Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74123 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74123 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Your point?”
“You’ve changed toys to hurt him now. You can’t expect me to tell you where he is.”
I pull the safety and point the gun at her head. “Then you’ll die with that knowledge.”
“Death doesn’t scare me.” She meets me head-on. “I signed my death certificate the moment I snatched Joseph from Costa’s blood pool and gave him a safe place to stay.”
“Safe place?” I chuckle without humor. “You might think yourself a saint, but you’re not. That fucking school was anything but safe. He was a weak little fucker and would’ve been raped then killed if he was left to fend for himself.
“But he had you.” Her wrinkles crease again, revealing crooked teeth as she smiles. “You don’t want to kill him.”
Doesn’t mean I won’t.
Joseph’s fate was sealed the moment Paolo shot his seed into his mother’s womb.
He will be killed either by me or Costa’s men. The only difference is that, if I do it, I get to live, if I don’t, Lucio will lose all trust in me and would turn the whole fucking city against me.
But Sarah doesn’t need to know that. We’re finally going somewhere and if she thinks I’ll protect him instead of killing him, she’ll talk.
I retrieve my gun and tuck it away.
Her hands work absentmindedly at the dough. “It wasn’t easy to get him to where he is today. He suffered a lot.”
Spare me the history lesson.
Still, I listen, with my hands clasped in front of me.
“After he left, his new family didn’t want him, because he was too quiet.”
I don’t remember Joseph being too quiet, he never shut the fuck up.
“He had a few foster homes until he graduated from high school.” She molds the dough into small shapes but doesn’t continue.
“Then?”
“Are you going to kill him?” She meets my eyes.
“No.” I don’t hesitate and for some reason, it doesn’t feel like a lie.
She nods sharply. “Return tonight and I might have something for you.”
“How about now?”
“George and his men will be here in two minutes. They’d love to send your corpse back to Lucio.” She raises an eyebrow. “You killed his brother three years ago.”
That George. Fuck.
“I’ll be back tonight.” I brush past her and into the kitchen.
“I was going to say use the back entrance.” She smiles. “Jasper?”
“What?” I throw one last glance at the old woman.
Her face creases into a smile. “Thank you for protecting Joseph back then. You’ll love the person he became.”
“Tonight.” I wave the gun between us and step out straight into the pouring fucking rain.
Fantastic.
I go into a back alley and take cover between two closed shops. No one is here, so I’m temporarily safe from George’s gang.
Retrieving my phone, I put on the listening devices I installed in my little Petal’s house.
I should’ve put cameras. I tuck that idea away for later use.
No sounds come out, which means she must be at her shift. A smile tugs at my lips as I think about the way she walked to her car this morning.
She was so sore, she had to take an hour off to have a bath. There’ll be a lot of baths in her future. I’m sure about that.
Baths with me, where she’ll be tucked all over my body as I make her soreness better and worse at the same time.
If obsession has degrees, I’m at the drunk stage where everything and anything is up for grabs.
And my little Petal is my poison.
I spend a few hours at the local library, going through public newspapers from the time Sarah saved Joseph.
There hasn’t been nation-wide news about the disappearance of a boy, and Joseph’s mother is still a mystery.
I know she was Paolo’s woman, but she was neither his wife nor his whore. He never married before or after her.
I don’t know why I think Joseph must look like her. He couldn’t have been with her since he was an orphan at the time, from the mother side at least.
The Costas were gods by then. Before that, they had the Vitallios up their asses, making them lose one deal after the other, then Emilio, Paolo and Lucio wiped them off the face of the earth in a cowardly mass shooting.
Since then, everyone else bows to the Costa power.
The other families don’t obey them out of respect, but out of fear. They know the Costas have no moral code or mercy and would do the same to them as they did to the Vitallios.
After a fruitless search in the newspapers, I quietly sneak into Sarah’s bakery through the back entrance. It’s early evening, but I don’t have time to waste.
I need to get this over with so I can go back and break my little Petal a little more, get under her skin a little more.
Problem is, she’s getting under my skin, too and there’s no way to stop that.