Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
“Shut the fuck up, Ethan,” Sly says. I raise my eyebrows, turn to him. “While your concern for our welfare is touching, it’s really none of your business, Silas. Ophelia Hart is none of your business, not anymore. I know you had a thing for protecting her growing up, but those days are over.” My jaw ticks and I know Sly doesn’t miss it, but he, unlike his son, is too controlled to give anything away. “While we’re doling out free advice, though, I’ll give you some. Stay away from Horatio Hart. He’s a criminal and a con and he’ll con you just like he did me.”
“Thanks, Dad, appreciate that.” I check my watch. “Gotta go. Need to get my tux for the big shindig.”
“You stay away from Phee, Silas. I mean it,” Sly says.
“Or what? You’ll expect me to stand there and take another beating? Those days are long gone, Sly,” I say, throwing his words back at him.
“There are much more effective ways to punish you, Silas.” I hear the threat but don’t quite get it until he speaks his next words. “No more private little meetings, understood?”
Does he know she came to see me? Which one of us is he having followed? If it’s her, does he know she went to see her father?
“What private meetings?” Ethan asks while Sly and I stare each other down, and I understand that Ethan doesn’t know.
“I wish I knew what the hell you were talking about,” I say and check my watch, weirdly calm, and turn to leave, Nigella just a step behind me.
Sly Fox is up to something and this time, it involves Ophelia, and she is most definitely my business.
15
OPHELIA
It’s Saturday morning, the last weekend before Christmas. Just a few days to go.
I used to love these days growing up, used to want to draw them out as long as I could. Most kids love Christmas morning. I get it. You’re anxious to get to the gifts.
For me, though, it was always over too soon, and I wanted to make it last. I loved having my dad home with me and not off to his endless meetings, and for some reason, he’d talk about Mom more over the holiday. He’d tell the same stories every year and wipe away tears that didn’t lessen over time.
Weirdly, I liked seeing this. It entranced me that my father loved this woman who’d given birth to me—who I had no recollection of—so very much. Mom loved Christmas, and they seem to be some of their happiest memories. I don’t think he realized how much I needed to hear those stories.
Now, though, I dread it all. I wish it were over and it was January already.
I sit on the edge of the bed in my apartment, a mug of coffee warming my hands, while I watch soft flakes of snow fall outside. The roads will be a mess, but from up here, it’s serene and perfect. For a little while, I can stay here, cocooned against what is coming.
There is a stillness so complete here that I imagine I can hear the flakes when they land on the floor to ceiling windows. I bring the steaming mug to my lips and drink a sip of coffee sweetened with sugar and cream, my half-packed suitcase on the edge of the bed next to me.
I look at the engagement ring sitting on the nightstand and feel a knot in my stomach. I don’t know how I got here, how Ethan and I got here. When Ethan proposed, I wasn’t remotely ready for it. As far as I was concerned, it came out of nowhere. I wonder where the disconnect was, how I didn’t see where his head was when mine was so not there. Not even close. It was also the worst possible timing.
When I think back on it, I wonder if I missed signs, if I was so absorbed in what was happening to my father that I just wasn’t paying attention, but not once can I pinpoint a time when Ethan was on such a different track than I was.
Over the years, Ethan and I have had a strange relationship, I guess. He was one of the only boys I had contact with. My father was very protective of me growing up. I attended an all-girls school. I was shy and never quite fit with the girls there, and the boys at the sister school never looked twice at me when we had any interaction with them.
But I’d had a crush on Ethan. Maybe it was because he was older. Maybe it was because he was the only boy in my life apart from Silas, who was never a boy, and that’s another story altogether. Maybe it was the fact that we were always thrown together. Even when Ethan went away to college we spent time together when he returned. Maybe it was just easier when he visited his parents, as I was the only girl around since we lived a little way out of town proper. Or maybe it was his parents giving him little nudges.