Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 65225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
“Fire and police have already been notified.”
“Okay,” I said. “Gotta go. Bye.”
I was already slipping into clothes when Easton walked through the door.
He looked pissed as hell, too.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Sareen set the fire,” he growled.
My mouth dropped open. “What? Was this her epic?”
“Epic, huh?” He shook his head, looking horrified on my behalf. “Crazy ass bitch.”
I slammed my feet into tennis shoes as I said, “At least I’m not living there anymore.”
And with it being so late, there wasn’t a soul in the building anymore.
At least, there wasn’t supposed to be, since Mirabel was staying with her current boyfriend.
I found out thirty minutes later, after arriving on scene to see my dad on a gurney, dead, that the bar wasn’t empty.
It was actually occupied.
My dad had been working in the office and was trapped.
Though he hadn’t been burned, he’d suffered major smoke inhalation.
When firefighters had found him in his office, he was already dead.
• • •
I was in a weird sort of fog.
I had a thousand and one things that I needed to figure out how to do, and all of those things included me stepping up and figuring things out. Yet… I couldn’t figure out how to make myself do any of them.
I didn’t know where to start.
Hell, I couldn’t even find my phone.
“Baby.” Easton hooked me around the hip, then guided me to sit on his lap. “We’ll figure out where your phone is in a minute. I had Donnelly hack into it and start tracking it. We’ll find it. In the meantime, I have your address book off of your computer.” He stroked my hair, and I could do nothing but lean my head against his chest. When I did that, the worries seemed to be soothed. “What do you have Mirabel under in your phone? Because I can’t find it in your contacts,” Easton asked, looking worried.
I was literally about to throw up.
My father was dead.
“Don’t bother calling her. Call Salem,” I grumbled. “She can help me run the bar until we can figure out what to do from here. Mirabel might or might not show up for her shift like usual. But Gareth being dead won’t change a damn thing.”
“Mirabel’s number,” Easton repeated.
I sighed. “She’s under Spare Parts.”
There was a moment of silence and then, “I don’t know whether to laugh at that right now, considering the situation.”
I didn’t blame him.
Usually, it was funny.
Sometimes she was listed in my phone as ‘Bad Daughter’ and other times, I changed her to ‘Spare Parts’ depending on whether she’d pissed me off lately or not.
“Salem isn’t answering.” He paused. “I’m going to text Mirabel.”
I would’ve snorted, but there was something wrong with my face.
It wasn’t working right.
That’s when I realized that it was scrunched up in a sob, and I was silently crying into my hands.
I must look like a nut case sitting here losing it like this.
“What the fuck?”
I split my fingers and peered out at him with a look of curiosity on my face. “What?”
His gaze flicked to me, then looked back at his phone, his expression of incredulity letting me know without him voicing the words that my sister had replied. And it hadn’t been what he’d expected.
“What did she say?” I urged.
I knew what I was about to hear.
Something rude and disgusting that someone wouldn’t think would come out of a girl’s mouth when it came to the man that’d all but changed her life.
Yet, that was my sister.
An ungrateful twat.
“She said that she’s busy today, can’t come in and that she hopes that his death won’t affect her paycheck on Friday,” Easton read in a monotone voice.
I would’ve laughed.
Really, I would have.
Yet, I couldn’t muster up the energy.
That’s what dealing with Mirabel did for me.
“I just…” He trailed off, almost unsure what to say next.
That was what Mirabel did. Surprise people.
And definitely not in a good way.
In an ‘I can’t believe that she’s for real’ kind of way.
“Bang Bang,” he said, pushing my chin back, which allowed him to look into my eyes. “There’s no bar to come back to for now. While you were sitting here looking like you needed a hug, I was taking a look inside. The bar part is totaled. The apartment above the bar, and the office is okay, but there’s a lot of smoke damage. Bar’s a total loss. There’s not a single bit of it that can be saved.”
“So it will affect my sister’s shift on Friday.” I snickered.
His eyes sparkled as he replied with, “Yeah. It’ll affect her shift. And her paycheck. As of right now, unless you’re a signer on his business account, that’ll have to go to the reading of the will. Then whatever the will says, it’ll then go to the children. Most likely, unless he left the stepkids anything, it’ll then go to you. And then I’ll highly suggest you make this Mirabel’s last week and be done with it.”