Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
I couldn’t help it.
I fucking laughed.
Hard.
In fact, I was still laughing my ass off when something interrupted me.
My phone that I’d just gotten back, as well as Booth’s, went off. It was the SWAT call app.
My brows rose.
“What the hell is that?” our father asked curiously.
I pulled away from Delanie only slightly then pulled the phone from my pocket.
I read the words on the screen. Then re-read them.
“Does that say what I think it says?”
Delanie pulled out her phone and connected to Facebook.
Seconds after that, she was watching fucking live stream—that Ellie was behind—and holding it out for us all to see.
“…admit it, David.” Ellie’s angry voice came over the line. “You were the one responsible for paying the man to firebomb my husband’s truck.”
My stomach sank.
“I will do no such thing.” David shook his head. “I will not be held accountable for somebody else’s actions.”
“You might not have done the actual deed, but I know that you paid that vagrant to do it,” she said, then turned the phone that she was holding in the direction of another man who was tied up on the floor. “Marco Pines, do you admit that this is the man that paid you to destroy the information that he’d obtained?”
Tied up, Marco nodded his head. “That’s him. Though, he just said to torch the truck. I thought the guy was out of it. I’m so sorry. He even let me borrow a car.”
Marco was crying.
I would be, too.
Especially if I’d done something as stupid as him.
The phone turned and then Ellie was talking again.
“You didn’t like that there was someone looking into your life. Someone who could expose all of your secrets,” Ellie said. “So when you realized that I was able to find the goods on you, pretty darn quick might I add, because you’re just that arrogant and thought that nobody would find out, you hired someone to destroy the evidence that was found. You are responsible for killing my husband.”
David made the mistake of rolling his eyes.
“I can’t help that some man did this,” he said. “It wasn’t me.”
Ellie laughed humorlessly.
Then she went on to explain every single dirty deed that David had ever committed.
Some we knew. Some we didn’t.
Some were surprising, others not so much.
“You’re right, you know,” Ellie said as she walked over to the couch that I could see in the background and propped her phone up onto the arm. “You didn’t tell him to kill my husband. Only to take the information. You never intended for anyone to get killed.”
David swallowed, sensing that something was about to happen, he just couldn’t figure out what.
Ellie walked over to a bottle of liquor that was sitting on the coffee table, then ripped the top off of it. She picked up a white rag that was sitting next to the bottle, then shoved it down into the neck of the bottle before pouring the bottle upside down until liquid saturated the rag.
Drops of liquor splatted onto the table, and she righted the bottle.
Picking up a lighter off the table, she flipped it open and closed, then looked at the crying man on the floor.
“This was my husband’s lighter,” she said to the man. Marco. “It was the only thing on his body that survived the fire.”
She flicked it open one last time, then lit the rag.
It flamed to life, and she stared at it in fascination before she turned to David. “You might not have done the deed, but you sure knew who did it, and you never came forward. You gave him the idea. The target. Now, you’re going to watch.”
She tossed the bottle then. Hard.
The glass broke against the wall next to the crying man’s face.
Then, on fuckin’ live video, everyone watched the man burn alive.
“Holy…” I started.
“…Shit,” Booth breathed.
Epilogue I
Fuck.
-Things you shouldn’t think when you wake up in the morning
Bourne
Five months later
“Are you sure that you want to do this?” I asked.
Booth rolled his eyes. “You can’t ask that as we’re moving into the house, dumbass.”
I grinned and picked up the box of shit that was labeled ‘Dillan’s shit’ and walked it into the house.
Months ago, when we’d started this venture, I’d been hesitant.
I mean, who wanted to live with their brother, his new wife, and their soon-to-be child when they were a newlywed themselves?
The reason I’d suggested this was in the kitchen.
After putting the last box down in Booth and Dillan’s room, I walked to the kitchen that we—Delanie, Dillan, Booth, their soon-to-be child, and Asa—would now be sharing as a family.
Dillan and Delanie were making cookies at the counter.
Delanie was rubbing her back, a look of pain etched on her face, and watching Dillan and Asa cut out cookies with the new cookie cutters that Asa had gotten Delanie and Dillan for Mother’s Day.
Upon seeing us enter the kitchen, Delanie went from grimacing to smiling.