Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
I glance at the only other person at the table, and my pulse kicks up a notch.
Lachlan Conroy.
I knew who Krisjen’s father was, but I would’ve known him anyway.
She has his eyes. Why is he here?
“The same deal is on the table,” Ames starts off, and it takes a minute to bring my gaze back to the meeting at hand. “Two hundred acres, you know what I’m willing to pay,” he states. “I’m playing ball, because this is faster than going through the government, but I can go through the government.”
I don’t have the authority to sell the land. It’s owned by several Sanoa Bay residents. But I am head of the community council, and I’m just about the only reason they haven’t sold their stakes yet. I can persuade them.
Or dissuade them.
I study the scar on his jaw. A groove with three lines. Like a shooting star. It’s faint. Not the first thing you see when you first meet him, but I’ve known that it was there for a while.
His eyes gleam. “I will get what I want, Macon.”
“For three times the price you’re offering to pay me.”
“What I’m offering to pay you is twice what they will when they take your land.”
He’s not wrong. He knows it, and he knows I know it.
I avert my eyes to the side, but I sweep over the corner of the room, at the top, near the ceiling. The fiber-optic lens hidden in the stag antlers. It records everything.
And judging from the things that just happened in this room last night, I’m guessing they don’t know it’s there.
“That star on your jaw.” I tap my fingers on the table. “I have the same scar. It comes from my father’s ring when he hits you.”
Army shifts to my right, and I see him look at me. None of them know where I got mine. I have a lot of scrapes. We all do.
“It was an accident with me,” I tell Ames. “We were both upset, I hit him first, but not many people have that mark. What did you do to him?” I cock my head. “He wasn’t typically violent.”
My father hit me twice in my life, and both times he was defending himself. He forgot he was wearing the ring that day.
Ames stares at me flatly. “Do we have a deal?”
“Was it over my mom?” I press. “When I was a couple of years old, she worked in your parents’ house for a time, right?”
Dallas’s breathing grows heavier behind me.
I go on, “My dad said one night she came home and never went back. What did you try with her?”
Liv shoots out of her chair, but I hold out my arm, pushing her back down.
“You wanted a piece of her, didn’t you?” I say. “Did you get it?”
I feel the heat rolling off Army and Trace, hear Liv’s knuckles crack. Ames went after our mom, like his son, Callum, went after my sister last April.
“If you got it,” I tell him, “I suspect you wouldn’t still be so angry.”
He’s been targeting us for as long as I can remember.
“Callum has a taste for our side of the tracks, too.” I clear my throat. “He’s your heir, correct?”
His eyes pierce like a raptor’s.
“Your only child,” I say. “Correct?”
Not correct. He has another son. At least one other one. It would create a fucking mess for Garrett Ames if Callum ever found that out.
But before Ames can react, there’s a knock on the door.
I tense. Santos is outside. One call away if we need him.
The attendant crosses the room and answers the door. Jerome Watson rises from his chair before I even look.
“Krisjen,” he says.
I turn my eyes over my shoulder, seeing her for the first time in days.
Glass. Did she look like that last year when she and Liv were in school together? She wears a black tennis skirt and a matching tight sleeveless shirt. I take in every inch of golden skin on her neck, her arms, and her thighs. I was everywhere on her. Just days ago.
Why is she here?
“You’re dressed for golf,” Watson says.
Her gaze drifts to me but faces forward again, like she doesn’t recognize me.
“I like night games,” she tells him.
He gestures for her to sit. “Me, too.”
She doesn’t take the seat offered, and I try not to glare at him. Did he invite me here because she would be here?
Liv looks around, and I can tell—same as me—she’s trying to figure out what’s going on.
“Krisjen—” her father starts.
But she cuts him off. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
She stands in front of the table, addressing Watson only. “I want my own room.”
I freeze. What the fuck?
“Until I’m ready to share yours,” she tells him.
A truck sits on my chest, but I don’t shift my eyes off the table.