Total pages in book: 170
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
I really fucking love her. I should marry her, just in case they pick her up. Then she can leave. She can go anywhere and the feds can’t legally question her about me. No one would dare touch her if she had my ring on her finger. None of this would fucking matter.
I think she’d do it. If she could leave without worry, she’d agree to it in a heartbeat.
My brothers would leave us alone. They would learn to trust her when all of this blows over. And it will. I won’t allow it to linger and taint her reputation or mine. They’ll all see that she’s good and good for me.
I watch as the screen plays nothing but an empty room after I lead her away. The laptop closed and the room quiet. Every minute of footage is like this. She’s the only one who touched it and there’s no explanation that makes sense. But I don’t give a fuck about logic or reason anymore.
They’ll learn to love her and she’ll learn to love them and the ways of this life. Just as the thought hits me, my phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out to see Carter calling.
He’ll give his blessing. I know he will. Even still, I’m anxious to answer the phone. I can’t shake this feeling.
“Carter,” I answer and clear my throat. I lean back in my seat but stiffen when I hear the tone in his voice.
“Declan, where are you?” He already knows what’s happening today.
Chills prick down my arm. “At the bar waiting for the—” I answer.
“She left. Half the money and left you a note.”
“No.” The word leaves me even though even I can hear the denial that’s wrapped around the single syllable.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me, his tone full of remorse. Clicking over to the tabs for my room, I flick through them, each and every one.
My gaze flicks to the empty screen, willing her to be there, but she’s not.
“Do you want me to read the note?” he asks and the blood drains from my face.
“What does it say?”
“I’m sorry. I love you. I can’t stay here anymore. I swear, I didn’t mean to.”
“I wonder what they gave her. What the feds could have offered her that would make her want to work with them,” I say.
“She was friends with Scarlet … you know how those things go. It’s possible Scarlet dragged her in … maybe she didn’t realize until it was too late.” Carter offers an explanation but it doesn’t do shit to keep me upright as the reality hits me.
“She could have told me. At any point, she could have—”
“She was scared, Declan. We all saw it.”
“Well no shit, she sold us out.” The anger is dull. There’s nothing but fucking heartache that overwhelms me.
“She didn’t call them. She called her mother and that’s it.”
“Her phone is still bugged?”
“Yeah.”
“What did she tell her?”
“That she misses her but she’s scared,” he answers and the back of my throat dries and I have to clear it once again. I fucking hate this. With my hands going numb I run them down my face.
How the hell did this happen? I don’t understand. I loved her. She loved me.
“You there?” my brother questions.
“What else?”
“That she’s going away for a while and that she loves her.”
“Do you have the recording?”
“Yeah. It sounded like she wasn’t coming back, Declan. She tossed the phone and left the car … took a taxi or hitched after that.”
“We know where she is?”
“Yeah … all that cash and she went to a shitty motel down the interstate.”
BRAELYNN
I can’t stop stop crying. My chest heaves as I try to calm the sobs.
What have I done?
I’ve never been so terrified in my life. My entire being is heavy with guilt. I’ve never felt so reckless and like I can’t go back, I can’t make it better. I thought once that I’d been at the lowest low possible, but I knew nothing.
I betrayed a man I loved. A man who if I ever see again will certainly have me killed.
I don’t even know who I am anymore or how any of this happened. I want to take it all back. Burying my hot face into the pillow does nothing but mute the sobs from creeping through the paper-thin walls of this shitty motel.
The mattress is cheap, the sheets stiff from too much starch and the comforter a holdover from the eighties. There’s enough money in that bag to stay at hotels I’ve never imagined myself in, but I couldn’t bring myself to face more people than needed. There’s no lobby here, just a teller at a window where cash is slipped under the plexiglass divider and a key is given in return.
There’s a chair that looks to be decades old, a laminate desk, a single bed and the kind of old-fashioned bulky TV I haven’t seen in ages and didn’t know existed anymore. From the single window beside the bed, the traffic from the highway blows into the room with a gust of wind. My face is hot and more than once I’ve looked outside, at the five-story distance to the asphalt below.