Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81581 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81581 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
I smirk.
Me: She’s worth getting fucked over.
He responds with the hand flipping the bird emoji. Gwen starts cleaning up her mess in the kitchen, so I stand and shove my phone into my pocket. I stalk down the hallway because I want to steal a moment alone with Violet. She’s been teasing me in her sexy little dress all night. But when I approach the bathroom, the door is ajar and she’s not inside.
Fuck.
I rush into my room first because I worry I’ve left my chest open. Once I realize it’s still locked, but she’s not there, dread fills my chest.
Oh, God, no.
I take off down the hall to the other side of the house. The side I never want Violet to see. No other woman I’ve ever brought home has dared leave my bedroom or the living room. They were there for one reason only. But since Violet is here “as friends,” I guess she’s taken it upon herself to explore.
“Violet,” I holler as I stalk down the long hallway of my giant house. There’s a reason why Gwen stays on the other side. When I near her rooms, the stench hits me. I hardly ever come over here, and the housekeeper has been forbidden to step foot past my bedroom. Bile creeps in my throat when I find that one of the doors is open. Her bedroom. The fucking worst.
I pull my shirt up to cover my nose and mouth. Violet stands just inside the doorway. Her entire body is frozen stiff as she stares.
“Fuck.”
Gray’s voice is muffled as he curses behind me. My stomach roils as I take in the scene before me. Madness. Absolute chaos. I’m so shocked because the other parts of the house are immaculate and pristine. But this…this is sick.
“Violet,” Gray hisses as he grabs my elbow.
I jerk my arm from his grip and stare at the dump. Dump is a nice word. It’s an absolute shithole. I’d barely gotten through an episode of Hoarders once a few years back. After they found a dead cat under some debris in an old woman’s house, I shut it off and scrubbed my bathtub until I could see my reflection.
This is worse.
The stink is sickening. Rot. Mildew. Sour…something. Yuck. The potato skins I ate moments earlier, before I went exploring, threaten to make a reappearance. From floor to damn near the ceiling, this room is piled high with junk. Not just junk but trash. Trash! Somewhere in the middle of the chaos is a bed. Shit has been piled up on the bed as well. Only a small portion remains uncovered. Where that person sleeps. Whose room is this?
“Gwen,” Gray mutters as if to answer my unspoken question.
He told me she was sick, but not like this. This is something else. I see something run across her bed and I let out a scream. A strong hand covers my mouth from behind. I’m dragged out of the room and the door slams shut. The stink lingers in my nostrils, and I feel like I’ll throw up at any second. I fall limp in Gray’s grip as he retreats quickly down the hallway. I expect him to drag me back to the living room but instead, he pulls me into what must be his bedroom, hence the familiar masculine scent. I inhale it in hopes of ridding my nose of the disgusting stench from Gwen’s room.
My body trembles and he hugs me tight against him. With my back pressed against his chest and his strong arm around my middle, awareness prickles through me. Slowly, he peels away his hand from my mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
Guilt rushes through me. “I-I overreacted.”
He nuzzles his nose against my hair and groans. “You didn’t. It’s…it’s not something that people besides her and I see. I didn’t prepare you. It’s disgusting. I’m sorry you had to see it.”
“Things were living there,” I hiss, my voice quivering on the line between hysteria and calm. I’m pretty sure it was a big mouse but I can’t be certain.
“I know,” he growls. “Trust me. I pay a fucking exterminator to come out every week to try and deal with it.”
“You pull it all out and throw it away. That’s how you deal with it,” I exclaim.
He releases me, and when I turn to look at him, his palms scrub over his handsome face in frustration. “If it were that easy, the shit would have been hauled away a long time ago. This is…this is something she’s learned. It’s been ingrained in her since birth.”
I frown at him when he stalks over to a chest in the room. He sits on it and then regards me with a despondent look.
“Our mother is worse,” he murmurs, shame coating his features.
Big, powerful, neat-as-hell Grayson Maxwell is surrounded by a family of hoarders.