Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
“I—nothing. I just wanted her to tell me where Brynn was. They were fucking with me, Jo! Playing games with my head!”
“Well, Brynn is here now,” she states. “What was your plan after that?”
“I don’t know. To have Boaz get rid of them for good this time.”
“For good? What does that even mean?” she cries.
“I mean . . . well, just to make them disappear. To fucking kill them! Jo, we have so much on the line. Baby, please? The rally is tomorrow. We need to handle this and get out of here.” Dominic rocks in the chair again and Jolene stares at him, head shaking, eyes empty.
“Boaz is dead,” she finally says.
The cabin falls silent. Then it hits him, and he stops rocking in the chair. The puddle of blood outside the cabin. The streaks of it in the house. Boaz’s body was on the floor. He swivels his head but can’t find the body anymore, however there are streaks of dark blood on the floor. Did he imagine Boaz’s body? No, he’s not crazy. Something else is going on.
“Where is that man? The one who hit me? Did he hit you too?” he asks, and he can’t help wondering that if he did, how the hell Jolene is still alive. How is she here asking questions when there is someone else in the house trying to hurt them.
Unless . . .
“Jo,” Dominic rasps. “What have you done?”
She places his gun down on the table then lifts something from her lap. When Dominic sees that it’s her phone, his heart fails him. She’s on the voice recording app. She presses the big red button to stop recording.
“Jo—what the fuck are you doing?” he hisses.
“Someone had to stop you,” she murmurs.
“Why would you do this?”
“Why would you be sending money to Michelle Dawson?”
His chest constricts. “W-what?”
Her good eye narrows. “You heard me.”
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I spoke to Anita. She told me about the foreign accounts that I found out are linked to Boaz and some other man named Tommaso Barone. These are the men you had handle the situation with Brynn in New Orleans, right? She told me the story, about how she was buried. Alive.”
“No no no no. He said she was dead.”
“Well, she’s alive, honey. She was still breathing, but Boaz kept piling dirt on her, hoping she’d suffocate. But her friend followed Boaz. Shavonne? She saw the whole thing. She has pictures of Brynn on the floor in John’s house.”
Dominic’s breaths become erratic, and it feels like the walls of the cabin are closing in on him.
“While also talking to Anita, I found out that there is a third account money was going to. Money to a woman and former bully of mine named Michelle Dawson. It’s strange that you’d think I’d be so naïve as to not find out. What, you tell Anita not to worry me about selling hundreds of shares from my father’s company and that would be it? Do you forget who my mother is? She lives to see me fuck up! I never should’ve trusted you! I mean, what the hell was I thinking making a joint account with you!”
Dominic’s jaw pulses. Right now, would be a good time to rip out of these cords, shoot Jo, and salvage the situation. He could lie and say the women attacked him, dragged him and his wife there, then killed her but he shot them before they could come for him. He could make it work. He could.
“You know the story about Michelle. She was the one who created the name Fat Jo.” Jolene stares into his eyes. “She had the majority of the campus referring to me as that. Some people literally thought I went by that name and that I was okay with it. And all this time, Dom, you’ve been seeing her behind my back. All these years. Trust me, I was very upset to hear what you did to Brynn, but this? This shit with Michelle was my last straw.” She chokes on her words. “I’m curious to know if this was her plan? To get you to come after me? To marry me, just so you two could have the life you wanted? I see she has a five-year-old now too. He looks just like you.”
“Jo,” Dominic rasps. “Michelle doesn’t know anything about how the money gets into that account. This has nothing to do with them.”
“Doesn’t it? You’ve been stealing money from me and sending it to her. All those times when you told me you had to take a weekend away, or that you had business during some of the most bizarre times of the years, even the holidays, you were with them. All this time, you’ve had a whole other life. But I thought you didn’t want kids. Or did you just not want them with the fat girl from college? Is the amputee better?”