Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
I just knew that she walked to work, and she never drove if she didn’t have to.
Which had seriously gotten under my skin because I didn’t like her walking to and from work in the near dark.
I walked to her car, fully expecting to see her get out of it, and frowned when I saw her dad.
“What the fuck are you doing driving her car?” I asked. “On a suspended license at that.”
Barry rolled his eyes. “I got my license back.”
“Sure you did,” I replied facetiously. “Just like you don’t know where my girl’s keys are.”
I had my phone out and I was hitting locate on the AirTag that I’d bought her for this exact reason.
He didn’t know it was an AirTag, though, or he would’ve disabled it somehow.
The beeping started in Barry’s pocket and I saw red.
“Give me her keys right now,” I said. “And I might let you walk away from me without a broken jaw.”
“You wouldn’t hit me,” he grinned. “I’m your daughter’s stepdad. I can and will make this harder for you. I have Elizabeth wrapped around my little…”
I punched him.
Not hard enough to break his jaw, but hard enough that he fell backward into the Grand Am and groaned, his hands going to his face.
I walked up to him and emptied his pockets.
I took both my daughter’s keys and Silver’s and said, “You touch either one of their cars again, I’ll fucking end you. I’m serious. Even the keys. If you touch either one of their things, I’m going to start playing dirty, and you won’t like how that ends for you.”
He pulled his hands away from his face, his tongue going to his lip to lick the blood at the corner of his mouth, and said, “You got a thing for my girl?”
“I got a thing for Silver. She happens to be your daughter, but from what I hear, that’s about all you are. A sperm donor. Just like her mother was just an egg donor,” I shot back.
And something swiftly changed in Barry’s eyes.
He went from being pissed off and ready to lunge to cold and calculating in a single heartbeat.
“You think that you know everything, don’t you?” He chuckled, splitting his lip open even more. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know that my daughter’s very much aware of everything that I do. She even helps me. She finds ’em for me. Helps me bleed ‘em dry. Helps me move on to the next bitch. Why do you think she’s so deep into your family? Going to Jit Jitsu to watch your daughter’s first day? Yeah, right. She’s just a fuckin’ con, just like me. Only better at it because she has a pretty face. When we’re done with your family, we’ll be just richer and smug about taking you and yours down a peg.”
Anger coursed through my veins at his words.
I tried to be rational, tried to deny his words.
But why else would he know that Silver was going over there?
Eedie sure the fuck wouldn’t tell him. She hated Barry as much as I did.
If not more so.
I left Barry there leaning against Silver’s car and didn’t comment.
I did have to force myself not to turn around and clock him for a second time because of that smug as fuck look on his face, though.
Picking Eedie up, I was still pissed as hell, but her smiling face dimmed some of the anger coursing through me.
However, after over thirty minutes of waiting on Silver to show and seeing the look of devastation on my daughter’s face, I was done.
I wasn’t thinking clearly.
If I had been, I’d have called Aella and found out where Silver was, and talked to her.
But I couldn’t look at my daughter cry and think rationally.
All the reasons I’d stayed away from her in the first place came roaring back to the forefront.
I couldn’t date a person that was related to that man, even if she was innocent of the shit that Barry had shared earlier.
But, more importantly, if she didn’t show up for important things that she promised she would, then she was no better than Elizabeth.
And I wasn’t going to stand for that in a woman that I called mine.
Still, I drove to her apartment again and knocked on her door for the third time that day with no answer.
One last chance.
She had one last chance to open the door and explain.
But…nothing.
She didn’t answer.
I let myself in using my lock picking tools, then set her keys down on her counter.
I yanked off a sheet of paper towel and wrote in Sharpie on the paper.
Your dad had your keys. I took them. Broke my phone and tried to find you because I didn’t remember your number, but after today, guess I don’t need your number anymore, anyway.
—W
With one last glance around Silver’s apartment, I noted the pizza on the counter.