Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
“The video games became more and more real and, in turn, more violent. So what’s a drugged-up preteen whose only exposure is to these made-up worlds with no other release for his natural growing pains to do? He lives inside of the game, and it becomes part of his reality. But wait, his young mind has been altered, poisoned, by the drugs he’s been on for years to control him and his behaviors.”
“That violence soon leaves the screen and becomes part of their everyday life because they can hardly tell the truth from fiction since these two things, the drugs, and the games, have culminated in a disastrous cocktail. Now, after years, those drugs no longer have the same effect, but the user needs something because he has become an addict, but no one sees it as an addiction because he didn’t buy it off the street corner. It was prescribed by a medical professional.”
“Their own parents fed it to them; their safe space was invaded by the pharmaceutical companies who used their parents’ own hands to bring about the destruction of their own kids. But why? What was their purpose behind this? Was it only money? Or is there something more sinister at play here?”
“Dafuq, Mengele, no!” All eyes in the room turned my way as I watched helplessly as the last vestige of my kid’s innocence evaporated right before my eyes.
“It’s too late, Lyon, you know how she is; there’s no turning back now.”
I nodded silently at Mancini’s words as I felt a tear in the vicinity of my heart. My poor kid. She’s ripping away the bandages without any care for herself. Looking head-on at the dark underbelly of humanity. “She’s already put together the bit about the tunnels, something we didn’t even think about.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What are you two talking about?” Flanagan looked back at the screen where his daughter and mine were diving into things no one their age should even know existed.
“Nothing, the girls are growing up too fast, is all.” Let him have a few more days of peace, at least. His wife was already MIA. Fuck my life.
Chapter 90
*Ryder*
I saw it as soon as I saw her walking towards the car. Even from this distance, her eyes gave it away. It’s amazing that after all that time apart, I can still read her so well. I knew from the looks of things that she’d spent the day worrying about someone who didn’t deserve it; in fact, I knew it would be like this even before I left her because that’s just who she is, and still, I’d let her go to work like that. I have to do better than this. This was one of my many failings from before, not protecting her even from herself.
She’s so brilliant in everything else, always knowing the right thing to say or do, that it was never really needed, except when it came to herself. For everyone else, she’s a champion of causes, the one you want next to you in a fight. As long as the fight is for someone else.
I’d seen it, time and again, the way she’d put herself last to take care of others and had taken advantage of that fact a time or two myself. Something I am now grievously ashamed of. Of everyone else, I should’ve been the last person to exploit this girl. Instead, I should’ve been her shield.
That heart of hers is incomprehensible to me sometimes. It’s one of the things that had made me fall for her so hard in the beginning. It made her stand out from everyone else around us. And yet, it was one of the things that made me doubt her in the end.
I couldn’t believe that she was real. Always doubted that anyone could be that pure at heart, especially being in the business we’re in. I’d used those doubts to fuel my own inadequacy, telling myself that she must be hiding something, so it didn’t matter if I was a monumental screw-up every once in a while.
As Lyon had so succinctly put it, I judged her according to my own shortcomings and fucked up royally. At least he gave me a pass because I was young when I got thrown in with the wolves, as he puts it, but my mom is a whole other story. The way he ranted and raged about her even though they had never met. Not just her, but apparently, any parent who allows their kid to get sucked into the Hollywood machine is a piece of shit who deserves nothing short of being drawn and quartered.
I can’t wait, if the opportunity ever arises, to meet his wife and kids. My imagination has already run the gamut from him being some sort of cult leader to a man who lived by his own rules regardless and who one hundred percent didn’t give two fucks what anyone else thought about him. Something he’s very fond of saying.