Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
He’d lied to Jolene about his mom. She’d long been dead, her ashes in a vase on his uncle’s mantle. He lied because it felt better than telling the truth—that his mother was a psychotic woman who ruined his childhood.
Dominic grips the steering wheel tightly as he pulls Boaz’s truck off the road and takes a rocky path. The tires of the truck bump along the dark gray gravel, branches swiping the body of the vehicle. His phone rings in the cupholder. Jolene is calling. She’s been calling for the past two hours. What the hell does she want? Why can’t she just sit down and let him handle this?
Dominic cracks a window, needing the air, even more so when he spots the brown cabin perched between low-hanging trees.
The cabin is small, with a sagging roof and a chimney. The porch wraps around to the left and a white door is in the center. Tree branches slope over the house, as if shielding it and its secrets from the outside world. Because there are secrets in that cabin—things that must never get out.
He parks in front, spotting his Chevy SUV off to the left. A curtain inside the cabin shifts, falling in place. He kills the engine of Boaz’s truck and climbs out, making his way toward the front door.
He gives it a knock and listens to the heavy footsteps thumping on the other side. The door swings open and Boaz has a brow cocked as he eyes him. “You’re late.”
“I had meetings.” He’s lying. He didn’t have meetings. He just paced around in a private parking lot for quite some time, trying to come up with a solution to the mess he’d created. He realized it all came down to this moment. He did stop by Executive Mansion to snag his iPad so he could have his speech with him. Once this situation was handled with Shavonne and Brynn, he’d planned on going straight to Charlotte. Push come to shove, he’d blame it all on Boaz.
He steps around Boaz, focusing on the woman strapped to an old wooden chair. Thick black cables are wrapped tightly around the upper half of her body and several strips of duct tape are around her mouth, but they don’t hide the freshly developed bruises around her eye and bridge of her nose. There are no tears in her dark-brown eyes, only pure rage. Shavonne grimaces at him, breathing raggedly through her nostrils, her dark, curly hair unkempt.
Dominic takes a look around the cabin. It’s just as he remembers when he was young, only dustier and creakier now. Wooden walls and flooring, dark counters, a stove he’s sure doesn’t work, along with a rusted white fridge. The door in the kitchen leads to what used to be a backyard but is now crowded with tall grass and trees. Both are small and vacant. A fireplace is off to his right, next to a dusty plaid green sofa. There are two bedrooms in the back of the house, one of which belonged to him.
This cabin used to belong to his mother. Then she managed to kill herself when Dominic was seventeen, and the state handed the house over to his uncle Ben. She had a will, apparently, and wanted all of her assets given to his uncle (her only other relative), so that once Dominic was of age, he could assume the assets. She didn’t have much, just the cabin and an old Buick that he used when he went to college. She had no money saved, nothing of substantial use. Dominic thinks about that sometimes—how his mother created a will just to fulfill the duty of hanging herself in her bedroom. The mind is a powerful thing, but hey, at least she considered her son before doing the deed.
He found her the day she committed suicide, a tipped over chair beneath her dangling feet, her neck bent at an odd angle through an extension cord. He remembers the dress she wore too—a pink one with red flowers. She also had a full face of makeup. It was like she’d made a day of it—prepared herself for her own demise.
He can still remember his uncle Ben going at him about being better than his mother. Uncle Ben may have been a country old man, but he knew the way to live. He had money, and he’d worked his ass off for it, but he couldn’t take care of Dominic forever. Uncle Ben had his own kids, his own life. He kept him around, just before Dominic ran off to Duke University. To this day, Dominic still can’t believe he landed a scholarship there. But being smart and rich was better than being stupid and broke. He wasn’t athletic by any means, so that meant he had to use his brains.