Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Just an hour ago I’d heard Aella and Searcy talking about trying a new seafood restaurant that served all their food in the middle of the table, family-style.
It was a ton of reminders that I didn’t need right now, because I needed to focus.
I needed to get this figured out for Finnian, and I would do a damn good job at it.
Because the thought of seeing any more heartbreak in the man’s eyes was unacceptable to me.
Not that I really knew why.
We shared a trauma bond, sure.
We’d had sex, sure.
But we’d both been a little out of our minds.
I doubted it happened again.
Plus, I just didn’t have the time, and a man like Finnian deserved a woman who could give her all.
Not to mention, what would he think when he learned what my brother had done, and that I still fully supported an almost-murderer?
I loved a felon, and I would never, ever stop.
My phone buzzed on the table, and I glanced down at it with a frown.
Daniella:
He’s with her right now. I’m watching them through the window of the hotel that she’s staying at in town. He hasn’t come home yet. I’ve called him so many times, Dru. He won’t answer. What am I going to do?
I skipped to the next one, reading that one next.
Daniella:
I called in a pizza delivery so I could get them to open the door. When I slipped inside, they said they would call the cops if I didn’t leave. They called the cops for real! The cops made me leave the premises. I went to rent a car and I’m back in the lot, but they keep looking out here as if they know I’m here.
They would. Daniella’s behavior was just like Aunt Jennifer’s. Who better to know the acts of a person with a love disorder than the one that it originated from?
Not that I would ever tell Daniella that.
Hell, I hadn’t even said anything to my mom that I knew that Daniella was Jennifer’s child.
The only real reason that I’d found out in the first place was that we’d blood typed our classmates at school. Two years before, Daniella had gone through the same blood typing class and had come home telling everyone that she was B positive.
I didn’t question it until I was in the class myself, and I’d found out that I was O negative. My dad and my mom were both O negative as well. And, as it turns out, it was impossible for Daniella not to be O negative if she were our parents’ biological child.
When I’d brought the problem to Romeo, he’d done a DNA test on us all, including Jennifer on one of her rare occurrences that she was home.
Everyone from our grandfather to ourselves got tested.
We’d found out that Romeo and I were my parents’ biological children. Daniella had belonged to Jennifer.
Oh, and even better, Jennifer hadn’t been my grandfather’s biological child, but another man’s.
We’d never asked him if my grandmother had cheated.
We’d left that alone.
But we knew that the love disorder hadn’t fallen far from the family tree—at least on Jennifer’s side.
Daniella:
Can I borrow your car?
Daniella:
Why are you not answering me? This is important.
Daniella:
I just rented another car. They’re looking at me funny through the window. I got one with darker tinted windows.
Daniella:
They’re going to lunch. I sat at the table four down from them. I also took a video on my phone. I put it up on social media. Eventually, he’ll have to talk to me, because he won’t like being tagged so publicly.
Daniella:
He fed her dessert. He used to do that with me!
Daniella:
I left early so I could slip into their hotel room and put in a camera. The lady at the front desk didn’t even question me when I said that I’d lost my key. Thank God for shift change.
Daniella:
I’m watching them right now. They’re talking about what they’re going to do. I think they might be breaking up.
“Okay, so here’s your options.” The funeral director turned the pages around to show us. “You can have a basic funeral. This is all that’s included. Cremation is this, and burial is this.”
I tucked my phone away, silencing it and shoving it under my thigh.
I couldn’t deal with her and her baggage right now.
The next several hours, as Silver and I planned two funerals, I was one hundred percent focused on what I was doing. We talked about how a military funeral would go. We talked about the special people that came to take care of the flag, and watch over the casket. We talked about so much stuff that my head felt stuffy.
One thing we did know, however, was that we would be cremating both of them.
The damage to both of their bodies was too great.
I hoped that was the right decision.
“I don’t think they’d be able to help themselves,” Silver admitted after the guy left to go make copies of the paperwork. “They’d have to look. Just one more time. And no one needs to see that.”