Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Yeah, you are,” Caleb agrees, digging the knife in further. “But he wouldn’t sue you.”
I scoff at the certainty in his tone. “Jack may have defended me before he knew who I was, but I don’t see him doing that now.”
Caleb waits a beat before asking, “So you’re not going to help him? You’re just going to let him rot in jail for teaching a leech nothing in life is free?”
“No,” I reply, shaking my head. “That’s not what I said. I’m more than happy to break the terms of my NDA if it will help Jack, but I need to make sure you’re okay with me doing that because that nest egg we act as if it doesn’t exist won’t exist if I go through with this, and I get sued. We will have nothing.”
Caleb doesn’t ponder the worry in my voice for even a second. “And has that slowed us down once the past decade? We survived a pandemic, a housing crisis, and months of unemployment, and we’re still standing. If Jack wants to take the money our grandfather left us, let him. After what he went through, I’m more than happy for him to have it.”
This is one of the reasons I would love Caleb even if he weren’t related to me by blood.
“Alright, then lead the way.”
I’m not at all surprised when our entrance into the living room has me spotting Fitz. He’s standing to the side of the kitchen, and a man I’ve seen before but have never officially met is at his right.
Relief crosses Fitz’s face when Caleb jerks up his chin in response to his silent question.
“Morris, this is Octavia. Tivy, Morris.” Our handshake is awkward, but it allows Fitz to move on to more pressing matters. “We need to make this quick. The early hour will work in our favor, but if we want to keep Jack’s arrest out of the papers tomorrow, we need him released from custody within the hour.” Fitz shifts on his feet to face Caleb. “Tivy will come with Morris and me. Caleb—”
“Jess is waiting for me out front,” Caleb interrupts, his tone more excited than worried.
He gathers our coats from a rack near the door before leading the parade outside. My stomach gurgles when I notice how much blood is on the floor where Silas once laid. He’s been removed from the site, but there are still over a dozen police officers swarming our apartment.
“Keep your head down and your mouth shut,” Fitz demands a second before we merge onto the footpath. The media is already here, and they’re as hungry as ever. They push and shove me before asking a range of questions. Mercifully, the ones they ask about Jack are purely regarding my association with him and if I took the ‘Hotshot Boss’ off the market.
After being bundled into the back of one of Jack’s town cars, my disbelieving eyes shoot to Fitz. He can barely contain his cockiness when he discloses, “At my request, they took Jack out the back entrance and announced to the media that they are here concerning a break-in.”
“Half a dozen patrol cars for a break-in. Sounds about right.”
The relatively short trip to the police station is long and silent. It doubles the churns of my stomach. I know what needs to be said and done to help Jack, but I also know the possibility of him forgiving me for sharing his secrets is extremely low. He didn’t go to the lengths he did to keep his personal life private for no reason. He doesn’t want a soul to know what happened to him, and I am going to do everything in my power to keep it that way.
I’ll even throw myself under the bus if I have to.
CHAPTER 27
OCTAVIA
My eyes dart to Caleb so fast the wooziness begging for a couple of hours of sleep doubles. His cell phone is on silent, but in the quiet of our apartment, even its vibrations alerting to a new message sounds like a jackhammer drilling through a concrete floor.
“It’s just Jess checking in,” Caleb announces, his tone as deflated as my shoulders.
We left the police station over eight hours ago. Although the DA couldn’t give me a then-and-there verdict, I’m confident my recollection of the events that occurred before Jack attacked Silas will go in Jack’s favor. It hurt like a thousand bee stings when recalling what occurred before Silas’s assault, but some good comes with a graphic memory.
Silas didn’t hide his intentions for arriving at my apartment early on a Sunday morning. He made it very clear he wanted me to suffer the consequences of my grandfather’s actions, and I made sure the DA and lead detective on Jack’s case were aware of that fact.
My belief that Silas arrived at my apartment with the intent to commit a crime brought a self-defense plea into play. And since I was unable to recall who threw the first punch, it may not even need to be used.