Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“What are your plans this summer?”
“I don’t have any. Apart from trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life, that is.” She tilted her head to the side. “Do you have any plans?”
“How would you feel about moving in? I know it’s quite sudden, but it’ll give you a chance to figure out what you want to do. What you want to be? No pressure.”
She couldn’t believe he was asking her that. Her parents were always on her case so that at times she felt she couldn’t breathe.
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to think about it?”
“I don’t need to think about it. Yes, yes, yes.” She jumped out of the bath and hugged him tightly. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You may hate living with me.”
She doubted that for even a second she would have regrets. It was Dwayne, the man she’d been wanting for a long time. There’s no way in hell that she’d ever hate living with him.
Chapter Ten
One week later
“What exactly are you looking for?” Beast asked.
Dwayne looked up from Beast’s office to see his uncle leaning against the doorframe. He’d snuck in early so that he could get started on what Williams, the police informant they paid, had for him. “I’m looking at most of the unsolved cases or the guys that were caught when I was eighteen.”
“At seven in the morning?”
“I started around four, why? I didn’t wake anyone.”
“Yeah, and if you did, I would have blown your fucking head off.” Beast entered the room. “Why unsolved cases and assholes that were caught?” He lifted up one file, glancing through it.
“The bodies that you brought to my attention. The women. I didn’t kill women. I was attempting to save them with my mission.”
“Mission?”
“You can mock it all you want, but it meant something to me.”
“I’m not mocking it. Just seems strange to call it a mission.”
“It’s exactly what it was.”
“Fine. So, this mission, what were you hoping to achieve going through hundreds of files?”
“To see if someone rang a bell. If I knew someone. Nothing matches.”
“Someone clearly thinks like you.”
“It’s not hard to see a forest that is completely off-limits to everyone, and think, oh, this is a good place to bury a body. I’m only doing this because you two can’t.”
“In our world, if you don’t think about everything and all the consequences of what you do, it gets you killed. Gets people you love killed. Don’t take that chance, Dwayne. Anything you see, anything that gives you even a smidgen of doubt, you double-check, triple-check, and make sure you wipe it out of your mind before moving on. Otherwise, people you love could end up dead.”
“Got it.” He glanced down at the file in his hands. The man had a shaved head, was known for racial attacks, and was still locked in prison. Just seeing the face of the man made Dwayne sick to his stomach.
There was a time he’d have been afraid, scared, and allow that fear to manifest. Not anymore. He was the thing that people had nightmares about.
“I heard Charity moved in.”
“Can’t anyone have a secret from you?” Dwayne asked, opening another file.
“She’s young.”
“Don’t even get me started on her age. Look at Hope. She should have been dating someone like me, not you.”
“Still, she wouldn’t have gone for your lame ass. Moving in is a big step.”
“I know.”
“You like her?” Beast asked.
Seeing as his uncle was clearly going to stick around and have this conversation, Dwayne closed the file and focused on his pain in the ass. “Why are you suddenly interested in my love life?”
“You’re getting older. Some men, they have certain needs.”
“If you’re talking about sex, don’t go there. I don’t need to know.”
“I’m talking about settling down, Dwayne. Not all of us think with our head in the trash. Sex is great, but grow past that,” Beast said.
Rolling his eyes, he stared at Beast. The man was huge, scary, and a force to be reckoned with. When he’d come to take him away from his father, Dwayne had considered him Santa Claus, taking him away from the nightmare that had become his life.
“I love her,” Dwayne said.
He’d never said that to anyone else before. Staring at his uncle, he saw that he’d surprised him.
“You love her?”
“Yeah, I do.”
He opened the file again, about to get back to work.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, you can’t just drop something like that and pretend nothing has changed.”
“Nothing has changed.”
“Dwayne, you’ve just said that you love Charity and you don’t think that’s a big deal?”
“No.”
“Does she know?”
“Why do I feel like we’re attempting to gossip or something?”
“Dwayne, I know we’ve not always seen eye to eye, but I do love you.”
“I know that.” Dwayne stared at his uncle, not really sure what to say to make him seem less enthusiastic. “She’s different. I don’t want to live without her.”