Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
I was still stuck on the abusive comment and her taking hits for Perry. I knew the guy wasn’t big, and he was two years younger than her, but, damn, he was a guy. What guy let a girl take punches to protect himself? I didn’t care what age he was. I had thrown swings at seven years old. Our dads encouraged it inside the family. We dealt with our disagreements by fighting.
“Your mother hit you?” I needed clarification.
She bit her bottom lip, then took a deep breath. “She wasn’t well. But yes. If I didn’t step in, she’d do more than break Perry’s bones, like she did mine. He was fragile. She didn’t ever attack me unless I stopped her from going after him. I never understood what it was that made her hate him like she seemed to. He was a quiet kid. Smart. A people pleaser. Rule follower.” She stopped, and her gaze looked at me pleadingly. “It’s why I am struggling to believe he did all this. And if so, then I don’t think he was the actual one behind it. He was used by someone else. Possibly this Samson guy.”
It was the opening I needed to turn this discussion to Perry, and I could ask things to get more answers where he was concerned. Which was what I should have been doing because all I had learned had me hating a dead woman.
Focus on the problem, Oz.
“We will know when we find him,” I replied, not telling her that Perry had absolutely known what he was doing. He was brilliant at it. No one was using him as a puppet. “You both went to college. Got degrees. How did you get the loans, assuming that was how it was paid for?”
She smiled softly. “Marley. She cosigned with me. Perry, however, got a full ride. His IQ alone was impressive. He skipped his eight grade and tenth grade years. Stanford gave him a full ride—considering our financial situation, he fell under the need category, and they wanted him bad. He graduated from high school the year I did. He’d done college freshman classes online that year too. By the time he was seventeen, he already had a year of college hours completed. Instead of four years, he completed his bachelor’s in three. He graduated from Stanford a year before I did from Mississippi State.”
Yet she didn’t see how he would maybe need money to help fund that company and open it up? That, in two years, he had become a multimillionaire from a start-up company, and that was fucking unheard of.
I struggled at not pointing that shit out to her. I wanted her to open up more. If she thought this was an interrogation, she’d flee the room. Shut me out. That wouldn’t help things.
“Impressive,” I said, then took a drink from my glass.
She laughed softly, and the sound distracted me. It had some soothing power to it. One you wanted to listen to again, just to see if it always had that impact.
“Yeah, while my little brother was out changing the world, I was busy going to my boyfriend’s games and the parties he never wanted to miss.”
Alec Dart.
“What, dating the football star wasn’t a fairy tale?” I asked, smirking.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “How do you know who I dated?”
I gave her a smug look. “Mafia,” I replied. “We don’t abduct someone without knowing basic facts about the people closest to them that might get in the way.”
She leaned back against the sofa, setting her plate down on the table beside her as she watched me. “What all do you know? I mean, if you know I dated Alec.”
I shrugged. “Not as much as you think. Like I said, basic. The reason Alec was info we needed was because he might be a person who would track you. Notice you were missing.”
She let out a short laugh. “Alec and I haven’t spoken in ten months. I broke it off eleven months ago, and after one month of him calling, texting, sending flowers, he stopped apologizing and left me alone.”
She’d broken it off with him. I liked that. Not that it mattered, but I still fucking liked it.
“Why did you end things?”
She tilted her head to the side, and her dark locks fell over her shoulder. “If you know who Alec is, then you know he plays for the Saints now. When the fame came, faithfulness wasn’t his strong suit.”
He’d cheated. Stupid fucker.
“How’d you find out?” I asked. This had not one damn thing to do with Perry, yet here I was, continuing to go off course.
“I called him after he got to play in their second preseason game his first year with them. We had been dating two years almost to the day. But he didn’t answer. A woman did. They were…well…” She paused, and her cheeks turned a little pink. “His mouth was otherwise occupied between her legs, and she answered the phone, then told me where he was. He took the phone and started apologizing, and I told him it was over. Not to call me again.”