Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
I sat up, my heavy-booted feet hitting the floor. “Hit me.”
“We’ll start with Eddison. He’s dead.” Shasha ticked off a finger. “Julia is alive but very paralyzed, with about a ten percent chance of ever feeling movement in her legs again.” He grinned then, quite manically. “And your daughter kicked ol’ Rich so hard in the balls that he had to have one of them removed. The other is touch and go.”
My brows rose. “And after he’s released from the hospital for his testicular problem, he’s going to be arrested. In fact, he’s technically already under arrest. Oh, and Julia’s awake and aware enough to give an entire accounting on what happened. She’s corroborated everything that you told the detectives. She even admitted to killing your dog on purpose.”
“Wow,” I said.
Nastya’s hand squeezed mine, and I looked to her. “Haze.”
I moved closer until her face was close to mine before saying, “Yeah, Mama?”
“I’m tired of being in the news.”
I snorted. “Me and you both, Mama. Me and you both.”
Cooking together is not romantic. Get out of my way.
—Nastya to Haze
HAZE
Four years later
“Whatcha got?” Shasha asked me.
I glanced at the papers on my console and said, “New district attorney in town has a hard-on for suave looking men that are more attractive than her. She’s put three people away in the last month for bullshit yet lets a man that raped his kid walk away with a slap on his wrist.”
“Is that right?” Shasha drawled.
This was how it went for us now.
I kept Shasha’s nose clean using my authority, and he took care of assholes that needed to stop breathing air, that the government wouldn’t take care of the ‘right’ way.
It was a great symbiotic relationship that Shasha and I had going for the last four years, and I imagined it would continue until I retired.
“Noted,” Shasha said. “Are y’all coming to dinner tonight?”
I looked at my watch. “Waiting on Desi to get home from class, then we’ll be there.”
“Okay, see you.” He hung up without saying goodbye, just like always.
I had just enough time to take a breath of air before my wife was staring at me with narrowed eyes.
“If you were in a room full of women, would you choose me?” She batted her eyelashes at me.
And, because I was who I was, I didn’t answer like she likely would’ve expected me to.
“Why am I in the room?” I asked instead of “of course.”
She frowned. “I don’t know. Why are you in the room?”
I leveled her with a look, then returned my eyes to the road.
“You’re not going to win this one, bro,” Dima replied from the back seat.
Nastya whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes at him. “No comments from the peanut gallery.”
“I would assume I’m in the room because you told me to be there…” I paused, deliberating. “Am I choosing because I want to have sex with them? Or am I choosing them to protect my back?” I hesitated. “Or maybe I’m in a room full of women, and I have to choose one to sacrifice?”
Dima snorted out a laugh.
Nastya turned to survey me.
Today was my forty-fifth birthday.
Forty. Five.
“I now knew what ‘aging like fine wine’ means,” Nastya said after a while.
I turned to look at her. “What?”
“Why do you age so sexy, and I age like I’m a bag of potatoes?” she asked.
I grinned wickedly at her and said, “I don’t think that you can really count yourself as a sack of potatoes when you’ve been pregnant with my children for the last few years, Mama.”
“Gag,” Dima said. “Can we not talk about my sister being pregnant?”
“Dima,” Milena snorted. “For the love of God, grow up.”
Dima narrowed his eyes at Milena, then said, “I’m not talking to you!”
Dima was home, and Milena had been tasked with picking him up yesterday, but had forgotten.
I’d picked him up on the way home from work, and he’d complained non-stop about being left behind.
Dima hadn’t let Milena forget that she’d forgotten, either. He’d brought it up at least fifteen times now.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Dima asked.
“Grabbing our packages from the Amazon Locker,” Nastya answered. “I needed two strapping men to get it.”
“What is it?” Dima asked as we arrived at the Locker.
“You’ll see.” She smiled. “You got that pallet jack, honey?”
I got out, pulled the pallet jack out of the back of the truck, and rolled it to the back of the trailer.
The box didn’t even fit into one of the lockers.
One of the men manning the place had to direct us to grab it from the back. Which we did.
Once it was situated and on the trailer, I got back into the truck.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“A small car, by the feel of it,” Dima joked. “Hey, what did they say about your ex?”
Nastya grinned but refused to tell me what it was until we were at home.