Total pages in book: 213
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
Daniel shakes his head as if what I’m saying is ridiculous. Even after all these years he can’t admit it.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re back, and she’s with you. I don’t care about anything else and neither does anyone else.”
It’s quiet for a long moment and Daniel runs his hand down his face, letting his head fall back and looking at the ceiling before he breathes in deep. The memory of Tyler and the pathetic look on Daniel’s face forces a vice to tighten around my heart. I fucking hate it. I hate the pain of our past more than anything else.
“Do you think he’d ever forgive me?” he asks me.
“Tyler forgave everyone,” I answer him quickly, ready to rid this anxious feeling coursing in my blood. He was the only good one of us. Of course he’s the one who died young. “And Tyler wanted her to have a home. To have a family.”
He nods his head, although it takes him a long moment before he looks back at me.
“It feels too good to be true,” he says softly and I know why.
“Did you tell her the truth?”
“The truth?” he asks as if I don’t know.
It only takes me glancing at his side where he was shot for him to understand my question.
“She has no idea. She thinks it was random. A coincidence.”
“Is it Marcus?” I have a bad feeling in my gut, but he’s the only person that this leads to.
“Yeah.” His answer is quick and met with a simmering anger that I recognize from him. There’s the brother I know and love. “I told him about her. I needed his help.”
“You told Marcus. Who else?”
“He’s the only one I told. It had to be him or someone he told.”
“Why did you tell him anything?” I keep the accusations out of my tone. Daniel’s been reckless for Addison. He always was but this …
“I had her license plate and nothing else.”
My thumb rubs in circular motions over my pointer finger as I take it all in.
He adds, “I couldn’t lose her again.” I know he could have told Jase. Jase could have looked up her information. But I don’t remind him of that. He holds on to guilt too much and I’ve only just gotten him back. I need him here… especially knowing what’s coming.
I have nothing but silence as I think of any reason that Marcus would come for us. He’s not a man I want as an enemy, but I’m also not certain it’s him.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. It will never happen again.” He strengthens his resolve and leans forward, daring me to object. But I do.
“And what if she leaves you again?” I ask him and he stares back at me, his chest rising and falling with determination. “What if she finds out something she shouldn’t?”
He doesn’t say what I expect him to, that she won’t. Instead he merely answers, “Then I’ll follow her.”
My breath leaves me slowly, words failing me.
“She’s mine,” he says as if nothing else matters. And maybe it doesn’t.
I nod my head once, ending the conversation.
The hands of the clock in the office are all I can hear as I run my thumbnail under the flap of the envelope and stare back at my brother. “She’s changed you.”
“How’s that?” he asks me. Again he’s on the defensive, and it makes me smile. I like to see him showing something that’s real.
“It’s hard to pretend when you’d do anything for someone you love.”
His gaze flickers to the envelope in my hand and he stares at it as he says, “I didn’t come here for a heart to heart, Carter.”
“You didn’t open it?” Although the words come out with disbelief, the corners of my lips kick up with amusement. He’s so consumed with Addison he didn’t give a fuck about the one thing I’ve been losing sleep over for weeks.
“Marcus said it was a message of what’s to come,” he tells me as I finally open it. The paper tears easily and inside I’m surprised to find only a one-by-one-inch square photo. It falls into my palm facedown and I toss the crumpled envelope onto the desk, then flip the small piece of photo paper over.
“I went through all that shit for that?” Daniel asks, but I ignore him, too drawn to the picture.
I trace the curve of her porcelain face. I let the rough pad of my thumb run along the edge of the photo as I note her beautiful smile and the way her dark hair is lit with the sunshine in the image.
My heart pounds hard and I can’t hear what Daniel’s saying. I can’t hear anything but the conversation I had with Tony Romano in the basement cellar months ago. The man who I’ve been avoiding, and the man who reached out to Marcus to deliver the message rather than tell me himself.