Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“I know, but I wasn’t kidding when I said I had people there already. We should be heading there too; there’s someone I want you to meet.” He looked down at me when he said this but refused to answer my questioning look.
“Son, how much did you value your friendship with Dana before all this?” Rebecca asked as we headed for the door.
“Why do you ask?”
“Um, I think that lady that just left here might make a stop before she heads to the estate.”
“What do you mean?” Rebecca rolled her eyes as if to say he was being dense. “If she’s killed before, she’ll do it again.”
“Oh shit!” He all but dragged me to the elevator.
“Wait, wait, are we sure we wanna save her?”
“Mom!”
“Damn!”
Calen
I made a call to Gordon on my way to the car to let him know I might be a little late. I’d planned on going there alone after he begged to be the one to throw Ann off the estate. He’s been waiting for more than twenty years for the chance, and I readily agreed.
Ann was just getting into her car a few cars down, and I thought of sending mom and Giselle on to the Winthrop estate in her car, but mom seemed to read my mind and hopped in the back of my car after giving her driver instructions to follow us.
“Follow that car that’s pulling out in front of us, Jeremy, but keep your distance.” I hadn’t planned for this little side trip, but hopefully, mom is wrong, and this woman isn’t stupid enough to be headed to Dana’s place. I knew I was wrong when she took the turnoff in the opposite direction from the Winthrop estate and headed into the center of town where Dana’s townhouse was located.
I’m not sure why I was still hoping that Dana’s betrayal had ended two years ago and that she hadn’t gone behind my back and done this shit again. But when the car stopped across the street from her place, and Ann jumped out looking around as if expecting to see us following, I knew it was a lost hope.
Jeremy, having sensed where this was going, had already pulled into a parking spot further down, and we waited until Ann had passed through the door before exiting the car. It’s the middle of the damn day, so I’m hoping she’s not dumb enough to commit murder, but who knows how her narcissistic ass would react.
* * *
DANA
* * *
I looked down at my thumbnail, disgusted with myself as I paced the living room floor back and forth. I’ve been biting my nails down to the quick since coming home the day before, and they were bloody and sore. I haven’t done this since my first year in college. Not since meeting and falling head over heels in love with Calen Addison the fourth.
I couldn’t believe my luck when one of the kids in the business and finance club said he knew him and had invited him to join. I’d been a nervous wreck for days knowing that someone like him wouldn’t be caught dead in our club when there were so many more to choose from, and in the end, I was right. He’d been decent enough to show his face and answer the hundred and one questions everyone had for the business guru who’d started working for his family business at sixteen.
Everyone at the school pretty much knew who he was; his name had been in business news magazines for years, ever since he’d taken the little arm of his family’s business that his dad had trusted him with and put it on the map in less than a year. As if his brains and business savvy wasn’t enough, his pictures in the magazines didn’t do him justice.
I knew that meeting him would be a once-in-a-lifetime event, and though I was sure he wouldn’t join our club, I knew that if I had that one chance, I could make it count; and I did. I used that first meet as a pathway into his life. It wasn’t hard lying and manipulating my way into his classes though the semester had already started, and most everyone tried turning me away. But that’s what money is for, and my mom and dad would do anything if it meant keeping me out of their hair.
After that, it was easy to pretend to have run into him in class or outside of it and strike up a conversation. I’ve always been popular, have always been one of the ‘it’ crowd, so knew well how to work him. I didn’t show any interest in anything more than business, never once let on that I was in love with him. Maybe I was too good of an actress because for the four years we were there together. Then the other one and a half spent getting our masters at the same university; he had a parade of women in and out of his life, and never once, not even in a drunken stupor, did he ever look at me as anything more than a friend.