Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
“He’s hungry after school.” I tried to talk to her like a rational human. “He needed a snack. I will go get you some milk. Just leave him alone.”
Mom didn’t drink milk. She just drank tequila. But I didn’t point that out. When she was like this, that would only make her angrier.
She pointed at the door behind me. “He’s a pussy, just like his father,” she spat. “Crying and running to hide behind a girl.”
The pure hatred in her gaze made my stomach turn. How had this woman given birth to us? We weren’t like her at all. She was a hateful, awful person.
“He’s nine.” I pointed out the obvious.
I didn’t add that he was no bigger than a seven-year-old. His size always made her livid. Another thing she hated about him.
Her hand swung out, and I had just enough time to brace myself before her palm hit the side of my face causing me to stumble backward. The sharp bite of pain made my eyes water. That would leave a mark. A copper taste filled my mouth, and I did a quick inspection to find one of my molars felt broken. I spat, and a piece of my tooth came out, along with blood. The throbbing ache was beginning to register in my head, and I realized that she might have done more damage to my mouth than she normally did.
Crappity, this hurt.
“Get him out of there!” she demanded. “And both of you go buy more milk!”
Her eyes barely glanced at the broken tooth and blood on the floor. “Clean that up too,” she added, then turned to leave the bathroom.
Unlike with Perry, once she hurt me, she would calm down. When she hurt Perry, she remained insane, but the moment it was clear that I had been hurt, she stopped. I didn’t understand it, but I knew it was the only way to stop her sometimes.
I waited until she was out of sight before touching my jaw. I barely covered my pained whimper from the brief contact, and I snatched my hand away fast. This was going to make it hard to eat. How I would hide this and Perry’s black eye at school, I had no idea.
The door behind me opened, and I moved out of the way while my brother climbed out. His round brown eyes studied me with an anguished glint in them that I knew too well.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “No. Just stings a bit. I’m fine,” I lied.
His expression didn’t change, and I knew he wasn’t fooled.
Closing the short distance between us, he wrapped his arms around me. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
Yep, I hated my mom. More than I would ever hate anyone else on this earth.
One
Oz
July 7, 2025
Asking Linc Shephard if he was fucking serious was pointless. Glancing at my best friend, I could see from the look on Bane Cash’s face that this wasn’t a joke. I shook my head, trying to digest this information. Six months—six fucking months—and we were just now figuring this out? How in the hell had it gone on this long?
“I’m struggling with the fact that no one realized the money was counterfeit. It’s not like he’s the first son of a bitch to try and pay us with bogus shit. We’ve always caught it immediately,” I said.
Four million dollars was a lot of damn cash to be fooled by.
Bane held up a hundred-dollar bill. “You saw it. Hell, he handed it to you first. You tested it. This is the closest thing to the real shit that I’ve ever seen. He’s not only an artist; he’s a fucking genius.”
Linc picked up his glass of whiskey and took a long drink. It was seven in the morning, and he was already drinking. Seeing as Linc led the Mississippi branch of the Southern Mafia, I knew that this mistake had been brought to him first. I might have been the one to take the kid’s bets, but Linc hadn’t caught the fraud either. His son, Levi, had, and he was one of the boss’s closest friends, he went to Blaise Hughes instead of warning his father.
“I’ll go get him,” I said, ready to slaughter the scrawny-ass computer nerd who had started placing bets on different sporting events. He lost terribly, then began to randomly win big between the times he lost money.
I’d been aware that for the past month, his winnings had far exceeded his losses. So much so that he’d broken even with his overall losses.
“Oz, you really think I came and woke you up the moment I got the call?” Linc asked.
I frowned, glancing back at him. “What do you mean?”
Linc took another long drink. “There wasn’t a call. Gage, Levi, and Huck showed up at my door at midnight. They had already gone to find him. He wasn’t there. They were going to handle it, and then Blaise was going to let me know of our mistake. But the addresses we had for him had been completely emptied, void of all fingerprints and DNA, they had nothing. The landlord at his apartment shit his pants and pissed on himself while Gage threatened him. The man wailed and cried that he hadn’t known the tenant had left. He’d paid for the month in advance. The security cameras had nothing. All footage from five days ago had been permanently deleted. HE IS GONE.” He slammed his glass down onto the table, causing the things on it to rattle. Gage Presley and Huck Kingston along with Levi were Blaise Hughes trusted circle that he kept with him. They were all friends and had grown up together. If they had been sent this was even worse than I realized.