Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 32248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Almost evil in its purity as he grins.
I hand the laptop back to him. “Both.”
He turns the laptop towards himself. “Your entire life is in our databases, or most of it. The time you spent in Mexico wasn’t though. When I vet a brother into our family now, I ensure we’ll never bring another Bartholomew into our fold again. No Judases, as one could say.”
“I know that,” I growl at him.
I can feel fury deep inside my body at the lengths he must have gone through to get Lucifer to tell him the missing parts of my life.
“Don’t worry, Lucifer never gave up your secret. But you know me, I won’t allow stones to be left unturned. I searched and searched. It was when you got shot helping me save my wife, I saw your stab wounds.” He points to my body. “Those kinds of wounds only come from small knives, shiv’s I was thinking. And that led me down a very dark path to your youth.”
“Which is where you found me in a Mexican prison,” I say.
“Precisely. It was easy to go from there. While I don’t know the full details, I know that five men went down to Mexico. Three came back immediately, one remained in prison, and one black male was found dead in a landfill near the police precinct.”
Brent.
Brent has a name and a family who never knew what happened to him. It tears my mind apart some nights because I know I’ve played a part in their anguish.
“Joe Hammonds unfortunately died in a car wreck long before my plans could unfold,” Simon says and puts the laptop on the seat beside him. “But Jake and Terry are still very much alive.”
“Why, Simon?” I ask.
Why would he do this? Why does he care enough to do whatever we’re about to do? Why would he shed his perfected clean, freak of nature, skin to do this?
“It’s simple, though my wife hates this beard with a passion.” Simon chuckles as he scratches at his chin. “Because I know the feeling of true betrayal. I know what happens when you trust someone to have your back and then find a knife stuck in it.”
“Bart?” I ask him quietly.
We don’t talk about Bart much in the family now, it’s almost as if he never existed. But we all remember him and the way he shattered our trust.
“No,” Simon says with a slow shrug of his shoulders. “Although he was surely a blow to my ego, betraying us like he did.”
Simon speaking those words is like a blow to my damn brain. A blow to his ego? No shit, it was a blow to all our egos. But for him to admit it, I’m at a loss.
“Simon, what the fuck is going on, brother?” I ask.
He huffs loudly and smirks. “There’s always dirty secrets in our dark pasts. None of us are clean. Some more than others. My family runs closer to Matthew’s than you probably know. But suffice to say, I know what it feels like to lose someone even if it’s beyond our control.”
Pulling back from me, I can see him almost physically detaching from the intimacy we were just sharing. The cold wall he normally has up sliding back into place.
I lean back in my seat and rest my head. Things are starting to seem a bit out of both of our comfort zones. Whether by choice or necessity, Simon has come with me on this. He could have sent Gabriel with me. Fuck, he could have never told me a thing about the two men.
“How long of a flight?” I ask him.
He grabs a separate laptop from his backpack and plunks it down in his lap. “About four hours.”
The plane rumbles for a long time, and the whirring of the jet engines lulls me into a trance-like state. I wish I could fall back asleep. I want to dream of my arms wrapped around Beth’s rounded belly. I want to be waking up to Charlie’s laugh when Maxine tries to lick his face clean.
I never could sleep on planes, and thinking about what’s coming up is just going to drive me insane. Too much is unknown, and I know Simon won’t give me more information until we’re closer to landing.
If only I could get back on those planes they used when I was in the Foreign Legion. When I was flown somewhere it wasn’t in a jet, that’s for sure. All this fucking luxury, all the money and excess the family has begun to show and use gives me hives half the time.
“Simon,” I say after almost an hour of silence.
“Yes?” he answers, and I focus on the fact that I have no clue if he’s been working the whole time I’ve been zoning out.
“This is personal, isn’t it?”