Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 95906 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95906 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
My suspicion that King had been following me for a while and had already done his homework was proven right when he responded with, “Micah Fox, twenty-three. Older brother, Brady, died a couple weeks ago. Kid lives with his brother’s widow and her two kids. Christopher, fourteen, and Aurora, five.”
“Rory,” I murmured. I found myself smiling as I thought about the little girl's name. No wonder she considered herself a princess. Hell, she'd been named after one.
“So who is he, Con?”
“Tell Lex I'm fine,” was all I said.
Not surprisingly, King didn't move. In fact, he reached into his jacket and pulled his gun from his shoulder holster. He ejected the clip and began examining it. Any other person would've seen the move as some kind of threat or silent warning, but I knew it for what it was.
King was uncomfortable. He wanted to say something that he couldn't. It was a good minute before he quietly said, “Con.”
The mere way he’d said my name had me shaking my head. “No. We’re not doing this here, now,” I said clearly. There was a lot that I needed to say to King about the whole Lex thing, but I needed to let that wound scar over a bit before I was ready.
As King toyed with his weapon, my eyes slid back to the house. I'd been watching it for hours over the past few days, but there'd been no sign of Micah yet. It hadn't mattered, though, because I'd seen enough.
I hadn’t expected the young man to live in a palace but never in a million years would I have guessed Micah and his brother had ended up in such a hole.
Several of the house’s windows were broken and covered with either tarps, plastic sheeting, or wooden boards. The siding was rotted and paint was peeling in more places than it wasn't. Bottles, cans, and bags of garbage were all over the front porch. A rusted-out junker car sat in the driveway leaving space for only one other car. That space had been occupied by no less than half a dozen cars in the past hour. The constant comings and goings of various men and women told me all I needed to know.
The place was a drug den.
I was still very aware of King's presence. As much as I wanted him gone, I knew he could give me the information I needed.
“What do you know about the widow?” I asked.
King seemed unsurprised at the question. “Clara Fox, thirty-four, unemployed. Previous arrests for prostitution and drug possession. Has been dating Ricky Roberts, forty-two, for the past few years. Not exactly citizen of the year material himself.”
I closed my eyes as my stomach roiled violently.
“You didn't know?” King asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
I wanted to dismiss him. I wanted to order him to leave so I could wallow in the acid of my guilt alone.
“What about Micah?” I heard myself asking.
King seemed to know what I was asking because he said, “There's nothing on him. No criminal charges, not much when it comes to a credit history. The kid’s a ghost.”
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“Who is he?” King asked. “Talk to me, Con.”
I found myself wrapping my fingers around my car’s steering wheel. The leather felt smooth and clean beneath my fingers. I hated it. I hated every luxurious element of the car I’d dreamed of owning since I was a kid. I glanced at the piece-of-shit house again as guilt knifed through me.
“I put his brother in the ground.”
King didn't respond, which I was glad for. I needed a moment to pull myself together. “I met Brady fifteen years ago.” I shook my head and laughed. “I guess met isn’t really the right word.”
I glanced at the house again and said, “He was hungry, just like me. I guess we all were. When I stepped into that ring, I wasn't going to lose. I had too much to win for.”
There was a moment of silence before King sighed and murmured, “Lex.”
I nodded without looking at him.
It was something King and I never spoke about. We’d silently agreed on that when we’d been kids. Lex had been a sickly kid who’d turned into an even sicker teenager. By the time he'd reached his seventeenth birthday, he’d been practically living at the hospital as his body had begun to give up on him. With both of his kidneys failing him, the doctors hadn't expected Lex to live to see eighteen.
But they also hadn't expected Lex to have two brothers who’d refused to watch him die. Amazingly enough, I’d turned out to be a donor match when King and I had gotten tested. Since I’d been well over the age of eighteen, there’d been no issue with me consenting to donate one of my kidneys to Lex. But the foster system meant a heap of red tape, especially for a kid that likely wouldn't survive the procedure anyway.