Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“Cass,” Sully began.
“What the fuck did you do?” I shouted. “What the fuck did you do?”
I had to turn the paper around again so I could confirm that it was what I really thought it was. The name “Hutch” was in bold print across the top of the page along with a slew of other last names.
“It’s not something you need to concern yourself with,” Sully bit out. He tried to snatch the invoice from my hand. I didn’t let him, though it didn’t matter if I had. My slow-to-catch-up mind was caught up.
The invoice was from the law offices of Asa Hutch, my appeals attorney. The total amount paid to the criminal defense attorney had been in the low six figures and the balance on the account was zero.
I slowly dropped my ass down in the chair. I ran my fingers through my hair as I processed what the invoice meant. “Why?” I asked angrily.
The disbelief and shame of how I’d behaved toward Sully was quickly followed by the stunning and undeniably painful realization that it hadn’t been my own family who’d paid through the nose to hire the best attorney money could buy to get me out of prison.
Sully didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for the bottle of scotch again. I managed to get to it before he did and threw it against the wall, not caring about the resulting mess the broken glass and amber liquid made.
Not surprisingly, he didn’t react to my show of anger. The only time Sully Ferguson did react to anything real was when it involved someone he cared about.
Like—
I cut the thought off because there was no fucking way I could go there right now.
“You paid Asa Hutch to get me out,” I said. “It wasn’t my family.”
I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t connected the dots sooner.
Sully had been the one to pick me up from the police station early that morning after I’d been processed out. It’d still been dark out, so there’d been no press to deal with. Seeing Sully waiting for me on the steps that led up to the police station had been the last thing I’d been expecting.
It hadn’t taken too much effort on his part to get me to agree to talk to him for five minutes in exchange for a shitty breakfast and access to some of my personal belongings he’d held on to for the two years I’d been gone.
I’d figured the return on investment was pretty good. Giving my former best friend a few minutes to provide one or two pathetic explanations for why he’d done what he’d done and maybe an apology was worth getting to tell him to his face what a piece of shit he was and then getting my hands on whatever remained of my personal possessions that weren’t already in my pocket.
I hadn’t been prepared for this.
“Fuck,” I snapped. “Where did you get the money? Unless you won the fucking lottery, I know you don’t have that kind of cash just lying around.”
“It’s not important—”
“How?” I demanded, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. Problem was, I didn’t know where to direct my anger.
Sully was still standing by the open door. He came toward me but instead of going behind his desk to sit down, he grabbed the other guest chair and turned it so he could talk directly to me. I’d angled my chair so I could still see the door, but it didn’t get me out of Sully’s pointed gaze. “I took out a mortgage on the house.”
It took me too much time to understand. God, had I always been this slow or was it a result of being stuck with only my own thoughts to keep me entertained for two years?
“That house,” I said with a shake of my head. “It was paid off. Your dad worked so fucking hard to pay it off—”
“And he would have been the first one to tell me to mortgage it to do what needed to be done. He loved you like you were his own, Cass. I know it may have seemed like he was one of the ones who… who turned on you, but he didn’t. He just… he didn’t know how to be on both sides at once.”
I sighed because I understood what Sully was saying. Sean Ferguson hadn’t been at my original trial, so I’d just assumed he would have been sitting on the other side of the courtroom rather than behind my sad excuse for a defendant’s table.
“I’ll get the money to repay you,” I said firmly. “My grandmother—”
“No fucking way are you going crawling back to that place. I may as well have left you in prison, you asshole.”
Sully returned to his chair. “Cass, I know you love your grandmother, and she always treated you well, but you’d be stepping into a den of vipers, and you know it. Your grandmother’s what… in her seventies now?”