Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 79749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
I can't count the number of times I've doubted how I handled that situation. Telling her who I was at the very last minute, when there was no chance of making a different choice, backed both of us into an inescapable corner.
Maybe if I had told her that I was a fed when we had a chance to get away from her father's house might've had her making a different decision.
Today, I gave her no choice. Sink or swim, beautiful Aspen. Your wish from eight years ago is my command, but after this is done, I have to walk away. I can't give this woman any more power over me than she already has.
I trudge toward the front door, my toes frozen from the snow and ice coating them. I'd forgotten just how brutal Massachusetts winters can be, and I haven't missed the harshness of the cold on my face at all. I'd much rather be on a beach somewhere or sitting beside a lake with a fishing pole in my hand, even though I hate fucking fishing. I hate the tasks before me even worse.
I remind myself that this is a case like any other. The history I have with Aspen doesn't come into play at all. The danger surrounding this is no different from any other case I've worked on. They're all dangerous. There's always a risk of dying. Damien is brutal, but so is Nathan Adair, who will always be the piece of shit who got away until we can take his ass down, too. So was Gabriel Sosa, and I put his ass behind bars years ago.
As I push open the front door, I spot her immediately, and there's something so familiar with the way she's sitting in the armchair, with her arms crossed over her chest, more than a little annoyed to be inconvenienced.
Her eyes light up when she sees me, and I hate the way the spark of it threatens to set something inside of me on fire like it always did in the past. There's no room for any of that shit in my life. I'm team fool me once, especially where she's concerned.
"Luke," she whispers, and I fight the way my face wants to scrunch in disgust.
Luke Gannon was a fool, and I haven't been that man since my blood stained her father's office carpet.
When I don't acknowledge her like it seems she fully wants me to, the waterworks start again. Witnessing her flipping the switch is surreal. There was a time when I'd bend over backward to keep her from feeling an ounce of pain, but I'm slightly more sadistic these days than the man she knew was.
"You have to take me back," she insists when I walk toward the small kitchen and take a seat at the tiny kitchen table so I can pull my soaked boots off.
"He will kill us both," the driver from the far corner of the room, having finally woken up after being drugged, says.
He's tied up. We haven't decided exactly what we're going to do to him.
Ivan was extremely paranoid. That's why I spent all those months working for him and didn't learn a damn thing. I was right in the middle of that shit and there was no one talking. What I was permitted to see was never enough to testify and get a conviction. I never once heard Ivan issue an illegal command other than the one that was supposed to end with my death.
I have to suspect that maybe one of the things Damien actually learned from his old boss was to keep things close to the chest and trust very few people with all your secrets.
There's a very real chance the driver doesn't know a damn thing and the only involvement he has with the family is driving Aspen to her weekly hair and nail appointment.
"Please," Aspen begs, and like the smart woman that she is, she doesn't use my fake name again.
She was always so good at reading a room, and I know that was from hard lessons learned when she made mistakes as a kid.
"Eli will be punished for this," she whispers, another sob escaping her throat.
Part of me wants to do her bidding. She's clearly a distraught mother wanting to protect her child, but not having one in the first fucking place would've been the best recourse.
"There is another team in Connecticut that is getting your son," I tell her as I stand barefooted and grab my go-bag so I can change my wet fucking socks and get a dry pair of boots.
"Is he getting all the kids?"
I snap my head in the driver's direction. "What the fuck did you just say?"
Jersey stands from his spot on the sofa and walks closer to the driver. "He has more kids."