Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 121728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“Because I understand what you’re going through.”
Her brow furrowed. “How?”
“My sister was an addict, too.”
When a visible shiver ripped through her, she wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed her upper arms. “Was. She’s now recovered?”
Decker heard the hope in her voice and even saw it on her face. Unfortunately once again, he was about to dash it. “No.”
“She’s still using?”
“No.”
Sloane’s chest swelled and then deflated. She closed her eyes and disappointment thickened her voice. “So, you gave up.”
“I didn’t. Amelia did.” Though, that wasn’t entirely true since in a way, he gave up, too.
Her blue eyes opened and bore into him. “But you accepted defeat.”
“I accepted her choices, no matter how messed up they were. I did what I could to save Amelia and when it wasn’t good enough, I had to move on.”
“Maybe it was easy for you to accept your sister’s choices, but I can’t do the same and live with myself.”
“You’re wrong. It wasn’t easy, Sloane. It was one of the hardest decisions I had to make in my thirty-seven years. And believe me, in my career, I’ve done some difficult shit. But like I told you the other night, there will come a point when whatever you do won’t be good enough. When everything you do won’t change the outcome. You can only beat your head against the wall so many times before you end up killing yourself instead. For me, the breaking point was when I had to face the fact that no matter how much I wanted Amelia to be a great mother, the truth was, drugs were more important to her than her own damn child. Someone had to be there to raise my niece. And that someone was me.”
“Then you still had someone to fight for. Your niece.” Sloane pinched her forehead between her fingers like she had a headache.
She probably did. He had suffered through plenty of tension headaches himself while dealing with his sister.
“You’re not sleeping, are you?” Decker had also experienced many sleepless nights along with the headaches. Addiction didn’t only affect the person doing the drugs, it affected everyone around them, especially those who loved them.
“I have nightmares constantly. I’m afraid that one day I’ll find Sadie no longer breathing. She’ll be lying there dead and the people around her will simply step over her or toss her outside since she’s in the way. Or worse…”
Worse.
What churned his stomach wasn’t the Italian hoagie he shoveled down his gullet earlier, it was the horrible things that could be and have been done while someone is dead or dying. None of them legal.
All of them ethically wrong.
“Tell me… While undercover, have you or will you sell drugs to people like my sister? Addicts like Sadie who can’t say no?”
“That’s not a question I can answer. I’m undercover to help take down their whole organization, Sloane. But to do so, I’m forced to play the game. I’ll have to do things I might not normally do. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the overall good.”
She might not like that answer, but it was an honest one.
“And when… if you take this MC down, what stops another group from picking up the torch and running with it?”
“Nothing.”
“So, it may never end.”
“It may never end,” he confirmed, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t try.”
“Sounds familiar.”
It certainly did.
“How is she getting her money?” He already knew how by her criminal record. However, he was curious to know how much Sloane knew about her sister’s illegal activities to feed her habit.
“Where do you think? Stealing. Begging on the street. Selling her body. Selling anything she can get her hands on. I bought her a prepaid cell phone with plenty of minutes. I don’t think she even had it for a few hours before she sold it.”
“Addicts will do anything for their next fix.”
Her expression turned grim. “Even give up a roof over their heads. I co-signed on an apartment lease, hoping to give her some stability once she got clean and to help her remain that way. She got evicted within days, flushing the first and last month’s rent, plus the security deposit, down the toilet. Whoosh. Thousands of dollars of my hard-earned money gone.”
“And that’s how you ended up in this dump.” Now it made sense.
A flush rose up her neck and into her cheeks. He didn’t mean to embarrass her but he was a “no bullshit” type of guy. The only time he sugar-coated the truth was when dealing with children. Including his niece. They’d have to deal soon enough with the world’s cruelty.
And Val began her life being born into bullshit. Luckily, she’d been too young to remember it.
“This motel’s the best I can do right now. I’ve wiped out my complete savings on trying to save my sister, including all the money I had put away to buy a house. Like Sadie, I also got evicted because I could no longer afford the lease on my condo.” She sighed. “I’ve even maxed out my credit cards. Trying to keep up with the interest alone is burying me financially and has already destroyed my credit. Of course, my sister’s life is worth way more than good credit. But bad credit has made it almost impossible for me to find a place to live except for motels like these that don’t do credit checks. The downside, besides being barely habitable, is they only take cash and I have to pay by the week.