Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
My heart sank, realization dawning. Fuck…
“I wish it would’ve worked out, though,” he told me. “It would’ve made everything easier. The women like you.”
“My mom thinks he’s a good role model,” his guy, McCann, joked.
I stared at David Miller—a thug, an addict, and a burden on everyone around him. But he liked the smell of a good fire, and collected old radios, and tomorrow he could’ve woken up and made himself into a person he liked. He didn’t deserve this.
“He was a good role model,” Drew replied to McCann. “Until he murdered Miller.”
I ball my fists.
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” his other lackey, Carlo Shield, mimicked.
Followed by the third, Luccson. “We tried to stop you.”
They just fucking played along with the new story as the walls closed in.
They were framing me.
“We just couldn’t hold you back from hurting him,” Shield added.
Grabbing my phone from where we left ours on the downed tree trunk, I turned to Drew.
“Try it,” I bit out. “I have a permanent seat at the dinner tables of two of the best lawyers in the state.”
Madoc might’ve been a little more talented than his father, but Jason Caruthers had a bigger network of powerful friends after thirty-five years.
But Drew just shook his head at me. “And I have fifty people willing to swear that Miller wasn’t your only victim,” he fired back.
“You brought in the drugs too,” Luccson chimed in, eyeing me.
“And the whores,” Shield offered, a sad pinch to his brows. “You turned those poor, young girls out.”
Oh, fuck you. I didn’t do any of that shit.
“You do what you want to do,” I growled, opening my phone and dialing. “I’ll do what I have to.”
Holding it to my ear, I faced them, ready to repel an attack if they come at me.
The line picked up. “Shelburne Falls Police Department,” a woman answered.
I opened my mouth, but not before Drew. “And I even heard his biggest customers were some fine, ‘upstanding civil servants,’” he cooed to his crew, telling another lie about me.
My customers?
“Hello?” the officer prompted over the phone.
Fine, upstanding civil servants. Did he mean Madoc?
And then it hit me. He wasn’t just framing me. He was threatening my family.
My hand fell away from my ear, and I ended the call.
Drew approached. “You brought this on yourself,” he said. “You shouldn’t have tried to stop me. We could’ve been partners. Family.”
Until he killed me, he means? It was only a matter of time.
“But still…” He took my phone and slipped it inside my breast pocket. “I’ll always protect you. We’ll go dispose of Mr. Miller together, you can go home, and we’ll never speak of tonight, or Green Street, again.”
His boys started to drag the body back up to the grass, beyond which their cars were parked.
“I have no interest in the Falls,” Drew explained, meeting my eyes. “I like a nice clean town to work in, and maybe set up a wife someday. Madoc can stay. For now. But you will never set foot across the river again, and when we run into each other, you be fucking civil as I pass by.”
Like it’s so easy, right? Just move on and live my life, and ask others to invest their love and friendship in me when he could turn my life upside down at any time and ruin theirs in the process?
Not to mention leaving a man in some lonely grave without any explanation to the people who loved him?
He fixed my wet collar, and I shoved his hands away. “If you tell Caruthers—or anyone else—” he warned, glancing at the dead body being carried away, “well, I’m capable of more than this. Just so you know.”
So many times, I almost broke the silence. My mom knew something was wrong, and so did everyone else. They thought it was a girl. Maybe I’d been cheated on or I got someone pregnant. Jax even asked me if it was gambling at one point. I laughed. I wish.
I told myself that I was scared for the family and what he might do to them. That even accusations are taken as truth these days. The taint of a rumor could ruin Madoc’s career.
I worried about their safety and Quinn’s association with me. What if I were out with her, teaching her how to drive or picking her up from school and we ran into Drew? I can only imagine what he would’ve tried with her if he’d gotten Madoc or her father under his thumb.
But the truth was, I was simply ashamed. Disgusted with myself for being stupid. For being selfish and greedy for something of my own when I already had so much. Even if I felt that I didn’t want to stain Madoc’s future with a dead body I’d helped bury, I should’ve stayed and protected them. I should’ve figured out a way to make it right, even if it took years. Even if it made me sick every day.