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)
Elizabeth knew damn well and good what The Boneyard was.
I hadn’t hidden who I was from her.
She also knew exactly what would happen if she defied me in this.
“That’s not fair…” She straightened.
I ignored her and turned back to Barry who was trying to slink away on his backside into the house.
Elizabeth looked damn close to closing and locking the door on him.
“Who did you see leaving her apartment?” I growled, fist pulled back and ready to hit him again.
Barry’s eyes were unfocused as he said, “That officer bitch.”
I gritted my teeth. “And you thought, hey, I’ll just leave my daughter here to fend for herself after I just punched her in the face?”
Barry’s eyes focused again and he said, “Figured you’d clean up the mess you made on your own. After all, my daughter is a piece of trash now, like you.”
It only made me angrier that my fucking issues had come back to fall back on my girl.
“She pissed me off.” Barry smiled, blood coating what was left of his teeth. “She deserved what she got.”
“Did she?” I asked. “And why is that?”
I had to control myself as I waited for him to answer.
I wanted his explanation as to why he would do that to his own daughter, then leave her to get beat up even more by the officer that he knew was bein’ a bitch.
“Because y’all took the love of my life away from me!” he bellowed. “It only seemed fair that I make her suffer for it.”
I was confused and said as much. “The love of your life?”
“Trini!” Barry roared, blood and spit spewing from his mouth and covering my arm that I held him at arm’s length with.
“That bitch is the love of your life?” I asked, stunned that he was naming his ex, the woman that’d gotten a gold medal in torturing her twin girls for their entire life, as the love of his life.
“She was mine,” he snarled. “We had such a good thing going. Then you and your bitch of a club came in and ruined it. Took her away and now I’m out here all alone, trying to pick up the pieces that y’all left behind.”
I ground my teeth together while collecting myself so I didn’t beat the shit out of him in broad daylight.
“Best con I ever did, marrying your ex-wife. She was so easy, too. She thinks I’m the love of her life, when in reality, I’m only here to take your money that you’re forced to give them every month. I sleep in your house. In your bed. Drive your car. Eat dinner with your daughter every night she’s here. It’s been the best goddamn feeling, making sure that you realize what you’ve left behind that I picked up.” He leered at me.
And that’s when I lost it.
All of this.
He did all of this because of that piece of shit he called the love of his life?
May Trini Cowan continue to live her life as she deserves.
I reared back, ready to let another punch loose, but a whispering voice that I knew all too well broke through my haze of anger.
“Piers.”
The sound of her voice had me freezing in my tracks.
I looked up from beating the shit out of her father to see Silver, broken and bruised, standing in front of me.
She had her hand extended toward me—a hand that subsequently still had an IV access attached to it.
She was wearing a hospital gown and blue non-slip socks that the hospital had provided for her.
She was staring at me, waiting for me to make the right decision.
“What the fuck are you doing out of the hospital right now?” I let her father drop to the concrete steps again.
There was a sharp inhale from two directions—both Elizabeth from the house and Barry from the ground—when they saw her.
I managed to hold in my groan of disbelief, but just barely.
“I knew you would come here,” she said. “I don’t have any broken bones.”
Like that made it all okay.
I walked to her and realized that she still didn’t have her eyes open.
Meaning someone had to bring her here…
“I brought her.”
I looked over, just now realizing that I’d never looked away from Silver, to see Jasper standing in the yard.
He pointed at his truck, and I swallowed hard. “Thanks.”
Jasper nodded.
I turned back to Silver and said, “Can I pick you up?”
“No.” She winced. “I don’t think I could handle that right now.”
Fuck.
“Okay,” I said carefully. “Let’s get you back to the truck. Jasper, can you drive my bike to my place and get your truck from the hospital?”
“Done,” he said, then turned back to a prospect.
“Get the cameras,” I heard him say to the prospect, then placed a phone to his ear. “Make sure that you wipe everything, Apollo. Then you need to work on everyone else’s video cameras on this street. They’re rich, so there’s no way that they don’t have them. He needs absolutely zero trace of being here. We’re fucking lucky no one saw him.”