Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 106948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
A smile tugged at my lips as I remembered catching her standing in front of a mirror last night and touching the pendant with a soft, dreamy expression that took years off her lined face. At one time, Carla Brass had been a beautiful woman, but life had ground her down, aged her before her time. She deserved a break after all her hardship, and I felt a great sense of pride that I could take care of her, give her luxury and comfort. Her happiness was my happiness, and there was nothing I enjoyed more than the satisfaction of making her world a better place. I’d felt so full of gratitude that I could provide for her like that, ease her burden and give her the things she’d always wanted, but sacrificed when she’d decided to marry my dad after she got pregnant at eighteen.
Then the bullets had torn through the house, piercing her in the lung, stomach, and leg.
Blood…so much of it that I knew the chances of her making it were slim as I held her in my arms, screaming into the phone for the ambulance to hurry.
Now she was in critical condition and they were trying to stabilize her enough to do more surgery.
I knew, deep in my gut, she wasn’t going to make it—and the knowledge made me furious.
Acid boiled in my veins and adrenaline surged through me as I thought about the men who’d done this.
I would find them and they would pay.
A family entered the waiting room, an older man with graying black hair and his pale, sickly looking wife, along with their daughter, jerking me from my dark thoughts. They were a nondescript family, the mother’s blonde hair showing about an inch of brown and gray roots, the father’s clothing wrinkled and worn, but something about them caught my attention. They were clearly grieving as they sat in the uncomfortable chairs filling the waiting room, the woman’s loud weeping annoying me.
I almost looked away…until I noticed the girl. She was young, probably no more than ten or eleven, and she had the biggest, saddest golden-brown eyes I’d ever seen. Even rimmed with red they were beautiful, and filled with so much sorrow. I’ve never met someone with such expressive eyes, their rich amber depths revealing a wounded soul that was old beyond her years.
Something seized up in me, pierced through my grief and made me focus on her. Next to the girl, her parents clung to each other and wept, ignoring her pain in favor of their own. It made me furious that they were so selfish, that they could sit next to someone as young and innocent as that little girl and not even see her. Didn’t they realize how short life was? That she needed them? I was pretty much emotionally fucked, but even I felt a flicker of compassion for the hurting kid who looked like her world was shattering around her.
I watched them for a little while longer, waiting for either the father or mother to even acknowledge their kid, but they didn’t. She just sat there, staring down at her feet clad in a pair of red Chucks, her jean shorts loose and baggy, revealing pale, bony legs and knobby knees. As she looked up again to stare at the television, I noticed further how frail she was, her arms slender to the point I wondered if she was even eating. Dark circles shadowed her eyes and there was a look of such hopelessness on her narrow face that I couldn’t help but raise my hand and wave until I had her attention.
She sat up straighter and glanced over at her parents, who were still wrapped up in each other, then back to me before easing out of her chair and walking hesitantly across the empty room to sit next to me.
Her parents never looked up, so I ignored them and glanced over at her, hoping my tattoo and size didn’t freak her out. “What’s your name?”
When she licked her puffy, chapped lips, I noticed she had braces as she whispered in a light and melodious voice, “I’m Hannah.”
I held my hand out. “Hi. My name’s Leo.”
Looking at me from beneath her long lashes, she bit her lower lip, then tentatively took my hand in her own and said in the sweetest, softest murmur as she blushed bright red, “Nice to meet you.”
Poor kid, she was going through that fucked-up, awkward stage of adolescence where your body seems to be growing out of sync. Her nose a little too big for her heart-shaped face, her chin too pointed, mouth too wide, and her mouth was puffed out by the braces she wore, giving her fish lips.
But there was something about her that made me take a second look. The more I studied her, the more I realized in a few years, she’d grow into her features and she’d be stunning, beautiful in an unusual way that wouldn’t just draw a man’s gaze, but hold it. I’d never seen a person with skin as pale as hers before, so milky smooth that I could faintly see the blue veins beneath if I stared hard enough. You don’t see a lot of pasty people in Arizona, and I watched with fascination as her cheeks flushed a deeper red all the way to her ears.