Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
I’m going to keep her safe. I’m going to eliminate the threat. I’m going to do what I said and give her a life back.
This is now my job.
She’s still shaking when she brings both mugs to the table. With a shaky breath, she sits down in front of one. I notice she hasn’t added any cream to hers. I know she doesn’t drink her tea without it, so I walk to the fridge, get the container, and add a splash to her mug until the offensive brew turns beige.
I’m going to suck it up and drink mine because it looks calm, domestic, and gentle, and right now, she needs that. She doesn’t need another display of power and muscles. The threat has already been chased off. Now, we’re going to deal with the fallout, and coming down from a real shock is always rough.
She looks like she needs a hug. But I’m just not the guy to do it. I’m such an asshole, which is no newsflash to me, but right now, I hate myself for it.
I add some cream to my tea and put the container back in the fridge, which makes a weird humming noise and then a small crunch. It’s one of those ancient old beasts from the forties or fifties, and I make a note to have someone come and look at it. I’ll find a specialist who deals with old appliances, even if I have to fly them out.
Wow. You’re seriously getting into this, aren’t you?
I sit quietly at the table, forcing myself to sip the spicy cinnamon tea until Ignacia is ready to talk. I’m not sure ready is the right word, but eventually, she does raise her eyes. They’re swimming with tears, but she’s making an effort not to let them fall. Just seeing that moisture makes me want to race out the door, run miles down the gravel road if I have to, and find Aiden. Fuck, I’d chase down his car, barefoot on said gravel, if I could reach him and kick his ass for what he’d done to this woman.
Whatever he did, he made her suffer in some way, and that is un-fucking-acceptable. Make no mistake, it will be rectified. Justice will be motherfucking served straight up, even if I have to ram it down the bastard’s throat myself.
Ignacia lets out a sigh that is pure misery. She blinks again, clearing her eyes, then whips them away and studies her tea. “Do you want the long or short version?”
I’d like the version where I kill your ex for you.
Well, not really. Because I don’t do murder. Never had to, thank goodness. In my line of work, it’s sometimes a definite possibility. When I’m working, I do carry a weapon in order to fully protect my clients. Some of them have gone through situations of extreme violence, and some of them have people who want to make sure they don’t wake up the next morning or any other morning. I’ve discharged my weapon several times, but I’ve never had to take a life.
“Whatever you’d like to tell me,” I reply.
She sips her tea so shakily that it dribbles down her chin. She quickly wipes it away, but it’s like she’s not even really paying attention to it. She looks at the table like there’s a live-action show of her past playing right there.
“The short version, then. Girl meets boy; girl thinks boy is perfect; girl is incredibly stupid. For years. Boy does super shady shit for most of that time. Not cheating on her or anything. Just stealing her identity and using her social media to scam people. Boy has all her personal information, so he sets up fake accounts under her name. Multiple fake accounts. Online. Bank accounts, offshore shit. And then he really gets into scamming. Low level. He only takes a small amount from the people he rips off because everyone knows the police are not willing to do anything over small amounts. But fifty dollars here and a hundred dollars there adds up.
“Boy gets confident. He starts making thousands of dollars a day. Under. Girl’s. Name. Girl finds out eventually, but it’s already been going on for years. Girl threatens to expose him to the cops, but Boy points out she’d only be exposing herself. Even when he wasn’t using her name and was doing all the horrible shit under a fake name, he was still doing it on her computer and laptop and phone. There was literally no way to prove it wasn’t her.”
She looks exhausted, but I don’t say anything because any words I use would be wrong right now. She doesn’t need to hear cursing and promises of bloody scenarios where I put my hand down Boy’s throat and tear him a new asshole through his mouth and leave his lips down below so no one knows which is the mouth and which is the butthole. Also? Wow. That’s just gross.