Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“Who would be at my front door at this time of night?” Jocelyn worries, a scurry of activity following her words as if she were dressing.
Door? That wasn’t a doorbell, I think. Where the hell were they?
“I’ll check the monitor,” the general says. “Dress faster.”
The sound of a keyboard being punched…followed by the general’s low curse.
“What?” Jocelyn queries fretfully. “What is it?” She gasps, and I imagine her looking at that monitor. “Oh, my God. My son is here. Creed is here.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Creed
The minute my mother opens the door, the scent of sex and lies lances my nostrils. And while my keen sense of smell has proven useful in battle, today it turns my damn stomach.
“Hello, Mother.”
She stares back at me with the same blue eyes I’d once possessed myself, with the kind of welcome reflected in their depths that one might give a tiger in the wild—a façade of regal indifference meant to show no fear that also hopes to mask an underlying desire to bolt. I have no doubt I do, indeed, look the role of an angry tiger, ragged from battle and battered by the rain.
I’m only here out of what is already a misplaced sense of obligation to her as her son to confirm her as guilty or innocent before ruining her. She reeks of guilt. She’s always been just as guilty as my father.
“And here, I thought you’d forgotten I existed,” she replies shortly.
“I’m sure you hoped as much,” I say dryly. “We need to talk.”
She tilts her head, studying me for several long seconds. The years had been kind to her, despite the demands of leading Taylor Industries—a task she’d begged me to undertake. Her skin is smooth, her long, dark hair sleek and glossy. She has aged like fine wine, younger than her years, beautiful even. It seems killing people agrees with her. But then, she had plenty of money to ease the effects of age.
“Come in,” she says finally, stepping back into the foyer to allow my approach. I enter the house I’d once called home—expensive Italian marble beneath my feet, etched plate-glass windows lining high ceilings—and wish like hell I didn’t have to be there.
“This way,” she says.
I follow her down the hallway to the kitchen, a room I’d loved as a child, a place where cookies and milk had awaited me after school and holiday meals had been festive. But age had dispelled the façade of a fairy tale family. I’d discovered my mother had been playing house at the expense of her moral compass, ignoring the people my father helped kill. Apparently, she’s found herself willing to take over where her husband had left off.
In a defensive posture, she places the eight-foot, navy-blue kitchen island between us. Neither of us bother with a bar stool.
I waste no time getting down to business, setting a bullet on the tile counter. The rosy color drains from her face.
“I see you finally managed to make Green Hornets market-worthy.”
“Where did you get that?” she demands.
“Dug it out of my rib cage,” I say. “I see you’re up to Dad’s old tricks, selling weapons to whoever will buy them regardless of consequence.”
“That’s impossible,” she counters.
“I promise you it’s not,” I say. “And I have friends, good men fighting for their country, who are now fighting for their lives because of those bullets. I want names. Who you sold them to, when, and in what quantities.”
“That list is short. The U.S. Army. Period. There are no other customers. So, if you’re shooting each other up with them, that’s not my problem.”
“You’re lying.” She can barely look me in the eye, but then, it’s been a long time since she could—maybe all the way back to the days of those after-school cookies. She wasn’t that woman anymore—the perfect housewife and mother—if she ever had been.
She glares at me. “Don’t you dare come in here and pretend honor while you judge me, because we both know you’ve plenty to be judged on yourself. And your day is coming, Creed.”
“I want names,” I demand, my tone harsh by design. “Who did you sell the Green Hornets to?”
“I’m not giving you anything,” she declares. “You certainly haven’t given a damn thing to me.”
“If even one more of these bullets ends up in one of our soldiers,” I say. “I promise you, I will make destroying you and Taylor Industries my life mission.”
That pale, plastic surgery-created face reddens. “What’s so pathetic,” she says, “is that I believe you. I believe my son would try to destroy me.”
“Your son died years ago,” I assure her. “You killed him.”
I’d come here for answers and hoped to find the loving mother I’d grown up with, not the enemy she’s become. Jesus Christ, I’m a fool. I expect Addie to give up on her father, and yet I still haven’t managed to do so with my mother. “Talking isn’t working,” I say. “Let’s go to your computer.”