Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Then, because it’d been in the back of my mind this whole time, I asked, “Why’d you destroy that house?”
His mouth tightened for a second.
I didn’t think he was going to answer, until, in a low voice, he did.
“You think I’m bad, but I’m not. I do bad things. Those people, whoever stayed there, whoever was a floor above my sister, they were bad people.” A sadness came to him. He didn’t move, or blink, or change his tone, but I saw it. I felt it. He gazed out over the lake again. “There was a room in the back that had pictures of children in sexual—”
I blanched. I didn’t want to hear any more.
His jaw clenched. “Brooke was in that house. She was in the vicinity of people who could do that.”
“Were they there?”
“No.”
I had a feeling it didn’t matter. I had a feeling he was going to find them anyway.
And I had to sit and think again.
I couldn’t slap Brooke; that was wrong. But what I knew he would do? That was murder.
And I didn’t feel any qualms about it, so who was the real hypocrite here?
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Kai put me in a first-floor bedroom adjoining his through the bathroom, similar to the last place we’d stayed. Brooke was on the second floor. There was no third floor or I had no doubt she would’ve been put there. As it was, Kai had guards outside her door, outside the house, and in the hallways. Every door and large window had someone stationed there.
It was an odd feeling to step out into the hallway a few hours later, long after it had grown dark outside, and walk past the guards, not having them even blink at me.
I was free.
It was starting to sink in with me. I knew it, but feeling it was different.
“—don’t understand why I’m not with Riley!”
I paused in the hallway to listen.
Brooke’s strident voice was reaching maximum volume above me.
A low murmur responded to her.
“I don’t care!” A slapping sound. “I want to talk to my old roommate. She was my friend first. Where is—”
I stepped forward and looked up. The hallway I’d been walking from my bedroom to the kitchen was beneath where she stood. A sitting room opened up next to me, the high ceiling going up to a loft on the second floor, so the hall outside her room looked almost like a balcony.
“I’m here,” I called.
“Thank God,” she said as she stepped to the railing. She started past the guard, wrinkling her nose at him. “I’m just going downstairs to be with my friend.” She came down the stairs, and he followed.
“Good God, Eric.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to run. I know my brother has men everywhere.”
“Anything you say, Miss Bennett. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
She snorted, coming to the bottom floor and turning toward me. “Safe, my ass.” Her eyes latched on mine. “I’m a prisoner of my own brother, can you believe that? That’s insane.”
“Imagine that.” My tone was wry.
She laughed, and her whole face lightened. “Can I hug you now? Are we going to get in trouble if I do that?” She glared over her shoulder at Eric.
He didn’t respond, just folded his hands in front of him.
She grunted. “Eric, I’ve seen you naked.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up, paused, and he swallowed hard. “Yes, you sure have, Miss Bennett.”
“Eric’s family is close to ours. He grew up with us,” she explained. “When’d you come to work for Kai? How long ago was that?”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze, keeping his focus trained above her head. “I’ve been working for your family for five years, Miss Bennett.”
She linked our elbows. “Eric used to run around naked with Tanner and me when we were little. We loved it when Samuel set up the sprinklers. We ran through them in our backyard.”
I assumed Samuel was another guard. Or a groundskeeper.
“I see.”
Brooke tugged me toward the kitchen. “Enough about Eric.” She squeezed my arm. “Are you still upset with me?”
“Yes.”
She burst out with a laugh. “Yes. Same Riley. You didn’t mince words back then either.”
I gave her a look. That wasn’t true. I’d barely spoken when she knew me before. If she asked a direction question, I would answer, but I did mince words. I realized now how much I’d tiptoed around Brooke.
I’d wanted a friend. I’d wanted someone to talk to, someone to listen to me, to care about me. I didn’t know how to demand that, so I cared first, I listened first. It was all coming back to me.
Eric was watching me. I glanced up, and he gave me a knowing look.
I looked away, clearing my throat. “Is Kai in the kitchen?”
“He’s in the study.”
“Where’s that?”
Brooke tugged on my arm again. “Who cares? Let’s get drunk. This place has wine.”