Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 60852 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60852 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Angrily, I move down the hall toward the bathroom.
Harper, never one to back down from a good fight, follows me.
“I know it’s hard for you, but you can’t just go sleeping with both of us while you decide. That’s unfair.”
Spinning, I face her. “What’s unfair is the fact that I thought you were fucking dead and now you’re not. What’s unfair is the fact that you won’t tell me what the fuck went down all those years ago, yet you want me to choose you. What’s unfair is me leaving my fucking kids behind, and my wife, because you came back to town.”
I’m yelling now, the rage building up inside me unable to find another way out.
Harper’s face flashes, and her eyes grow angry. “Do not yell at me, Brian. None of us had a choice in this. I didn’t ask for it, just as much as you didn’t, but it was essential that you thought I was dead.”
“Why?” I roar. “What possible reason could you have to break me like that?”
“It was so he didn’t kill you,” she screams. “I was protecting you. He was going to do whatever it took to destroy me for what I did, and he was going to start with you. The only way to end that was to make you think I was gone so you’d move on and he’d think I was out of the picture.”
Flinching, I stare at her, panting with rage. “What did you do that was so bad he was willing to take you down? Tell me, Harper, or I swear to fuck we’re done here.”
Her bottom lip shakes, but it isn’t with emotion, just rage. “I was working with the FBI to destroy him. I wanted out of that life. I knew it was the only way. He found out about it, and he was going to have me killed, but not before he took everything I loved first. He needed to think I was dead, but so did you. It was the only way.”
I feel like I’ve been sucker punched in the chest. “You could have told me.”
She shakes her head. “No, I couldn’t, because you and I both know you would have found a way to be with me. I couldn’t risk you. I just ... I couldn’t.”
“So you let me think you were dead?” I roar. “Do you have any fucking idea what that did to me? I lost Charlie, and then I lost you. I had nothing. I had no one. My heart was fucking destroyed.”
Tears burst forth and roll down her cheeks. “I know, Brian. I know, and I’m so, so sorry. If there was any other way ...”
“I can’t do this,” I bark, turning toward the bathroom. “I can’t fucking do this right now.”
Stepping into the bathroom, I slam the door.
Harper’s sob fills the room.
This is all too much.
I’m not made for all this fucking bullshit.
I need to make a choice, not just for them, but for me.
If I don’t, it’s going to kill me.
It’ll crush me into the ground until I’m a shell of the man I used to be.
I can’t let that happen.
The time has come for me to pick, and that decision could cost me everything.
If I choose wrong, my life as I know it is over.
13 – Janine
“HELLO, SISTER.”
I must be dreaming, because this can’t be real.
The man standing at my door ... he’s meant to be dead.
Shaking my head, I attempt to wake myself up from whatever hellish dream this is, but it doesn’t seem to matter how much I shake, he doesn’t disappear. Standing in front of me is my brother-in-law Wesley. The last time I saw Wesley was when Derek and I got married. He’s a bad man, worse than Hogan and his club, and seeing him here has my blood running cold.
Derek told me he was dead.
I hadn’t seen him since before Ebony was born, and I figured Derek was telling the truth, and that he was dead.
But here he is, standing in front of me, grinning because he knows just how shocked I am to see him.
“Don’t look so shocked, Janine, I haven’t changed that much.”
What the fuck is happening?
“You’re ... Derek told me you were dead.”
“That’s what I wanted him to think. I had business to take care of. Now, Derek is dead and I heard ... Well, you know I heard you have something that belongs to me.”
I know what he’s talking about.
Before Derek died, he showed me a safe full of money, weapons, and diamonds. He told me he was looking after it for the club. When the Hell’s Knights took his club down, I figured it was gone, but it turns out he had it hidden in our old house. I found it after he died and quickly hid it, figuring that one day I would use it for Ebony’s future. After all, it’s the only thing he left behind. She can have a house, go to college, and her entire future will be set up. Max’s too. I was never going to let it go to waste.