Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
We’re all processing this in our own way. Luke is raging. At least that makes sense. He should be angry. We all should be.
The man truly worrying me is actually Aiden. He has retreated into a sense of complete control, and that concerns me because he already had a lot of control. I can’t imagine what will satisfy him now. If he intends to become tyrannical, that could have unpleasant consequences for us all.
“Ella,” I say, repeating her name and returning it to the conversation to distract my brothers from their burgeoning fight. “She knew Teddy, and somehow she managed to find where his funeral was, and show up to it. But I don’t see any other connections that are obvious. She’s not related to anyone we know as far as I can tell.”
“What does she do for work?”
“She’s a customer service agent for a company that sells insurance,” I say.
Luke makes a face.
“Teddy was dating a customer service agent?”
“I doubt he cared what she did for a job. She’s pretty, and she seems sweet,” I say. “Her social media is mostly about ducks.”
“Ducks,” Aiden repeats dourly.
“She likes ducks,” I say.
“Real ducks? Or like, pictures of ducks and shit that she has up in her house or whatever?”
“Both, it would seem,” I reply.
A peal of unhinged laughter breaks over the room, the cackle of a madman.
Luke stares at Aiden and me. “We got Teddy’s funeral crashed by a duck chick? And her name is Chick? But she likes ducks?”
“A study in contradictions, apparently,” I say. The minutiae of a person’s idiosyncrasies would usually not be of interest to us, but we are grieving and our minds are looking for anything to settle on.
“She does not sound like someone who would be a threat of any kind, except for the fact she found the funeral. It was entirely private. I wonder how she did it. We need to find that out,” Aiden says. “We need to…”
“We need to take this girl and interrogate her,” Luke snaps. “Who gives a fuck what Teddy would have wanted. Who cares if maybe he loved her and he just wants her to be safe and not involved in any of this shit.”
Luke is very bad at being subtle, and at keeping secrets.
“Someone killed Teddy,” Aiden reminds him. “She might know who. She might even have seen it happen.”
Teddy’s body was found in an alley in the middle of town. He had been shot. That’s as much as anybody knows. For all the cameras and satellites and everything else, there are still blind spots. The autopsy and investigation suggest he was shot elsewhere and his body was dumped in a low-income, semi-industrial area. There’s not enough to go on.
“I think we need to make contact with her in some form. If she belonged to Teddy, she belongs to us now too. Simple as that. He may wish for her to be looked after,” I say.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Aiden frowns. “But you’re right.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Luke says. “Teddy had a lot of girls he went out with. Women loved him. But girls don’t shoot guys in the face and dump them in a shitty part of town. Gangsters do. I’m not wasting a second on this girl just because she crashed the funeral. Waste of fucking time.”
He storms out, slamming the door behind him.
“He’s high,” I mention to Aiden.
“Yes,” Aiden says. “He is.”
“Are we going to do something about that? I don’t want to lose another brother.”
“I’ve got Henri watching him,” Aiden says. “Luke does better when he gets to act out. Trying to contain him has always backfired.”
Aiden runs his family like our businesses, with a kind of empathetic manipulation that is incredibly effective, as well as frighteningly powerful at times. From time to time, I can feel his strings on me.
Luke, on the other hand, needs ropes, maybe chains. And even then, containing him is a full-time fucking job.
“Keep an eye on her,” Aiden says. “We can follow other avenues as well.”
I nod.
Sounds like a perfect way to pass the time.
While Aiden follows up with police and manages the investigation on his level, and Luke goes off on a bender of one kind or another, I watch Ella.
I already know where Ella lives. I already know her favorite animal. And now, as I watch her, I discover how she deals with grief.
She dyes her hair.
The first time we saw her, she had a blonde bob. The next time I make contact with her, she’s dyed that same hair gothic black. It suits her. She has a cute face. I can see why Teddy liked her, if he did, in fact, like her. She has one little streak picked out near the front that is colored purple. She manages to find a gothic duck charm for her handbag, too. I’ve never seen someone accessorize grief quite as fiercely as she seems to.