Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 76812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
I regret the attempts I've made in the past to end my life because it made him prepare for the prevention of me doing it now when I really need it the most.
The closet reveals the bar being held up with only enough force to hold the clothes hanging on it. The ceiling fan and light fixture in the middle of the room are much too high to access even though there will be nothing in the room I could use to hang myself with. There will be no trash bag to put over my head, nothing sharp I could stab myself with.
I want to cower and hide, but I know doing so will only make it worse. I lift my chin as I dash the tears off my cheeks. I have no hope of making myself any more presentable. I know my eyes are rimmed in red from crying, but I still walk to the bedroom door and open it.
Nathan looks at me as he pulls his thick coat from his shoulders. I can see that he's lost the weight I've gained, and I have no doubt that he found the food in jail rather lacking. It's another thing I'll be punished for.
"Welcome home, Father," I say because it's what's expected of me.
I feel the eyes of every man in the room on me as I speak. The count is now five, two new ones having come inside with Nathan.
His eyes skate up and down my body, and it takes everything in me not to suck in my breath and straighten my spine further.
He doesn’t look at all impressed with what he sees.
Instead of voicing his opinion, he walks toward me. I flinch as he nears, but the man walks right past me without saying a word.
The man with the scar running down his face glares at me. The look in his eyes is sinister and filled with even more disgust than I saw in my stepfather's eyes. He looks like a man who might've been promised something he has every intention of getting.
When Nathan's bedroom door opens and he disappears inside, closing the door behind him, I step back into my room and close my own bedroom door.
It could be minutes or hours before Nathan opens it again. I need to find a way to die before he does.
Chapter 33
Newton
Despite whatever arrangements Nathan made to make sure we couldn't track where Brielle was taken earlier today, he made no effort to hide his location. He knows we followed him to the house. He also knows that unless we break the law, we can't go in and get her. We have no proof that she isn't there of her own free will.
There's only one window with a set of bars, and I know it has to be where she's being kept. All she has to do is open the fucking curtains and mouth the word help and a dozen fucking commandos will enter the fucking place.
"The warrant?" I ask Kincaid. The prosecutor threatened to get one for her, and that would really be beneficial right now.
"The judge refused to sign it," he says.
We've moved from the apartment near the government building to a house a block and a half down from where Nathan and Brielle are with what we can tell is at least four guards inside.
He isn't even trying to hide the fact that they're there, and if anything it's a slap in the face.
"Hemlock said he heard the two of you arguing, that she claimed to have been lying to you all along," Kincaid says as we both stare at the live feed.
One of Deacon's guys is in a car right across the street from the house. There's no sense in trying to be covert right now.
They aren't even trying to hide. The curtains in the living room have been pulled all the way back, allowing us to see right into the house.
We've been posted up here for eighteen hours, and there hasn't been so much as a flutter of the curtains in the room we're presuming is hers. The bars on the window aren't reason enough for us to make entry into the house, and after the judge released Nathan, apologizing to him, we aren't getting much help from the local police department either. I really think they blame Brielle for Detective Greene's disappearance, but they also have probably been given orders to stay clear of Nathan Adair.
The prosecutors assured us that they weren't giving up, but it'll take time to build a case that will hold up in court. We don't have the luxury of time right now.
"Newton," Kincaid snaps, pulling my eyes from watching Brielle sit at a fucking table eating breakfast with a man that has spent most of her life hurting her.
He looks sad when I meet his eyes, and I can see his faith in her wavering.