Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
“This isn’t your fault, Brigid,” I tell her, grabbing a bag of peas from the freezer and pressing it against her face. “We needed the money. Me, you and Ruth. You did what you thought was best. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s Dad’s. And Greg’s. We had forty grand before they decided to lose it all. And did they stick around to help pick up the pieces?”
She shakes her head, tears trailing down her cheeks.
I kiss her forehead and stand, giving Oscar a fuss behind his ears. “We need to leave. The house foreclosure is in two days, I say we stay until then, enjoy sleeping in a bed while we can, then get in the car and go.”
“Where?”
“Away from here. I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ve got waitressing experience now, I can get a job somewhere and take care of us. But we can’t stay here. That guy will be back and he will want his money. Zeneli won’t let this drop.”
“Did you notice how he changed when he saw your phone?”
I nod, remembering the look he gave. I cross the kitchen and grab the smashed phone from the table where it fell, studying it. There’s nothing there, no messages, no alerts. Just that stupid selfie of me and Dietrich that I haven’t had the heart to delete.
Because despite what I might say, a part of me still loves him. Stupid, I know, after all he’s put me through. If I had any sense, I should be wishing I never met him. My life before was bad, but since Dietrich it’s only gotten worse.
The only light in that darkness is Ruth. And Brigid. We promised to make our own family different from how we grew up, but we’re sort of sucking at it right now.
But still. I loved him. I did, and I can’t change that. Will I ever be able to delete that one and only photograph I have of the father of my child?
I don’t know.
But my time here in Vegas has come to an end.
chapter fifteen
Dietrich
As the private jet hums around me, approaching Henderson, I have no fear. How many people in the world have survived a plane crash then went down in another one?
The odds are so minuscule I’d lay my bet down on never again.
I rub the spot above my eye where the pain never seems to stop. The rough skin reminds me that not only do I have a new name, I have a new face. Which, doesn’t bother me. I never cared what I looked like.
From an aesthetic standpoint, I understand it’s less pleasing with the hard, stretched, thicker skin where the burns healed, and the jagged reminder that they basically had to staple what was left of my mangled forehead back onto my cracked skull. It’s not without its downside though. Splitting your head open and breaking sixteen bones leaves some aches behind that no amount of Advil will soothe.
I’ll suffer. I won’t medicate with anything that would dull my senses. I need them all to make things right.
Out of the fire comes the phoenix, as they say, and somewhere in the hospital, in those months where my memories were a black hole, I rose.
When I came out of the coma, the hospital staff gave me the two things found on my person when they brought me in barely alive. The first was a ruby ring I had in a box in my pocket when they found me in the wreckage. It was my mother’s, the one she gave me when she died, and I take it everywhere I go. And the other was a folded scrap of paper with a note, from who I wasn’t sure.
I owe you, man. Whatever you need.
Then a phone number.
It took months for my rehab to have me walking again and able to hold my fucking spoon myself. But, that ring kept me going. There was something about it that told me it was the key to everything.
Then, one morning when I was strong enough, one of the staff walked with me down to the beach. I stood there, the ocean breeze lashing around my robe as I fingered the ring in my pocket. As I withdrew it, the sun caught in the center of the stone, flashing a streak of red across my vision, and I said her name.
Hannah.
From there, a deluge of memories overwhelmed me. There are still some gray fuzzy areas where details are lost and times and places don’t make sense, but my focus was clear. I dialed the phone number on the note, but it wasn’t Hannah. It was someone else, someone I didn’t expect, but someone who it turns out owes me. Just like the note said.
I don’t like favors. Giving or receiving. But I’ll bend all my rules for Hannah. I needed a plane. Even in Grand Cayman, chartering a plane without ID proved beyond the resources I had at my disposal.