Total pages in book: 213
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
You can only move forward, a voice tells me, and I close my eyes, letting the last tears fall. They linger on my lashes as I open my eyes again and say goodbye to her, leaving the photo where it is.
I carelessly brush them away, gazing at the full duffle bag as my phone pings. It’s only one of two people. I already know that.
Please tell me you’re okay. I read the text message from Angie and my heart sinks. I think I would have been good friends with her. Even though neither of us ever belonged here. I’m grateful to leave, but I don’t know how much this place will take from her before she walks away, if she can even walk away.
I don’t know why she’d stay here any longer than she has to. But it’s her choice, and she knows what she’s doing. Maybe me leaving will push her to run; I try to justify leaving her in the dark with the thought of her being warned to stay away with my disappearance. I can only hope that’s what she does.
There’s not a damn thing good that lives in Crescent Hills.
Answer me, she texts me, but I don’t text her back. The next time it pings, I turn off the phone without looking.
Bastian said it’s better to just disappear and for no one to know where we’ve gone. He’s right, and I don’t want anyone to come looking for me. If I could disappear and be lost in the wind with Bastian forever, I would. Tonight, I’m going to try to do just that.
I leave the phone on the bed, on the sheets that never belonged to me. It can stay there and when the men come and take everything inside because the bills go unpaid, they can have it.
They can have every piece of what’s here.
It never belonged to me and I’m done belonging to it.
SEBASTIAN
I can’t stop staring at the note on the counter. It’s only a Post-it with the words, “Leaving for the weekend – Seb” written on the yellow square. Eddie will get it on Monday, or maybe this weekend if anyone comes in. The shop is supposed to be empty, with most of the guys going down to the docks for Romano this weekend. There’s a large order of coke coming in. And the butcher shop isn’t needed for that.
I’ll leave a note and I’ll ghost. He can try to find me all he wants, but I’m done with Romano and this place. Just as the thought hits me, I hear the bells chime at the front door and a chill seeps into my veins.
“Eddie,” I greet him with a grin, hiding the fact that I didn’t want anyone to know I was leaving until I was gone. I didn’t want anyone to ask questions. “What are you doing here?” I ask and casually lean against the counter. The spool of butcher’s cord is right below me. All of us who work in the shop are familiar with it; we use it to secure packages and orders.
I don’t reach for it yet, but with the pounding of my blood, I know it’s going to end like this. The desire to get it over with forces a numbness through my fingers and I shake it off, smiling as he answers me.
“What am I doing? How about, what the fuck are you doing here?” He shoots me a twisted grin as if he’s being friendly, but the look in his eyes is filled with the psychotic glee he’s known for. “I heard Romano wants to talk to you,” he adds as he walks to the counter, the sound of his boots slapping against the floor in time with the pounding of my heart. He tosses the keys to the shop down on the counter and leans closer to me just as I reach for the cord.
I wind it over my fingers under the counter. The dumb fuck is so hellbent on letting me know my days are numbered in the darkened butcher shop that he doesn’t realize his own imminent demise is only a moment away.
“Seems he thinks you have something to do with those assholes coming up dead,” he tells me, eyeing me and then glancing out the window as the headlights of a passing car shine through the glass.
Dread rips through me, thinking it’s someone else and I won’t have time to finish Eddie off, but it’s not. The lights flash and keep on going, heading down to the mechanic shop behind us.
“Why would he think that?” I ask him, wrapping the rope around once more and then starting on the other hand. I leave less than a foot of cord between the two. Enough to get the thin rope over his head, but not so much that it’ll be too loose when I choke him out.