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)
That’s when Rayann turned to me with a sneer. “What are you talking about, bitch?”
I waited for Hazel to say something, anything, and she didn’t.
“Hazel,” I said carefully. “What is going on here?”
Hazel swept her arm wide. “Well, I was looking at the cabin since you sent it to me in a message, and I know we have more than enough room to fit everyone comfortably. So I invited them to stay here.”
I was already shaking my head. “I’m not comfortable with that. So they’ll have to stay somewhere else. Even Mark.”
Hazel’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said,” I ground out.
“But…it’s going to be impossible to find a place to stay now!” she cried. “This can’t work!”
“This is going to have to work,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Hazel’s and Mark’s things hit the ground of the porch, and I said, “Have a good one.”
I walked inside and closed the door, disgust again hitting me at the mess.
“I’m sorry, Artur,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he replied. “I’m just glad that I was here.”
“Hey, you can’t do this!” Hazel banged on the door.
I walked away when she tried to input the code into the house. “Hey, will you reiterate that this isn’t going to work for me?”
“Oh, I’ll reiterate it all right,” Artur said.
I walked to the back porch and shut the door so I didn’t hear everything that happened.
The moment my butt hit the chair, I started to cry.
I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone when you called. I don’t use it for that.
—Text from Milena to Cutter
CUTTER
I heard my brother’s ‘what the fuck’ from behind a curtained-off area.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I heard him reply. “I won’t die, ma’am.”
“Oh, are you sure?” Phoebe said as she wheeled Copper into the room. “I swear to you, I didn’t mean to cut you like that. Here, hop up here and let me take a look at it.”
She threw the curtain open that I was sitting behind, and my brother and I locked eyes.
His face split into a huge grin and then we were throwing our arms around each other.
Copper was fuckin’ huge.
Which, compared to me, was saying something.
He had a lot of muscle to him, and this was the first freakin’ hug I’d been able to truly feel from him in a long time.
“God, it’s good to see you without my hands and feet chained,” he crowed. “How are you?”
“Sit down so I can get a look at that cut,” Phoebe ordered.
“I was really freaking out.” Copper pulled away and sat on the table. She just walks up to me and cuts the shit out of me with a scalpel and is all, “I’m so sorry. Let me take you to my infirmary and fix that up for you.”
I chuckled as I said, “You’re just a distraction.”
His brows rose.
Then they narrowed as he whispered, “Lyle?”
I nodded.
“Oh, did you hear that he was sick, too?” Pheobe asked. “He’s on his way here because he had a brush with a prisoner that arrived yesterday that we suspect has measles. Those are so contagious that we have to be super careful when we’re in a prison. We can’t have all that spreading around like wildfire.”
The two of us shared a look over her head.
“You look perfectly good now. I’ll go get a Band-Aid.”
She was gone seconds after that, heading to a big drawer-type thing in the middle of the room.
“I have some needles in this drawer,” she called out. “Syringes right beside the needles…”
Then she recited everything that she had before she came back to clean Copper’s arm up.
She’d done a pretty good job at cutting him open. There was blood literally everywhere.
He looked like a murder victim. Which would make sense if you called a family member if you thought he really was going to die.
“I’ll just give y’all a few minutes and go check on my other patients,” she said as she closed our curtain.
I pulled the syringes out of my pocket and placed them on the bed beside Copper’s leg.
Peeking out of the curtain, I headed toward the drawers Phoebe was just at and got two needles, then walked back to Copper.
After getting them onto the syringe, I looked at Copper and quietly said, “Lyle’s.”
He jerked his chin up and said, “You want me to hold him? Or you want to hold him?”
“I want to look in his eyes when I do this,” I said.
“Then I’ll hold him,” Copper quietly replied. “Let me borrow your phone.”
I shook my head. “Had to give it all up to get here. But…”
I jerked my chin toward Phoebe’s phone on the desk. “Code is 2224.”
Copper grinned and headed for it.
I didn’t bother to ask him why.
Instead, I stayed back and allowed him his phone call, peeking through the curtains to see when Lyle was brought in.