Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Ryder looked just as confused as I was, and the hand that I’d used to slug her with stung as he held it gripped tightly in his. There was way too much to unpack here, not least of all the things Janie had revealed in the video we’d all just watched.
My chest felt tight as I fought the urge to attack her again, but I knew as much anger as I felt, she was not the only one to blame here. I could lay it all at her feet for sure since she was the idiot who couldn’t take no for an answer. But I have to ask myself, had it not been her, would they have found someone else? From what I see, they would’ve used anyone to serve their purpose; she just made herself available.
I don’t want to feel anything for her, and I’m not dumb enough to let my heart soften to the point of stupidity, but it was hard not to look at the mess in front of me and feel some type of pity. She’s a mess both physically and mentally, and I probably wouldn’t have hit her so hard had I known what she had done to her face.
I can only blame the piss poor lighting in the old warehouse for keeping it so well hidden, but now I felt like crap for adding to her obvious misery; go figure. I was thinking of any and everything so as not to focus on the elephant in the room, and that is what had just been revealed.
I thought I knew most of what they had done, but I didn’t know the half of it still. That we had been targeted by such evil leaves me breathless and just a little bit shaky to think about what else is out there. With all that had been done to me, I hadn’t seen them as the evil people she had described, but now I know better because she didn’t just talk about Ryder and me and her part and theirs in our demise.
She spoke about things that my mind had never even imagined someone like Mary as awful as she was being a part of. Her mention of the church and the things that went on there made my skin crawl, and I felt a shiver go down my spine at the thought of how close I came to being snared and caught up with them.
I’d left when I got a bad feeling about Matt and some of the people around him and tried to take Ryder with me, but I never in my wildest dreams could’ve foreseen this. At least now I know why he hated me so much, why he went out of his way to take Ryder away from me.
On the one hand, if I had gone along with their program Ryder and I would’ve been married by now, but then I’d be a running candidate for a front-row seat in hell. I’ll take the hell I’d already suffered here instead of the real one; thank you very much.
My confusion, though, stemmed from the question of whether or not these people were even human. Mary Hudson was either crazy or diabolical as hell, and her daughters don’t seem to be much different. I guess they will be the next generation of monsters who will pick up where she left off unless someone stops them.
The kid that was talking while keeping her face hidden seemed to have an agenda in place to deal with that, if I’m not mistaken, and that was the other thing messing with my mind. Her voice sounded like that of an elementary school girl or even younger, but the things she was saying and the way the two grown men in the room seemed to comply with her orders left me with more than a few questions.
She’d stumped Janie with her last statement, pretty much telling her that her only options right now were to live on the streets or live in the house she had grown up in, which would be anyone’s first choice, but it was the caveat that was going to be hard for Janie or anyone else to deal with.
Last night there were a few people from her childhood who had chimed in on the type of person she was back in her school days. From what was said, most of them still lived in the area, an area where Janie and her family were not well-liked. Now she had to face the prospect of living in the midst of the people she had wronged when she believed she would never have to live there again.
Even so, me being me, I still felt a bit sorry for Janie when it was all said and done, and she just sat there on the floor weeping bitterly. As a woman, it was hard to watch. I tried to hold onto the memory of all that she had done, but a part of me still felt for her.