Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
And I’d make their mother smile.
I glanced her way. Though she still silently wept occasionally, she held herself together. Just like I told her. When she seemed on the verge of losing it, she’d glance at me, and I’d reach over to squeeze her shoulder. That seemed to steady her.
God, she seemed so lost and broken. When the sunshine hit her face, the bruises stood out starkly. Thank God her face wasn’t swollen, because I wasn’t sure I could handle that. The bruises looked to be three- or four-days-old, still purple, but fading to a greenish yellow. This girl and her feisty boys brought out my protective instincts like nothing else had in years. I wanted to pound that little fuck into the Goddamned ground for doing this to her. The boys, though taking the whole thing seriously, seemed in a little better shape, but that was likely because they were kids. They didn’t know any differently.
Despite the marks of violence on her face, Callie was strikingly lovely. She looked younger than she had to be given she’d raised the boys from birth, but she wasn’t a kid. Just the haunted look in her eyes told me that much. She was slight of stature -- too skinny for my liking, but I suspected that had a lot to do with her living situation. Stress and likely lack of finances if her boyfriend had taken everything. Her hair was a light brown, cut short. Looked like she might have just hacked it off as it started bothering her, but she managed to pull the look off in a cute kind of way. She had a heart-shaped face and the cutest little button nose. Kind of reminded me of a fairy or something. A real-life Tinkerbell.
“We’re almost to Somerset,” I said softly when she caught my gaze again. “When we get there, Cain will have some questions for you. It will help you more if your answers are complete and truthful.”
“Who’s Cain?” She asked the question like it was expected of her, not because she really wanted the answer.
“Our president. I’m hoping we can get a handle on who the boys’ father is and where he’s located. We can shore up your legal claim from there once we know exactly who and what we’re fighting.”
She gasped. “You’re not gonna call him, are you? Because I have no idea what he’d do. Cherry said she told him she was pregnant after she left, but I have no idea how that conversation went. All I know is that he never came back. But if she lied…”
“You think she’d do that? Lie about telling him about the boys?”
She shrugged. “I never thought so. But Chase always talked about wanting a family. The more I thought about it over the years, the more I wondered why he didn’t at least come see the boys if he knew Cherry was pregnant.”
“Did you try to contact him after she passed?”
“No. I didn’t want to know,” she admitted. “I wanted to take Cherry at her word because I loved them so much and they were all I had left of my sister. My only family.”
I took a quick glance in the rearview, checking to see how closely the boys were listening before I continued. “We’d never set in motion anything to take the boys away from you. Even if they were in immediate danger. We’d simply remove them and you from the situation and reevaluate. We ain’t social services.”
“What if Chase wants them?”
“You adopted them?”
“Yes. Right after Cherry passed. In fact, she had it all fixed before then, making me their mother at the moment of their birth. She said she had her lawyer try to find Chase, but I wasn’t involved in that. I was too busy trying to take care of Cherry.”
“Fair enough. Do you know Chase’s last name?”
“Yeah. It’s Dutton. He was living in Indiana when they met, but worked for some paramilitary thing. They did protection detail or something. He was very secretive about it.”
Carnage’s gaze snapped to hers. “Chase Dutton. You’re sure.”
“Oh, God.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “You know him.”
“Just calm down, girl. Take a breath.”
“We ain’t goin’ with no one other than Mama,” Theodore said quietly. “I’ll kill him if I have to, but I’m not leavin’ my mama on her own.”
“No one said you were, Theo,” I assured him. “Just that I might know your daddy. If I’m right, he’ll do what Cain says in this matter, no matter what the fuck he wants.”
“Stop the car,” Callie said. She’d gone pale, and sweat broke out over her face.
I knew that look. I pulled onto the shoulder, radioing the situation quickly so my brothers would know what was going on. A couple of them slowed down and waited on the shoulder ahead of us. The second the truck stopped, Callie opened the door and stumbled out.