Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 71312 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71312 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
I stare at my plate as images form in my mind, and I find myself rolling back through time.
Was there a reason why we moved? Why I had to finish my senior year of high school away from my friends? Away from everything I knew?
There was.
And that reason’s name was Michael.
He just got married, but he’s not happy. He was forced into marriage at the young age of twenty.
And now, here I am in Austin at a new high school where I don’t know anybody. Great. Not a fun senior year.
Back in New York I went to private school. But here? Mom and Dad decided to have me finish out in the public school system.
Mom and Dad think I don’t know. But how can I not? I know why my oldest brother left the country. He didn’t want to get into Dad’s and Grandpa’s business.
I’m not naïve, and certainly not ignorant.
You learn things after a while, after you see some of the things I’ve seen.
I’m a girl, so they try to shield me.
But I know what my future holds.
After I finish high school, they’re going to try to marry me off. Like Mom was married off at eighteen.
It all sucks.
If I knew where Vinny was, I’d contact him. Go to him.
He could be dead for all I know. Dead seems to happen a lot around this family.
I’m not getting married at eighteen. I’m going to college to study criminal justice and then go to law school. Then I’m going to devote my entire life to taking out people like my father and grandfather.
And I hate to even think that. I love them both very much, and I know they love me.
But I’m not stupid. I know what’s going on.
And I’m pretty sure that their work is related to why we had to move suddenly.
But I will make it happen.
I’ll get through this senior year. And then I can do what I want. I have a trust fund, but I don’t get access to it until I’m twenty-one.
I’m not sure I want to access it. I know it’s ill-gotten gains. Oh, I’m sure the money itself has been laundered as clean as the driven snow, but it comes from nefarious sources.
Drugs.
My family moves drugs.
And I want out.
“Please eat, Savannah.” Falcon gestures to my plate full of cold and congealed scrambled eggs.
“I’ll throw up if I do.”
“You won’t. You’ll feel better. Believe me.” He rises, stands behind me, and rubs my shoulders again. “You think I don’t want to toss my guts right now? I just got the fuck out of prison, I’m finally watching my sister get well, and all this shit goes down.”
I push the eggs around on my plate with my fork. “This has nothing to do with you. This is my doing. My family’s doing.”
“It’s not your fault, Vannah.”
“Isn’t it? “ I toss my fork onto the table with a clatter. “I was so naïve to think I could come here. To think it was all over. That they could find somebody else in Austin to do their dirty work.”
“Why do they want you to marry that guy?”
“I don’t know. Alliances or something. I said no at eighteen, and I said no at twenty-one after I finished college. I tried to throw my father a bone by putting off going to law school and getting a job as a parole officer. I did my job and I did it well. They didn’t come to me often. Only occasionally, and I violated my ethics and looked the other way. It was only once or twice a year. But even that was too much for me, and I found I could no longer live with it. But I should’ve. I should’ve stayed. Mr. Shaw would still be alive.”
The tears come then—the ones I’ve tried to hold back. I bury my head in my hands.
Falcon steadies my shoulders. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t take the blame that’s not yours to take. Trust me. I learned that lesson the hard way.”
I look over my shoulders, meet his gaze. “Do you regret it?”
“No,” he says flatly.
There’s still so much I don’t know about Falcon and why he copped to the manslaughter charge. And I want to know. I want to know everything about him. But right now? All I can think about is the havoc that I’ve wreaked on this lovely small town. This lovely small town that I should’ve stayed far away from.
“Will you ever tell me the truth?” I ask.
“I can’t, Vannah.”
I wipe at my eyes. “Why not?”
“Because I swore I’d never tell. And I will not break that promise.”
I sniffle. “I understand.”
“Have you ever made a promise like that?”
“You have no idea. All those times I looked the other way on the parole thing.”
“Because you promised.”
I pause a moment, think. “Actually, not in so many words. It was just expected of me, my lot in life.”