Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
“What’s up your sleeve?” Dario asked him.
“Re-think this,” Pop threatened.
I shook my head. “No. I’m done.”
I walked outside.
I walked by my two sisters who were huddled with Lisa by the gazebo near the door.
“Three of Pop’s men drove off with her, Tommy,” Tessa whispered. “Lisa said they pulled her out of your car and left in a black Impala.”
I ran back into the house toward the room I’d been in with Pop and Dare. Dario met me in the hall.
I pushed past him, “Where the fuck?”
The room was empty.
“Where’d he go?” I yelled at my brother.
Dario looked back, “I dunno. He left the room after you. I made a call.”
“He fucking took her!” I snarled.
I tore through the house looking for Pop, but he wasn’t here. I finally found Nino, who’d been in the garden off that room and he’d seen Pop come outside and head toward the driveway. He had been watching his son play with the other kids while Bianca was in the kitchen with some of the other women, so he hadn’t paid attention. Most of the men were still on Pop’s payroll. The house security had been part of that until last week when he cut me off. Nino and Dex stayed with me; I was paying them myself.
I got on my phone and dialed Pop’s cell.
“You’re in time out, my boy,” is how Pop answered the phone. I tried to get a lock on the rage that was building in me but no, it wasn’t happening,
“Where the fuck–” I started but he cut me off.
“I’ll call you later and we’ll discuss the extra payment you’ll have to make if you want her back. Like you’ve changed your mind about loyalty to me, I’ve changed my mind, too. I’ve decided that thirty-five k for Athena wasn’t quite enough.”
He fucking hung up on me.
“I almost kept you for myself, Athena,” Tom said to me. “Almost. Now that… that woulda been the ultimate fuck you to your father.”
We were in a living room of a cabin in the woods where we’d been dropped off by his three thugs. It was just the two of us in there; the thugs were mulling about, armed, outside. Tom was pouring a glass of wine.
I visibly shuddered.
He continued talking. “Saw you on that street and it felt like I could have a do-over with Carlita. But then I remembered you clutching your little dolly in my car that night, begging to go home to your mommy. If it weren’t for that image burned in my brain, I wouldn’t have given you to my son.”
I tried to hold my emotions in check, but he went on, “Your father, piece of shit moron that he is, he thinks this was all his idea. I told him it was time to pay his debts, planted a few seeds, and he practically offered you on a silver platter.”
My armor split right down the middle and I started to lose my foothold, started to lose my foothold on everything.
“He’d have agreed to it being me, being Tommy, or you could’ve been given to my pool guy if it’d mean saving his ass.”
I was going to throw up.
“Dario has a thing for you. Wishes it were him. I know how he feels. I wish it was me.” He downed his drink, put his glass down, and then he started to walk towards me.
“He’s here, Sir,” a gruff voice announced, then I heard a gunshot and a thump. The goon who’d announced that was down on the ground, bleeding from his head. I heard rapid fire outside the cabin. I turtled on the floor and scampered backwards against a wall.
Tom Sr. advanced and got right in front of me. He was an inch from me when I heard Tommy’s voice and then saw him. Tommy was in the doorway and the gun in his hand was pointed at his father. On his face was a hard, stony, hateful expression and it was trained on his father.
“Back away,” he told him.
Tom sneered at Tommy, then reached, grabbing me, yanking me to my feet, then spun around so that he was in the corner of the room and my back was against his front. Tom’s arm was around my neck, my throat in the crook of his arm; his fingers digging into my shoulder.
Tommy didn’t look me in the eye. He was looking at his father.
“You let her fucking go, Pop. Now.”
“I gave her to you!” Tom shouted. “She saves your soul from hell and you thank me by pointing a gun at me, boy?” Tom started to laugh.
“Let. Her. Go.”
I’d never seen Tommy’s face like that. In all the moments when he’d frightened me, in all the times I thought his anger couldn’t be any scarier, nothing had prepared me for the emanating anger that was coming off of him at this moment.