Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
I swallow as my resolve solidifies. I know what I need to do.
As the three men move out the front door, a sense of loss and heartbreak tightens around my throat. It may have been only a few days of text messages, but Erik made me feel something maybe I didn’t want to admit to myself.
Now, I’m not sure who is who, and what is real or part of some twisted cosmic coincidence.
Either way, it’s time to use what I have to get what I want.
Ernesto said it himself. I’m marketable.
Cassie may be a friend, but my aunt is my family, and I’m going to fix this mess once and for all.
2
Erik
“Blow it the fuck up,” I say, gritting my teeth as Theo, one of my most loyal and terrifying employees, holds the piece of shit human trafficker in a half nelson. “You won’t be chaining any more girls up in that fucking basement. You’re lucky I didn’t chain you up and leave you down there.”
I look over my shoulder toward Dimitri, who stands at the ready to twist the final ignition trigger for the explosives my team packed into the corners and walls of the old warehouse where Lenny the lecher kept his stable of women and girls, smuggled in from all corners of the world.
“But I have money! I’ll pay you! I’ll cut you in!”
With a nearly imperceptible nod at Theo, I watch him flex his biceps and nearly pop the head off the sub-human pasty-faced Kevin Spacey lookalike.
“Wait, please!” He’s choking and begging now. We’re making progress.
I may not be squeaky clean—the demolitions business is legit, but in order to grow I’ve danced with some dirty demons—but there are lines you don’t cross. Enslaving people is one, and two—and bigger still—kids. Any fucking thing to do with kids and my moral compass finds true north, even if I have to put my foot straight up someone’s ass to get there.
You’d think coming down here to finish off what I would refer to as a passion project for me would distract me more than it has. Running my family’s demolitions business is enough to keep a man occupied twenty-six hours a day. Add in my little anti-hero side ventures, and every synapse in my brain should be accounted for.
But what I didn’t count on was Andrea Collins.
Fuck. It’s been 72 hours since I walked into my brother Magnus’s house for Thanksgiving dinner and saw the dark-haired beauty sitting on the countertop, swinging her bare feet and sucking on a purple Tootsie Pop.
Fucking life changing.
Lenny’s screaming and begging draws me back to the task at hand, making me angrier still that he interrupted the sweet memory of the first time I saw the girl that I’m going to marry. Stuffing my hands into the pockets of my suit pants, I take a step forward, leaning down and locking my eyes with his.
“I already have your money. It wasn’t hard to crack your safe inside, and even if it was, I would just stuff some C4 in the cracks and blow it up. Your little offshore accounts are emptied as well, compliments of some supremely talented hackers I know. But your legacy will go on. All that money went into an anonymous donation to the Michigan Abolitionist Project. All the women were taken in. They will all get what they need to start over. Ironic, it’s the money you forced them to earn for you that’s going to fund their new lives.”
I straighten my spine, rolling my shoulders as I turn away, squeezing the sides of my forehead. Then I give Dimitri the thumbs up.
The first low pop pop pop sounds like muffled gunshots. There’s five more in rapid succession, as I walk toward my waiting car, wondering what lengths I would go to in order to secure my new obsession into my life.
Would I chain her up in my basement?
The thought has occurred to me. Does that make me a bastard like Lenny?
The resounding eardrum-damaging booms push the thought from my mind as I take one last look over my shoulder at the falling cinder-block and concrete building. I pause, watching as the structure falls like a house of cards.
The artistry of a perfectly-orchestrated demolition is underappreciated.
“Throw his ass in the river!” I shout over the sounds of the last explosives and the crushing weight of the building falling into itself. Theo nods in acknowledgment, before I turn back toward my waiting car and the text messages that have become the axis on which my world now turns.
***
Back at the Foundation Demolition building, I’m barricaded in my office with an old business associate, Jackson Carter. And he’s giving me shit I don’t need.
“You keep checking that phone,” he says, “I’m going to think you’re going soft on me. Frankly, I’m surprised to find that Erik Leonard even has a phone that isn’t like something out of a museum.”