Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
“Donny”—Callie’s voice—“what are you talking about?”
“Rory? Are you there?” I ask.
“Hi, Brock. I’m here.”
She has the voice of an angel. A worried angel.
Dad clears his throat. “Rory, Callie. I don’t know what’s going on with you and Pat Lamone right now, and we’ll get to that, but we have reason to believe he may be a Steel relative.”
Gasps come through the phone.
Two gasps, and I know which one came from Rory.
Already I know her that well.
“There’s no reason for anyone to be freaked out yet,” Dad says. “We haven’t figured out if it’s real or not. But that’s the claim.”
“Oh my God.” From Callie. Then, “Rory, are you all right?”
My nerves contract into spasming twitches.
“Rory?” I yell. “What’s wrong with Rory?”
“I’m fine, Brock.” But she doesn’t sound fine. Her voice is shaking.
“Damn all of this.” I rub my arms against the tension. “I don’t want to do this over the phone.”
“Oh, you’re going to do it over the phone, Brock,” Donny says. “You and Uncle Joe don’t drop a bomb like this on me and the women without finishing it.”
He’s right, of course. I’d never let him get away with the same.
“Who wants to tell the story?” Dad asks.
A pause, and then Rory’s voice.
“I was the adult in the room back then. This falls on me.”
I hear the trembling in her voice, and in my mind’s eye, I can see her bottom lip. She’s probably chewing on it. The lovely rosiness is gone from her cheeks, and she’s probably feeling as nauseated as I am right now. Probably more.
I listen, wishing I could hold her in my arms as she goes through, in a robotic tone, everything she told me the other night.
Dad goes rigid.
Rigid and red-faced.
More rigid and red-faced at each point in the story.
The hairy buffalo that was drugged with angel dust.
Diana’s poisoning, the reward offered by our family.
Callie inadvertently overhearing Pat and Jimmy talking about drugging the punch.
Callie and Rory coming up with an idea to claim the reward.
Rory—my beautiful Rory—putting herself in harm’s way to get the confession.
Then—
Rory, along with Callie, lured by Brittany Sheraton, getting poked with something. Drugged. Passing out.
The two women waking up, surrounded by X-rated photos of themselves.
Finally, Lamone’s return to town, his antics since then.
Rory goes silent.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” I ask through the phone.
No reply.
Then, “She’s okay.” Callie’s voice.
God, I need to be holding her. I need to be telling her this is all okay. That I’ll fix it. That I’ll move heaven and earth to fix it if I have to.
Dad finally speaks. “All right.”
“We’re really sorry, Mr. Steel,” Callie says. “We knew who poisoned Diana all those years ago, and we didn’t come to you.”
Dad lets out an angry growl. Yeah, it’s a growl. This is Jonah Steel when he’s mad. Red with rage. The Jonah Steel that has to be talked down by his calmer brothers.
Except they’re not here.
But I am, and I’m not going to let him blame Rory and Callie for this.
“Dad, they had no choice.”
“No choice?” Dad growls again. “We would’ve protected them.”
“Uncle Joe”—this from Donny—“they had no reason to believe we would’ve protected them. They were kids.”
“I wasn’t a kid.” Rory’s voice. It’s soft and distraught.
“I’m not going to let you do this,” I say. “We’ve talked about this, Rory. You were barely eighteen.”
“I wasn’t a kid,” she says again.
I turn to my father and glare at him. Don’t you dare, I tell him with my eyes. Don’t you fucking dare go after her.
His lips are pursed, his jaw tense.
He’s angry. Yes, he’s angry, and he has a right to be. But damn it, if he goes after the woman I love, I’ll never forgive him.
Then I drop my jaw.
I did not just think that word. The L word.
Doesn’t matter. All that matters right now is Rory, and I need to protect her from my father’s rage. And yes, it’s rage. I see it everywhere.
“Dad,” I say, “this isn’t about Diana. She had already recovered by the time Rory and Callie even knew. It doesn’t matter.”
“Uncle Joe”—from Donny through the phone—“Brock is right. You know Brock is right.”
“We’re talking about your sister,” Dad says to Donny through clenched teeth.
“Yes,” Donny replies, “and trust me, I was plenty pissed off when I first found out. Diana’s fine. There were no long-term effects, and like Brock said, Diana had already recovered by the time the rest of this happened.”
Dad sucks in a breath. “Callie could’ve come to us when she first heard the confession.”
“This was ten years ago,” Donny says. “They wanted to have proof. Don’t you see? There was no proof.”
“We would’ve found the proof,” Dad says.
He’s right. We would have. We would have manufactured it if necessary. But that doesn’t matter now.
“If this fucking degenerate is a relative,” Dad grits out, “I will personally see to it that he never gets a penny of Steel money.”