Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“Exactly. The thing is, he didn’t… no. Wait. Okay. So I tried to get away for a while, but someone always found me. So I moved back and just… made some life adjustments.”
Christ.
That kind of explained her rules, didn’t it?
“That’s why we only fuck outside of town,” I concluded.
“Yep,” she agreed, nodding as she let out a deep sigh. “Anyway, everything was just… status quo. Until a couple of weeks ago. A package arrived at my door. Signed by Czar.”
“What was it?” I asked, feeling dread start to swell in my system.
“Four bricks of heroin. Asking me to hold onto it for a while. And I did something really, really fucking stupid.”
“What did you do?”
“I stashed it. Somewhere I thought was safe, but I wasn’t thinking straight. And then another package showed up and I went to put the new bricks with the old ones, and…”
“And the first ones were gone,” I concluded.
And, yeah, that was a massive fucking problem, wasn’t it? I’d never been in the drug business, but I knew enough to know that bricks of heroin, depending on various factors, could easily clear a hundred grand each.
If Nyx was in the hole for that kind of money, I could see why she was freaking out.
“Did they ask for the drugs back? Is that why you got attacked?”
“The thing is… no,” she said, finally glancing over at me. “I went home and my door was open. Stupidly, I went in. Thinking it was just a break-in or something. Everyone knows where I work and that there is a lot of cash involved in that, y’know?” she said, sighing. “But as soon as I walked in, I knew it was about the drugs. They’d even gutted my couch. And as I was noticing that, someone came out of nowhere and attacked me,” she said, waving at her face.
“How bad was it?” I asked. I mean, I had eyes. I could see that it wasn’t good. The bruises were nasty. There were ten stitches up by her hairline. That was a lot of damage. But other things could be hurt too. And, well, other unthinkable shit could have been done as well.
“I think I was lucky actually,” she said, shaking her head. “I think he just wanted to get away without me seeing him.”
“Which might imply you’d recognize him.”
“Yeah, I was starting to think that too. But who? I mean… I don’t think any of Czar’s people that I used to know are still around here.”
“Yeah, let’s circle back to Czar,” I said, wincing inside at how sharp I’d said his name.
“Well, after spending the night at the motel,” she started.
“Why didn’t you come here?” I asked, cutting off what she was about to say.
“I just… I wasn’t ready yet,” she said, glancing away again. “Let me get to that part.”
“Okay. You went to the motel.”
“Yeah, after I dropped in on poor Dr. Price. I just didn’t feel safe at home,” she admitted. “And I didn’t really get much sleep, just stewed in what happened. Which got me good and pissed. Which gave me enough motivation to drive my ass up to the prison this morning to confront him, since I’d been sure he was behind it.”
“But he wasn’t,” I concluded.
“The look on his face when he saw all this,” she said, waving at her head, “really told me all I needed to know. It wasn’t him. He said he was behind the notes and flowers. But not for a while because the guy he had sending them to me got locked up too.”
“He doesn’t have any idea who could be doing it?”
“No. He said he is going to look into it, but he’s been away for a long time. I don’t know if they will even give him any sort of information now.”
It was a fucked situation.
I mean, if it had been Czar, it would have been an easy enough fix. At least you knew who the enemy was.
But if it wasn’t, and Nyx seemed pretty sure he had nothing to do with it, then we were completely in the dark.
“Why wouldn’t you come to me sooner?” I asked, hearing the hint of vulnerability in my tone, and finding that I actually didn’t give a fuck about her hearing it.
She had, after all, just been vulnerable with me.
To that, she let out a sigh.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she said with a little smirk that said she was pretty sure everyone had. “But I can be really stubborn and have a bit of an ego?”
“Shit, really? Never fucking noticed that,” I drawled, getting a real smile out of her.
“It’s stupid, looking back, but I was really embarrassed.”
“About being dragged into the drug trade?” I asked, brows pinching.
“About being involved with a guy who was trying to control my life. Except, of course, as it all turned out, he wasn’t. But that was just… humiliating to me. I didn’t want anyone to think that I would let a guy control me.”