Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 108165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
He steps back, and she puts more force behind it. “Ouch!” She shakes out her hand.
Jackson chuckles. “You need gloves, tape, and tougher skin. Is your goal to take up boxing or take out someone in self-defense?”
Frankie rubs her knuckles. “What do you think?”
Jackson reaches into his bag and pulls out boxing bandage elastic tape. “I think you need to leave your body intact and let me take care of it.” He wraps her hands.
She glances up at him, but he keeps his focus on her hands. “Take care of what?”
“Eloise is concerned about you. She said your nephew’s girlfriend wrote a disturbing letter.”
“Disturbing? That’s an understatement. Did she also tell you Molly burned down the house?”
He lifts his gaze to hers. “That’s a bold accusation. Do you have proof?”
“Does it matter?”
“Save your hands. Save your dignity. Go home, and I’ll make things right.”
“My dignity? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He nods toward the punching bag.
She faces it, punching it the way he showed her. “She cheated on him because she was so distraught over his football injury.”
Smack. Smack. Smack.
“Then she told him it was okay to end things, to end his life.” Frankie huffs and grunts with each jab. “Her mother is a cunt. Her father is … well, he’s a real piece of work. And I want the whole family to pay because they are all awful. And they think they can get away with murder.”
Smack. Smack. Smack.
Frankie loses form and keeps punching the bag. Then she kicks the bag. “I hate them! I just HATE them!”
Jackson lets her fall apart. He waits for her to expend her last bit of energy. When she drops to her knees, hands balled at her face, body shaking, he hands her a bottle of water.
Frankie sniffles, lifting her red, tear-stained face.
“How are you making them pay?” he asks.
She takes several long gulps of water before rocking back onto her butt, knees bent. After wiping her face, she stares at the floor. “I’m going to ruin her reputation. I will make everyone see what a demonic whore she really is. And I will kick her mom off her pedestal, expose her indiscretions, and make her the laughingstock of Rhodale. Then I will run her out of business, off the city council and school board. Destroy her marriage and her whole fucking world.”
Jackson squints, returning a hesitant nod. “And her dad?”
Frankie lifts her gaze. “I’m going to make him fall in love with the woman destroying his whole fucking life, but he’s never going to see it coming.”
He weighs his words, but he won’t mince them. “You don’t have what it takes to pull it off.”
Frankie scrambles to her feet, chin up, jaw set. “You know nothing about me. I have absolutely nothing to lose.”
“Your life.”
She shakes her head. “My life? What life? I lost my brother and his wife. I lost the closest thing I had to a child of my own. I lost my job. And my parents won’t live forever. You overestimate the value of my life.”
Jackson holds back his instinct to wince at her words.
“Are you okay with a seventeen-year-old girl taking her own life because of you?”
She swallows, keeping her chin up, but she doesn’t answer.
“Are you willing to fuck her father? Are you willing to be his whore? Do you really think he can love his whore?”
A tiny line of indecision trenches between her eyes, but her stubbornness prevails as it always did with his sister. “Yes,” she says with a strained voice.
Jackson glances away from her at nothing in particular while pondering the questions only he can answer. Is he willing to let her destroy her life? Is he willing to let her potentially die? Is he willing to let Archer Sanford have her?
Jackson’s not in Boone, Kansas for Francesca Holter. She should be nothing more than a sideshow in the Sanford circus. Jackson has a family, and they need him to stay focused.
“If they don’t take your life, you'll wish you were dead by the time they’re done with you. Are you good with that? Are your parents good with that? Maybe you should take a trip home and ask them how they feel about losing their last child. And fuck your brother if he honestly would have expected this from you. I would walk through fire to keep you safe if you were my sister. I would take a million bullets. I would let someone torture me. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my loved ones from suffering.”
Frankie balls her hands at her sides. Lip stiff. Her eyes set in a hard stare as if she could will herself to hide all emotion.
Jackson cups her face, and she exhales a tiny breath while leaning into it. “Go home,” he whispers. “It’s not worth your life too.”