Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
If Lyle Pennington ended up getting out, I would need a plan in place to make sure that he wasn’t breathing free for long.
How do I take my coffee? Seriously. Very seriously.
—Milena’s secret thoughts
MILENA
I woke up in my bed.
I blinked open my eyes and stared at the man sharing my bed.
A smile bloomed on my face, and I launched myself at him.
Dima laughed, caught off guard, and slammed back against the headboard.
“When did you get in?” I cried, squeezing his neck hard.
Which, inevitably, wasn’t that hard.
When he squeezed me back, it was to cause my breath to seize inside my chest.
Only when he let up did I say, “Does anyone else know that you’re here yet?”
“Shasha was here when I got here. Got pissy that I didn’t tell him that I was coming,” he said. “You want to talk about it?”
He knew.
Which, honestly, didn’t surprise me.
I mean, if Shasha was here when he got here, then Shasha would’ve shared.
There were no secrets in my family.
At least, not the ones that didn’t come as happy surprises when certain people came home…
“Not really,” I admitted.
I mean, what was there to tell?
I’d seen my rapist in prison.
He’d been sitting behind me, likely fully aware of me, the entire time.
Meanwhile, I’d been happy and content where I was, thinking that my rapist was in prison, far, far away.
“When did he move?” I asked. “I thought he was in Tennessee?”
“He was,” Dima said. “But he was moved a couple of months ago due to overcrowding issues in the prison back home.”
Before we’d moved to Texas, we’d lived in Tennessee.
When our sister, Maven, had been kidnapped from Gatlinburg on a family vacation, we’d settled there in hopes that one day she might come back.
Except, she never came back.
It was two decades later that an app that Maven’s best friend had created made a match with Maven’s missing person’s poster. From there, we’d moved to Dallas, wanting to be closer to her and her family.
We’d left Tennessee behind.
I, for one, had been more than happy to do that thanks to all the horrible memories that Lyle had given me.
I’d thought I was safe and happy here.
I was wrong.
“Shasha and I are kicking ourselves for not telling you,” Dima said. “He wants to know if you want to have dinner with the family tonight.”
I was already shaking my head, my mind skipping to a different place that I wanted to be.
“I need to go see my…I need to go see Cutter,” I confided.
“Cutter the motorcycle club friend?” Dima asked. “I’ve heard about him, too.”
I smiled. “I want to let him know that I’m okay.”
“Do you mind if I tag along?” he asked carefully.
I thought about it for a long moment and then said, “Dima, I’d like to do this alone. I have to explain today.”
He was quiet for a long moment and then, “What if I drive you there, and you send me a text that you don’t need me, and I’ll leave?”
Used to making compromises for the protective men in my family, I agreed.
“But first I need to find out where his clubhouse is,” I said.
Dima laughed. “Leave that to me.”
I left it to him for half an hour while I showered again and got dressed.
I chose to wear leggings, an oversized long-sleeved t-shirt and tennis shoes—my go-to outfit when I wanted to feel comfy.
Today practically begged for comfortable, too.
After the day I’d had…
“You look like a drowned rat,” Dima said as he came into the bathroom and sat on the counter next to where I was drying my hair.
I gave him the hair dryer and my brush, then turned around.
Used to helping me, he took both and started to blow dry my hair.
One of the deals that we had when I wanted to cut my hair at seventeen was they’d—Shasha and Dima—help me blow dry it whenever I wanted. I don’t know why it was so important to keep the long hair, but I’d never cut it. Even though I’d wanted to.
Badly.
He was on minute twenty when the hulking form of my oldest brother filled the door of my bathroom.
I smiled at him hesitantly, and he took a long step forward and wrapped his arms around my body.
Dima shut the hair dryer off and I had no other recourse but to bury my face in Shasha’s chest.
“I’m sorry for not telling you, Mil,” he rumbled.
I nodded, not bothering to say a word.
I knew he felt bad, and there was no reason to make him feel worse when he’d only done it to save me the heartache of knowing that my rapist and abuser was in the same state as me, and two hours away at that.
“Let me finish this, bro,” Dima suggested a long while later. “My ass is getting numb from halfway sitting in the sink.”