Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
What made me stop her? Maybe it’s a diversion, a distraction from what’s out there. Or maybe I just love fabulous jewelry. It could really be a little bit of both.
“Um, you mean this necklace?” She runs her fingers over the rounded stones strung together like pearls around her neck, but colored a distressed teal.
“Yes, it’s unique. Where’d you get it?”
“It’s one of mine actually.” A small smile tugs at Kerris’s lips.
“Obviously it’s one of yours, but where’d you buy it?”
Maybe she is slow.
“No, I mean it’s from my Riverstone Collection. I make the jewelry myself.”
Oh, so I’m slow. I forgot about her jewelry line. I wasn’t in the city when it launched, but I’m sure I wasn’t invited. We don’t exactly socialize outside of Bennett functions.
“Nice.” I wave my hand like a scepter toward the door. “You can go now and tell Walsh there’s no need to wait. I’m fine.”
I should have let her go when I had the chance; now she’s lingering. Hesitating. Grappling with her misplaced compassion.
“That’s the closest to a moment as we’re likely to have, Kerris.” I plasticize a smile. “You should probably go before the full moon comes and I turn bitch again.”
She must believe me because she leaves without so much as a chuckle. I need the quiet, the space she left behind, to pull what remains of my shit together. Mentally, I reach for the affirmations my therapist taught me all those years ago. Those words that empowered me to, day by day, reconstruct myself, but I’m empty-handed. It’s been so long since I needed them. Now that I do, they elude me.
“You haven’t needed them.” I turn back to the mirror to tell my reflection. “And you don’t now. They’re just words. I don’t care who’s out there.”
Who’s in the mirror? The leather-tough, butter-smooth woman I’ve spent the last fifteen years creating? Or that sniveling girl who used to wake up screaming and shivering and sweating because of him?
It’s me. The version of myself that did whatever it took to survive. I marshal all my forces and step into the hall. Walsh straightens from the wall and approaches me, concern all over his face. How did he end up such a good guy? With Martin Bennett as a father? I really want to know, because I haven’t figured out how to escape my DNA. It must have been Walsh’s mother who tempered that ruthlessness that lives in Martin. And in my father. And in me.
“I had no idea Kyle would be here.” Walsh shoves his hands in his pockets. “I haven’t seen him since high school. I didn’t know we had any business with him.”
“Daddy’s buying himself a senator.” I lean against the wall Walsh just abandoned, flexing my toes in the beautiful shoes that are just starting to hurt. “Think of all the legislation we can corrupt with a senator in our pocket.”
Walsh huffs a heavy breath and runs one hand through his dark hair. He knows I’m right.
“We should have handled this years ago, Sof, when you told me what happened.”
I focus on the span of floor between our feet. I can’t look at Walsh right now without seeing that girl, without feeling her shame and despair. And with that monster only a dining room away, I cannot afford those emotions. They’ll cost me, and I need every advantage at my disposal.
“We did handle it, Walsh.”
He tips my chin up with a gentle finger, his green eyes dark and tortured.
“I’ve never forgiven myself for not turning him in.”
“By the time you found out, it was too late. It was my choice, not yours, and it was the right choice for me.”
“But he never paid. He never answered for what he did to you. He—”
“Don’t you dare say it.” My voice is an outraged hiss in the confines of the hall. “Don’t you ever give him that much power over me again, Walsh.”
“But, Sof, he’s about to become a damn senator. We could still tell the truth about what happened and—”
“I didn’t want to fifteen years ago, and I certainly don’t want to now. If it hadn’t been for a drunken night in Paris, you wouldn’t even know.” I rest my fists on my hips. “It happened to me, so it’s still up to me, right?”
“It’s not right to—”
“You don’t get to determine what’s wrong or right for me.” Anger and frustration, maybe fear, sharpen my tongue and dull my discretion. “You have your perfect life. Bennett Enterprises will be yours soon. You have your perfect wife. Your perfect kids with another perfect child on the way. Why do you give a damn what I do or don’t do?”
Walsh’s eyes narrow and his jaw hardens the way I know means he’s about to sort my shit out, but a small motion behind us grabs our attention. Kerris stands there, eyes wide, gripping her phone.