Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 115272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Life, for all intents and purposes, has been plodding along. Right now, the twins are filling out college applications, and I can’t help but wonder if Gianna has continued her education somewhere. After almost two years (I know the day the month the hour almost to the second, but I’m not going there), you’d think thoughts of her would dwindle, but they haven’t, not even a little bit. I still long for her like I do my next breath, though the pain is not as sharp as it once was.
Thankfully I was too caught up in my scheme to dwell for any surmountable length of time, but at night, alone in bed, the pain was tenfold, and nothing I’ve tried took the hell that is my life without her away. I’d given up trying, accepting this too as part of my penance. Though I wish she’d at least reach out to someone to let them know she was okay.
I have a feeling she’s punishing me with her silence that she’s alive and well somewhere, but could she really be hanging onto that mad after all this time? Hadn’t I stopped being mad at her a long time ago? Was my rejection so harsh that she had to do this? I ask myself those questions time and time again with no answers.
I’m even tempted to go looking for her after this is all over, but then I remind myself that that won’t be possible. I long for one last goodbye, even if just to see her from a distance, anything to give me that one last glimpse of my love before I go. Why hadn’t I thought of any of this before sending her away?
It was even more exacerbating now that none of what I feared had come to pass. No one has suspected me of anything thus far, and Ricci had his hands too full with his wife and the coming fallout with his father to look for me here. He was catching his ass trying to get back in Sal’s good graces while the old man was busy pulling his backing from the six others that had been there that night.
He’d met with the nun as I suspected he would, and she was the one, I guess, who’d given him the full details of that night because it was after his meeting with her that he really made up his mind about his son and grandson. Jr. has been lost without his mother, who had gone completely insane and was now at death’s door.
I guess she doesn’t have a year after all, but who could’ve guessed that even in the midst of sickness, she’d use that cream every single day, subjecting herself to the poison I’d put there? She’d sped up the process on her own; I’m not taking the blame for that.
Natalia had been sent away to some boarding school because she was literally traumatized by what had been done to her mother’s face, which looked as if acid had been poured all over the skin of her cheeks. With the people around her falling apart, her father because he’d lost his bid for a political seat, and now her mother, who’d gone insane, she’d needed to escape, I guess.
Now it’s time for me to go back, to start the ball rolling on Luna and those who are in bed with her and the sick shit she’s doing with kids. I thought of getting something extra special for Memnon to thank him for all his hard work as I got on the computer to contact him. As expected, he was there waiting as he’d promised with all the information needed.
“Mem, you’ve been a great help. I’ll take it from here.”
“What do you mean? Don’t you want my people to handle it?”
“No, not this time.”
“But those kids are spread out all over the place; it’ll take time to find them all and….”
“Oh, that part I’ll leave to you. I thought you meant bringing her down.
“Oh, I see, so you’re planning to expose her.”
“Yes, maybe we should coordinate our strikes.”
“I don’t understand. Are you going back to Sicily?”
“Yes!”
“You know it’s very dangerous; some of the people she’s involved with are high rollers, men and women with lots of backing. We’re talking world leaders and dignitaries.”
“I don’t care!”
“Nemesis, what’s really going on with you? Is this about your thing still? You haven’t mentioned it all this time, but I get the feeling you’re after more than you’ve let on. In fact, your very silence on the matter is suspicious in itself.”
“You’re overthinking; the two things have nothing to do with each other. She’s just a byproduct; I guess you can say.”
“Somehow, I don’t buy that. Why would you be on the ground there alone? What is it that you’re planning to do? You’re not still….”