Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Us brothers kept coming even when we were older because there was no way we were going to leave her here with that woman and his daughter, who was just as bad as she was even as a kid. Helen hated it, especially when we got older and didn’t need to be here, because we never spoke a word to her, never ate anything she made, and made sure Alyssa got to spend one-on-one time with Dad.
Something we knew wouldn’t have happened without us here because Helen and her daughter are jealous hags who didn’t want to share Dad with any of us, but especially Alyssa, who had always been his little Princess. They both have a grudge against us because we never accepted either of them and refused when Helen insisted we treat her kid the way we treated our sister.
Since she was the youngest when this all happened, we did our best to shield her as much as we could and picked up the slack where Dad was supposed to be, for both her and Mom. I was already in my first year of college when all hell broke loose, but Mom had insisted I stay, and it was the longest four months of my life.
I lost all respect for my Dad that day. He knows it, and so does everyone else. My siblings follow my lead as the oldest, so you can imagine how that went. But little Alyssa, along with Mom, took it the hardest. That little girl cried herself to sleep every night for a whole year, and poor Mom didn’t have time to grieve since she had three kids at home to raise.
Mom was the one who begged us not to cut our Dad off completely, but we couldn’t stomach him, and his wife doesn’t let him go anywhere without her, so that kind of took care of that for us. “Well, Dad! Are you going to call the cops?”
“No, of course not.”
“Corbin.”
“Daddy!” The two of them started their shit until I gave them each a look that had them sitting back in their seats. “Just go take care of your sister.” At least he still had a conscience.
ALYSSA
“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens….” Who the hell is calling me? I reached for the dash to answer my phone. “What up? Who dis?”
“Alyssa?”
“Sherry?”
“I heard.”
“Heard what?”
“About Lacey, I’m so sorry. She said you were acting crazy. I want you to calm down and don’t do anything stupid. They just made a mistake is….” Click! Now that’s sad. That’s my new ex-best friend.
We’ve been friends since we were in diapers, but it looks like she’s an adultery sympathizer. I don’t have time for that shit. Granted, Lacey is her little sister, so her loyalty should be with her blood, and it would’ve been unfair to make her choose sides, so I’m doing it for her.
She tried calling back, but I just went ahead and blocked her now to get it over with. I parked haphazardly in my driveway and went on inside because it was late as hell. I made my way to the guestroom after grabbing my laptop case. I have a lot of work to do.
Before I could make it to the door, I heard tires screeching again, and I knew somehow my brothers were back. I wonder if they knew that my neighbors were probably sleeping. The seventy-something couple that lived next door goes to bed at around seven or eight in the evening, and the other neighbors on the other side have young kids.
My neighborhood is a hodgepodge of ages, from the very young to the very old. I walked over and unlocked the door. It was my sisters-in-law. “Where are the guys?”
“They went to the twenty-four-hour store?”
“For what this time of night?”
They just shrugged their shoulders and made their way inside to the living room. Oh well, I didn’t have work tomorrow since I wasn’t supposed to be back for another couple of days, and if I was needed I could just work from home anyway.
I grabbed those bottles of wine from the dining room table, along with fresh glasses, and went to join them. Jilly popped the cork and poured us all a hefty sip before taking her seat between the other two, leaving the big, easy chair that I loved to sit in for me.
“So, what brings you lot back here?”
“We just came from your Dad’s.”
“Oh? This late?” They looked at each other and back at me.
“You know Helen wants to call the cops?”
“Helen has six days and a few hours to get her ass outta dodge before I beat her ass again. I’m not worried.”
“Alyssa, why?”
“What do you mean? It’s the day of reckoning. I’ve decided that I’m not going to let anyone mistreat me or my family anymore.”