Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
Ollie was smiling at her, amused and clearly as smitten with the reality of Tanya as he was the idea of her.
Zane knew the feeling. She was more than he’d ever expected.
Zane got caught smiling at her by his father who was back after a moment out of the room likely making another phone call.
He and Zane’d had a long talk about the possibility of Joran being not only alive but involved with the rebels.
Zane’s father had oversight of Joran’s financial affairs since Joran went missing and had remarked he’d not looked at Joran’s financial accounts for months. When they’d had their conversation, Zane’s father had gone to a tablet and accessed records for the financials of Joran’s former business, which had been closed down after Joran’s disappearance.
“There’s money withdrawn,” Ollie Sr. had said. Zane looked over his shoulder and saw that a considerable amount of money was gone via small and larger transactions.
“I’ll request access to the logs for entry to his storage facility. If any weapons or other belongings have been moved, I’ll know soon enough.”
“I’m sorry to bring this to you, Father, but if he’s alive and hasn’t reached out to us but yet got involved with these illegal activities?”
“He may be lost to us long ago, Zane. We don’t know what he endured in that conflict. He was reported as taken prisoner. We don’t know what he endured. We know those aliens are known for their brutality, though.” The pain in his father’s eyes hit Zane in the gut.
Zane and Joran had been very close until a few years before he disappeared. If Zane was honest, they began to drift around the time Zane and Arla were engaged.
After the wedding, she regularly disparaged Zane’s brother, both in front of him and in mention of him. She had a problem with him, with his outspokenness, with how he’d drink too much and influence Zane, with how he brazenly teased Zane for being so easily domesticated.
Zane had fun with his brother. And he hadn’t any idea at the time that his fiancée was slowly trying to change him to make him into the ideal husband she’d planned to have for herself.
Zane hadn’t liked that his willingness to concede with her to keep things peaceful had been pointed out and started pushing back with Arla, realizing that his brother was right. He stopped trying to placate her and they regularly began quarreling because Zane was then paying closer attention to what she was doing and finding he very much disliked it. Of course Arla had liked Zane’s brother even less and she looked for reasons to avoid visits.
Zane admitted to himself when he thought his brother was lost that he should’ve never allowed Arla to get in the way of his relationship with his brother.
It wasn’t that Zane was twisted around Arla’s finger. But it was what she was trying to do for the entirety of their relationship. And eventually, it got to a point of living in the same house and Zane trying to do his best to avoid conflict with her while still giving his daughter plenty of attention. Perhaps he had thrown himself into his work in order to avoid the woman he was married to. He always gave his daughter his time, but Arla complained that he didn’t give enough to their marriage. Yes, he’d go back to work after Jaya went to bed. In Zane’s mind, it was better to work at providing for his family and building his business than arguing with Arla.
She manipulated him into getting her pregnant with Ollie for Jaya’s sake, so she wouldn’t grow up without a sibling and they’d had terrible arguments about how she’d successfully driven a wedge between Zane and his only sibling, a sibling who then went missing, leaving Zane with regrets.
The last time Joran called him, Zane had ignored the call and not returned it. Joran was shortly thereafter gone on a mission and hadn’t been heard from since. He’d gotten to meet Jaya a few times, but she was a baby back then.
Joran hadn’t been there when their mother died due to a terrible illness. He hadn’t been there when, a year later most of the females on the planet died. He hadn’t met his nephew. And the first they hear of him is that he’s potentially back and stealing women?
Zane’s father convinced him to wait things out without making assumptions while Ollie Sr. investigated Joran’s financials and his storage situation. The weapons company had been closed down, production halted, but there had been a vast amount of stock in storage. Ollie Sr. hadn’t decided what to do about it.
Zane’s father took a seat beside Zane at the table by the pool and said, low, so no one else would hear, “The storage facility was emptied about twelve weeks ago. Authorized. They sent me camera footage. He was there. Your brother is alive.”