Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Hugh laughs once and shakes his head. “Good luck with that. You’re nothing but the disgraced son. You’re a petty criminal and a minor mafia lord. Nobody at Hayle Construction’s going to give a damn about you, not a single employee, much less the damn board. You have no legal standing and no support. You’re as dead as your old man as far as they’re concerned, which means you’re wrong, Kellen. This family is mine and I’m going to steer it the way I see fit.”
While Hugh is in a good position to take full control of the Hayle Construction Company and the real power behind the behind the power, the Hayle mafia family with its sticky fingers in a thousand pots of honey, he’s wrong about me. So fucking wrong it’s almost comical.
I smile at him tightly, struggling to maintain my composure. “I’ll have the staff make up a room.”
“You can’t stay here forever,” he says as I turn and walk away. “At some point, you’ll have to accept it. I’m the one in charge, Kellen, and that’s not going to change.”
Chapter 3
Tara
The cottage at the edge of the Hayle property is a tiny one-bedroom shack with a red door, a brick facade, and creeping vines growing up into the gutters. A rain barrel sits out front collecting whatever water falls in the desert, which isn’t much, and dozens of gardening implements are scattered around in the shade of the nearby shed’s overhang, with more tools inside.
At least it’s cool in my little house. It’s been mine for years, ever since I begged Cait’s Dad for a job and he allowed me to stay here while I got clean. I drifted into the gardening position, and that’s been my life ever since—though the old man’s tolerance and leniency didn’t last for long.
Still, this place is my home, or at least the closest thing I have to a home right now. My plants are in little pots along the deep kitchen windowsill. My cups and plates and utensils are nestled in their little drawers and cupboards and my tiny living room is cluttered but cozy with lots of pillows, throw blankets, and a constantly humming ductless AC system. My bedroom isn’t much bigger, but it’s got a decent closet, enough room for a queen bed, and the bathroom was updated in the last century.
Overall, it’s my little escape from the world.
And it feels like Kellen’s invading it.
Even though he hasn’t been back here yet. I dig through an old bin I keep tucked away under my bed while the coffee brews and the sun rises on a comfortable morning until I find the old pictures of me and Cait. I smile to myself, amazed all over again at how young we were. The photos range from when we first met at fourteen, all the way up to our last year together at eighteen. Those final pictures aren’t easy to look at—we’re skinny, strung out, eyes half-glazed, probably high. Before that, we were happy teenage girls.
I still don’t understand how the slide happened.
My hands shake when I put the pictures back and shove them under my bed again. Kellen’s question keeps ringing in my ears and I rub my wrist where he gripped me. His fingers left dark black and blue marks in my skin, and the asshole looked like he wanted to crack my skull open and tongue my brain, and I almost can’t blame him.
From his perspective, I’m the source of his family’s suffering, or at least intimately linked with it.
But from where I’m at, Kellen and his entire psycho family deserves to be dragged through the dirt, beaten, bruised, and left for dead.
There’s a reason Cait picked me up from my parents’ house one night when we were sixteen, took a baggie of little white pills from her purse, and said, you want to forget for a little while?
My only regret is laughing and saying, hell, yes.
I sit down at my kitchen table and try to distract myself. My father moved to Florida after I got clean and now I send them half my paycheck every month to help him make ends meet after a shitty investment nearly wiped out all his savings. I get the pleasure of supporting his new girlfriend, Janet, a girl I dislike with all my power, but I do it anyway because I’m a good daughter. When that’s done, I put the check in a card, put the card in an envelope, and force myself to take it down to the front driveway where I can drop it in the mailbox.
On the way, I slow and stop when I reach the driveway. A big, white van’s parked out front, and three guys are lounging around. I don’t recognize any of them, but a bunch of stuff is piled up on the ground: furniture, luggage, big paintings. The guys are all in jeans and shirts, talking to each other quietly, laughing about something, and as I stand there staring at them through the bushes, Kellen comes out from the front, picks up a chair, and carries it inside.