creep wishes he were as cool as Jason Voorhees.”
“Your sick fascination with the ugly fuck from Friday the 13th isn’t dispelling the father-daughter comparisons here.”
I skid to a full-blown halt right outside of Briny Pearl. I glare at the pirate ship wheel on the restaurant’s navy-blue siding. “I’m not like my dad. Take it back right now.”
“Only if you stay on topic. For fuck’s sake, Phebs. I’m going out of my mind picturing him tailing your bus.”
“Like I said, he was waiting at the bus stop in Victoria. I thought he was going to follow me on, but he just waved me goodbye with a creepy smirk.”
“Use another fucking adjective.”
I hate that I love Rocky’s aggravated, serrated edges. I might be a freak in the sense that I like being cut up by him, but I refuse to believe I share more than a genetic code with Varrick Wolfe. Personality, uh-uh—we are not the same. Not that we’re on speaking terms. He’s just done the stalkerish loitering thing.
I expel a molten breath. “Picture a fortysomething version of Christan Bale in American Psycho. That was his pompous, punchable smile.”
“Great. Did he know you were going to Newport?” Rocky asks.
“Unsure.” I fix the spaghetti strap to my slim pink dress, then bend at the knees to retie the loose ribbon on my white wedges. “He knew I was leaving Victoria to hop on the bus, at least. Maybe my mom told him. She’s been keeping in contact with Varrick.” It’s been a point of contention among me and my brothers and her, and I feel ill even imagining her spending two seconds with a man who murdered Rocky’s entire family.