Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 118333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
My hands stopped halfway through rinsing my hair. The only way they could have known about those underground passages was from me, my father . . . “Or Tanner,” I whispered into the thick, dense steam. “No . . . he wouldn’t . . .” But I could think of no other answer.
Anger built at the tips of my toes and traveled up my body. With every new breath, I felt that anger take hold. I shook from the betrayal. I knew my father had made it appear that it was a cousin who was getting married.
“Why?” I said to no one but myself.
Drying off, I tried to quell my fury, but I succeeded only in reducing the roaring flames of ire in my chest to flickering kindling. I left the bathroom. Beauty was sitting on the bed. “Here, darlin’,” she said, getting up and handing me some clothes. “This is all I had. Thought it would be more comfortable than leathers and a tank. There’s some new underwear there too.”
“Thank you.” I dipped back into the bathroom and pulled on the fitted sleeveless black dress. I combed my wet hair with a comb I found beside the sink and brushed my teeth with the new toothbrush and toothpaste Beauty had left for me too.
I leaned against the sink. My hands shook on the porcelain. I couldn’t get it from my head that Tanner had a part in the kidnapping—a huge part.
“You okay in there, darlin’?” Beauty asked through the door. I hadn’t realized I’d been in here that long. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and forced a smile. “Look at you!” Beauty said, smiling wide. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Beauty handed me a sandwich of some description. “Here, eat this. You’ll feel better with something in your stomach.” I forced down the sandwich, but every bite felt like swallowing sand. My stomach was churning over and over with the possibility—no, the almost certainty—that Tanner had been the one to relay my family’s secrets to these men. My family’s enemy.
When I was done, I said, “I’m tired, Beauty. Can I lie down?”
“Sure, sweetie,” Beauty said. “I’ll just be in the corner reading my book.” She leaned in. “It’s about a duke and a servant girl in sixteenth-century England. Tank mocks me something fierce for reading this shit, but I can’t help it. I fucking live for all the romantic crap!”
This time my smile was genuine. Tanner had been right. I did like Beauty. In another life, perhaps we could have been friends.
Moving to the side of the bed, I lay on the cover and closed my eyes. Beauty turned off all the lights but a small lamp for her to read by. I closed my eyes, breathing deeply to shed this feeling of betrayal. How the hell had it all got so messed up? I answered my own question when I thought back to that night. To the night when everything changed.
To the love, the loss, and what led us to the mess we were in right now . . .
*****
“No . . .” A pain so intense it sliced through my stomach; I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I stared at my papa and slowly shook my head. “No . . .” I cried again, as tears welled up in my eyes. I looked about the room, searching for some form of relief, but none was to be found.
“They were attacked by Valdez’s men. Run off the road, dragged from the car to a ditch and shot in the head.” I tried to hold it back. I did, but a rebellious sob spilled from my mouth. I covered it with my hand to quieten the noise, but it was no use. She had been my friend. My dearest Teresa. One of my only two friends in the world was dead.
My father didn’t move from behind his desk. His hands steepled as he regarded me, coldly. Death was nothing to my papa. Simply part of his everyday life. “The men who killed them will be taken care of,” Papa stated, as though I wasn’t breaking enough in front of him. As if one of his closest friends hadn’t just been killed in cold blood by his number one enemy. “Go to your suites, Adela. Take the day to mourn Teresa. Then carry on tomorrow, as you must.”
I looked at my father and wondered how he could brush off so easily something so devastating. Then I considered how it was always his way. If you died, it was as though he never knew you. He never talked about my mother. My own mother was a stranger to me. I knew nothing of her, save the snippets the staff had given me. And I wondered, if I were killed, how would he react? Would he take a day to mourn me, then return the next, all business, “as one must”?