Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
"Holden Stryker?" she asked, mouth gaping a bit. "But... what... how... no, why?" she decided.
"Why what? Why did I go to him?"
"No, I know why you went to him. He's one of the scariest bastards I've ever come across. Why did he help you?"
"Honestly, I don't know. But he did. He gave me a room. And food. Horrible, horrible, healthy food..." I added, giving Vance a smile. "He then whipped my ass every single day of my life for eight years."
"Until he didn't," my father guessed.
"Until he didn't," I agreed.
"So, what now?" Chris asked, pinning me with cool eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"You come back here. You make amends. You jump into bed with Vance." Oh, sweet Jesus. I could feel all the gazes shifting in his direction. I almost felt bad for the shit he was about to get. But I couldn't help but be a little pleased that I had so many people who would even want to give the guy I was seeing shit. "Now what? You're done?"
"I went on the job last night, Chris," I told her, eyes getting small, confused. She had to have seen the news. Aunt Lo had a group of new guys at Hailstorm whose job it was to comb the news from all states, finding anything that might be useful to them. That was how she'd found me in the first place.
"What? Your last hoorah. You finally got the baby dealers, so now you're retired?"
"I never said I was retiring. I just... look, I don't know what is going to happen from here on out," I admitted. Things were getting blurrier by the moment. "But I can't see myself wasting all those years of pain and missing my family by deciding right here and now that I'm done. I won't be able to sleep at night knowing there is a trafficker close by that I could take down and don't. I just... I don't know. I think we need to sit down and figure out a way to make the job work alongside a life. You have a life. I think it is only fair that I have one too. While still removing some evil from the world."
Deflated, she nodded a bit tightly.
"I'll work on it," she told me, giving her mother a shrug, then taking back off.
"She's gonna be a good boss, babe," Uncle Cash told Aunt Lo, pulling her to his side, kissing her temple.
"She deliberately went behind my back."
"Well..."
"Well?" Aunt Lo asked, shooting a hard look at her husband.
"It's not like she disobeyed you. She found a loophole. That's the kind of shit bosses do, don't you think?"
I could tell she was torn. On the one hand, she was still the boss; she didn't tolerate insubordination or backhandedness. On the other, though, she had to have been proud that in just eight years, she had taken a very broken girl and turned her into a very strong woman.
Aunt Lo was good at that.
It had to have given her a warm feeling in her chest to learn that Chris didn't just want to head a criminal empire, but that she wanted to find a way to do good with it as well.
"I'm glad to hear that you are going to try to strike a balance," my mom cut in, giving me a squeeze to the wrist. "I think I might know why," she added, glancing over toward Vance.
"Mom... no," I insisted, a little bit insulted that she thought I would let a man change such fundamental parts of my life.
"Oh, but I think a lot yes," she told me, shrugging. "There's no shame in that, baby. These Henchmen, they have a way of getting in and taking root, don't they?"
With that, her eyes twinkling—likely remembering all the times I had fawned over Vance as a girl, had decided he was my one and only, and thinking fate was a truly wonderful thing if, even after all this shit, we still found our way back to each other—she went over, grabbing my father's arm, and dragging him along with her down the hall to their room.
"I don't envy him that ear lashing he's about to get," Uncle Cash said, grimacing as he led Aunt Lo outside to talk.
"So," my Uncle Adler said, walking over as Vance moved in at my side. "How's the pride feel knowin' she could kick yer arse?" he asked, slapping a hand on Vance's shoulder so hard he made him slam into me.
"Says the man who got beat up by a skip three weeks back," his woman, Lou, told us, chuckling as she moved up next to him.
"The woman was four-hundred-pounds."
"She was on an electric scooter," Lou added, pressing her lips together to try to keep from smiling. "She beat him with her cane. Then ran over his arm when he was down. It was fucking hilarious."