Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Mommy!” I scream, my voice finally void of the stutter I’ve had since I could talk.
As I run to help my mommy, a bullet whizzes past my head. It hurts my ears even more than the shouted words, but the pain in my chest is worse than that. When I kneel next to Mommy, the red goop seeping into my pajama pants hides the wet patch soaking the front of them. I’m scared and angry at the same time, and it has me acting out.
With tears streaming down my face, I leap to my feet and charge for my father. I don’t want to protect him. I want to hurt him. He killed my mother, but instead of acting like he’s sorry, he’s staring at her like he finally found the money pot he’s been seeking the past six-plus years.
“Y-You killed her! Y-y-you hurt Mommy.” I bang my fists into the lower half of his chest four times before I’m sent flying backward.
I think it’s because Daddy swatted me away like a fly but learned otherwise when a man with a big shiny head promises, “It’s okay, CJ. You’re safe. We won’t let him hurt you anymore.”
Chapter Twenty
JR
When I come to, I’m groggy and confused. My head is throbbing, and my body feels like it was hit by a Mac truck. It was a tree trunk, but all bruises eventually end up feeling the same.
Wounds are like trust. On the surface, they appear identical. It’s only when you scratch beneath them do you realize how different they can be.
I trusted Agent Tobias Brahn when he said I was safe from my father.
He broke my trust, then I did the same thing to a man who learned the hard way you can never trust a Petretti…
When Old Man Stephens enters the workshop of a rural property three clicks out of Hopeton, I tug off the earmuffs that are meant to protect my hearing from the industrial equipment producing such high-quality pieces, its customers have no clue its crew has only been three men strong the past six months.
“What is it?” I ask after swallowing down the urge to stutter like I wasn’t born with a speech impediment.
I’ve learned to control my stutter the past fifteen years, but it’s not always accomplished when I’m thrown into situations I can’t control. Since that happens more times than not in my family’s industry, my stutter rears its ugly head more often than I’d like.
I transfer the sawdust on my hands to my jeans when I notice how white Old Man Stephens’ face is. I’ve been working for him since I dropped out of college at the end of last year. The bullet that whizzed past my head a mere second after one ripped through my mother’s six-month pregnant stomach caused significant hearing loss to my right ear.
Doctors were hopeful the reduction to my hearing would get better with time, but regretfully, it got so bad, I struggled to hear my professors even when they enhanced their voice via the PA system wired throughout the lecture halls.
I could have sucked it up and used the assisted-hearing implements offered at my university, but since that would mean I’d have to admit I have a problem, I decided college wasn’t for me before dropping out halfway through the second semester.
Hearing loss in one ear is a small price to pay for what occurred that night. My mom didn’t fair nearly as well. She died that night, and so did my relationship with my siblings. They didn’t see what happened, so even to this day, they have no clue our father pulled our mother in front of him to protect himself from a bullet earmarked for his heart. They believe his claims that her death is the Bureau’s fault, and they’ve spent the last decade doing everything they can to make them pay.
Dimitri is still a teen, yet his criminal record is longer than the plank of wood I’m contorting into the leg of an armchair some rich schmuck in Ravenshoe is paying out the eye for.
I’ve tried to tell them the truth multiple times the past fourteen years, but when my efforts doubled the loudness of the constant dull ring in my left ear, I gave up. My father doesn’t want them to know, and I was sick of being beaten by him and his goons to ensure I knew he wasn’t joking about his demands for me to keep my mouth shut.
I’ve done precisely as asked the past three years, which makes me even more shocked to discover the cause of Old Man Stephens’ white face and massively dilated eyes.
No one likes being visited by the reaper, not even when he’s your father.
After gesturing to Old Man Stephens that I’ll take care of his unwanted visitor, I signal for my father to follow me outside. My steps out of the almost derelict property are sluggish and slow. I wasn’t aware my father knew I worked here. Old Man Stephens agreed to keep my employment off the books so we’d avoid exactly this. I don’t get paid as much as his other two employees, but since no one in this town would give me the time of day when they learned my last name, I took what I could get.