Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
“By disclosing your involvement,” she assumes. “And therefore giving yourself a vested interest in the case.”
“We have to go further than that. I drew up a separate set of dummy documents that give me an interest in the winery. But again, you’ll have documents that cover all of this and protect you.”
She doesn’t even blink. “I trust you. What else?”
“I have a number of tools in the chest, but among them, I’ll offer to move some of my money to your bank, which will have influence. But not until we have our day in court. I want to see their hand before I play ours.”
“Ours,” she repeats.
I reach up and brush a strand of the pale blonde silk of her hair from her beautiful green eyes, the many shades of torment in their depths accented by flecks of yellow. “Ours,” I say. “I told you. I’m in this with you until the end.”
Her hands come down on my forearms, then lift the right to stare down at the black-and-orange tiger etched into my skin, but her gaze shifts to my left, her fingers tracing the words there. “An eye for an eye,” she says, reading them as she did once before. “I don’t believe in an eye for an eye.”
I believe her. She is a kinder, gentler soul than me, the moonlight on the water when I’m the sun bringing it to a boil. And I like that about her, about us. The contrast; the good and the bad. And I don’t mind being the bad. “Only one of us has to go for the throat,” I say. “I’ll be the killer. You be the artist. And maybe you’ll tame the beast along the way. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
“You’ll be the killer,” she whispers, letting out a choked laugh. “Right.” She reaches for the coffee and gulps it down like water, then sets the cup aside. “I need air.” She scoots around me, stands up, and walks away.
I’m on my feet almost immediately, watching her track across the room to exit the open patio doors onto the terrace. I’m aware that I’ve thrown a lot at her, but also that she’s rattled when she doesn’t rattle easily, and I don’t like the word that had that impact: killer. Fuck. What is happening here? I pursue her, and I find her at the railing, her back to me, her attention on the city, the ocean, and the Golden Gate Bridge before her. I close the space between us, stepping to her side, close but not touching her, my hands also resting on the railing. And while there are times when I push people to talk, there are others when silence leads them to reveal what is there but not yet spoken. With Faith, I don’t speak. I wait, giving her the opportunity to speak when she’s ready. Confident that she needs to say whatever it is she hasn’t spoken yet.
“When I went to L.A.,” she says without looking at me, “it hurt my father. He didn’t want me to chase a hopeless dream.”
“Was hopeless his word or yours?”
“His,” she says. “But I couldn’t give up my dream for his.”
“And his was for you to run the winery.”
“Yes. Exactly. And yet, I almost stayed. I was going to stay, because I was worried about my father. But then the night of my college graduation happened. That disaster changed my mind.”
“What kind of disaster?”
She looks at me. “You know the details on that already. It was when my mother got mad at my uncle. To get back at him, she told my father that she slept with my uncle.”
“Holy fuck,” I breathe out. “I still can’t believe she slept with his brother and he forgave her.”
“Yes. And the truth is that I hated my father a little afterward, too. I mean, he never spoke to his brother again, but he forgave my mother. I couldn’t look him in the face and see the same man anymore.” She cuts her gaze, staring out at the city. “I wasn’t as angry at my mother at that point as I was at him. I mean, he was the one who’d become the fool.”
“And then he died.”
“Yes. On the same night I had an explosion with Macom that was the end of us—in my book, anyway. So, leaving felt right. It had for a long time. But I didn’t think it meant leaving my art. But my mother was a train wreck, and I wasn’t without a head for business. I wanted to protect my father’s pride and joy, but also, one day that winery would be mine. And with a management team, I knew it would be an asset and an income that supported, not destroyed, my painting.” She glances over at me. “I hated to think like that. It meant thinking beyond my mother.”