Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
“That’s all,” Dad repeats. “How awful. Come here.”
Dad pulls me into his arms. I hug him, placing my cheek against his chest.
CHAPTER NINE
Luke
As I drive, I think about what Violet said, hinting at the darkness in her past. If anybody hurt her, they’d have me to answer to.
That’s a phrase people use often. He’d have to answer to me…
It takes on a new significance where I’m concerned. I wouldn’t have a tough talk or put a man in his place. I’d take my gun and shove it in the bastard’s mouth and pull the trigger and watch his brains splatter the wall.
Anybody who hurt my woman, who made it so intimacy is a trigger for her…
Violet sits with her forehead against the window.
We’ve broken through the forest now, joining a road with medium traffic flow, with fields stretching out around us. We’ve left the East Coast, and we’re cutting west, as if we’re traveling to the frontier. I scan every car we pass, wondering if the mafia is suddenly going to spring out and launch an attack.
I’ve removed the tracker. Can they track our cell phones? With their police contacts, it’s possible. That’s why, before we left, I made Violet and Andrew ditch their phones, dropping them in the trash. Andrew did it quickly enough, seeing the sense in it, but Violet gave me that pouty, pissed look. She did it in the end.
Every time she looks at me in the rearview, I can see the confusion on her face, the twist in her lips. It’s enough to drive me to pull her into my lap, to stroke my hands over her back as softly as I’m able to, to tell her I’ll try to be gentler this time, more patient.
But can I?
The second I felt her lips, something unleashed in me. My hand moved to her sex, driven by carnal instinct, driven by unstoppable lust… and visions of the future, too. I need her hole and her body, to give me the family I never knew I wanted. It’s difficult to fight these thoughts now that I’ve felt her lips, felt the passion buried inside of her.
“License plate game?” Andrew says, breaking the tense quiet as cars drive by.
Violet looks at him, like she’s going to tell him no. Then she sighs, nodding. “Sure, Dad, that sounds like fun.”
I smile, thoughts going to a make-believe scene in which one of our kids doesn’t want to play a board game with the rest of us. Violet walks over, beaming down at him or her, placing her hand on the child’s shoulder. Like that—magic—the child smiles and beams up at her because they know Violet has darkness in her she’s able to overcome, able to fight against.
I wonder what it is, this darkness… and how I can help her.
Another safe house, another perimeter. I check the sensors and then return to find Andrew sitting at the kitchen table, his hands clasped and his forehead resting against them.
“Where’s Violet?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
This must be what it’s like to have a wife, an invisible rope connecting us, so that I have to know where she is, know she’s okay, know nothing bad’s going to happen to her.
“Having a lie-down,” Andrew says.
“Long drive,” I reply, nodding.
It was four or five hours, a portion of it spent with them playing the license plate game. When we hit the quieter roads, Violet retreated into silence, leaving me to wonder what she was thinking.
Does she regret the kiss? Is she angry at me for pushing too hard? Maybe she’s thinking about how unsuitable it would be to be with a killer.
I sit opposite Andrew. “What are you thinking?”
He grins at me, summoning memories. He hasn’t gone there, and so neither will I. I push it down. I’m good at that. Or I used to be before Violet.
“Who said I was thinking anything?”
“Just your face,” I answer, smirking.
“The mob,” he says. “I might have a way to make them stop.”
“Tell me.”
He picks at the table. “When I was digging, I started saving some of their financial details. They did a sloppy job, incorporating more than they had to into the laundromat.”
“You’re speaking to a fixer, not an accountant,” I say.
“Basically, I’ve got some stuff that could incriminate them. I’ve also got a backdoor into their internal system, but I’ll need access to the internet. I might be able to compile enough to create a kill switch. If anything happens to us, their details go public.”
“We’d still have to leave the East Coast,” I say. “There’s no way they’d let something like that fly.”
“But they’d let us live?” he says.
“It’s possible. I’ll need to get you a secure laptop with internet access, but if this is a trick…”
“What? You’ll kill me?”
A previous version of me might snap yes and slam my fist on the table to push away any doubts I was experiencing. I can’t bring myself to do it.