Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“Because he said it was my responsibility. If I didn’t want my trust dwindled to nothing, I had to help him.” His priorities are undoubtedly skewed when he mutters, “He was going to take it all away. Every last cent. I had to do as asked.” Knox locks his watering eyes with me. “She was going to ruin everything.” He stops, screws his nose up, then starts again. “She did ruin everything. My mother took us to the cleaners. She left us nothing.”
The gun rattles as rigidly as Knox’s breaths when Laken discloses, “Your mother has been missing for over a year.”
“Because she’s living it up with one hundred million dollars.”
“Her bank account hasn’t been touched by her either.” When Knox stares at Laken like there’s no way he could know that, Laken breathes heavily out of his nose. “Toilet cleaning wasn’t River’s sole chore. He also had to collect the mail. During a heavy storm, the envelopes were soaked and disintegrated in his hands. He tried to save the documents inside with a hairdryer. They were statements from your parents’ joint bank account. The only card using the substantial funds the prior three months was in your father’s name.”
“No! He said she took it all. That she wiped us clean. She only left money for River.”
“The money in River’s account is the money I sent him, Knox.” Laken works his jaw side to side before correcting, “The money that was in River’s account was the money I sent him.”
Even with the truth blatantly obvious, Knox still tries to deny it. “No. My father wouldn’t do this to me. He loves me. That’s why he left me the task of running my car off the road. He knew I’d do it for him. That I’d take care of his whore and her baby. I killed them for him!” His voice reaches an ear-piercing level at the end of his statement, meaning the microphone I left on has no issues picking up his confession. It broadcasts his crime for the world to hear.
After yanking out the cable responsible for his suddenly white face, Knox points his gun at my head while projecting his voice at Laken. “You think you’re so fucking smart, but you forget you can’t manipulate the master. By the time help arrives, you’ll both be dead, and I’ll deliver a sob story about how you forced me to confess to a crime I didn’t commit seconds after forcing her to sing the words you wrote while on a three-day bender.” He tosses my songbook onto the ground. It falls open on a page that shows Laken’s handwriting has been traced on repeat.
“Are you sure about that?”
When Knox’s eyes shoot to Laken, who is pulling up the hem of his trousers to show his ankle is without the tracking accessory it’s been wearing the past week, Laken uses the distraction to his advantage.
He races for me so fast the grunt he releases when he pushes off his feet almost drowns out the noise of a bullet being dislodged from a gun.
With one of his hands protecting the back of my head and the other bracing to take the impact of our fall, Laken tackles me to the ground just as the rooftop is filled with shouting voices and clomping feet.
“Get down!”
“Place your hands behind your back.”
“Stay down!”
I have no choice but to follow the federal officers’ directive. Laken is pinning me to the ground with his body—his lifelessly still body.
“Laken?”
It takes everything I have to push him off me, and when I do, my world is ripped from beneath my feet for the third time in my life. He’s been shot, and the entrance wound is puddling blood around his frozen and rapidly whitening frame.
“Help me!” I scream while rolling Laken onto his stomach to compress his wound. “It’s not my blood,” I assure the brunette, who falls to her knees beside me two seconds later. “He’s been shot. He’s bleeding.” My voice croaks when I add, “He wasn’t meant to be here. He was supposed to walk away.”
I repeat my mantra over and over again as they load Laken onto a gurney and race him toward an awaiting ambulance. Then I repeat it even more when the last man who should be offering me comfort wraps me up with one of his famously warm hugs.
“He wasn’t meant to be here. He was supposed to walk away.”
EPILOGUE
NICOLE
Nerves take flight in my stomach when I walk onto the stage at the annual Country Music Awards in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. The mood is subdued. I’m not surprised. It always is when I perform this song. It was the number-one hit on my first album. It is titled: “It Should Have Been Him.”
As I stand behind a microphone, the scene reminds me so much of the ending of A Star is Born. I can see the tears in the audience’s eyes, and I haven’t even started singing yet.