Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
It was only as we were bringing our plates to the dishwasher when my mom asked, “What does Savannah look like?”
“Like sunlight,” I said, shocking even myself, my eyes widening at that declaration. I was not a poetic sort of man. The looks on my mom and sister’s faces looked equally as surprised. “She’s very blonde,” I clarified. “Big smile,” I added, trying to make the first comment make some sense. “Green eyes.” I went ahead and left out how they looked like moss you would find in the depths of the woods.
“How old is she?”
“I didn’t ask,” I said, shrugging. “Around Valley’s age, I guess. Twenty-five or six.”
I knew as soon as I said that part that I’d just added more fuel to the fire that was my mother’s vision of seeing me settle down with the woman who saved my life.
So I went ahead and thanked her for breakfast and hauled ass out of that house before I said anything else that would get everyone gossiping.
Luckily, when it came to the moms of the family, claiming there was a Family meeting was always an excuse to get out of damn near any situation.
It wasn’t a lie, either. I was fifteen minutes late for the meeting, rolling in when everyone else was already gathered around, drinking coffee.
“Sorry. Ma dropped over to make me breakfast and give me shit about not being the one to tell her about the shooting.”
“Rookie move, man,” Lucky said, shaking his head.
“What did I miss?” I asked, taking a seat next to my brothers.
“We didn’t get started without you,” Luca said. “But to get it going, since we all have work to get to. Savannah Vanjoy,” he said, flipping open a file.
“You made a file on her?” I asked, hearing the indignation in my voice. We made files on enemies. Not fucking innocents.
“We wanted to make sure it was a hit for us, not her,” Luca said, tone calm, placating. “Nothing we’ve come up with thus far, in terms of enemies, suggests that anyone is going to send some rookies to do a hit.”
“Alright,” I said, forcing myself to relax back into my seat, to not blow this out of proportion. If for no other reason than to keep everyone here from saying something to their wives, sisters, or mothers about how I reacted to everyone looking into Savannah.
“From what we can tell, she’s really never settled anywhere for long. Neither has her mother. It seemed like Savannah was pretty much raised on the road with a single mom, only stopping somewhere for a few months at a time. For the record, Vanjoy is their real last name, but the mom chose that last name when she was eighteen. When she decided to start living in a van.”
Again, that suited the hippie vibe her mother had.
“From what we can tell, Savannah and Sunshine Vanjoy have no enemies. Neither are busy on social media, mostly only posting pictures of places they visited, or sharing about some festival they were attending. But everything is all, uh, ‘love and light’ is the note here,” he said, smirking at it, making me wonder who he’s sourced the research out to.
“Could they have been moving around so much because someone was on their tail?” Lucky asked.
“It doesn’t seem likely. If that was the case, why would they finally stop and put down roots here? And it seems they’ve done that. Both Sunshine and Savannah have properties of their own. Sunshine’s is leased, though, whereas Savannah owns hers.”
“How?” I asked, surprising myself.
“We don’t know. We didn’t dig that deep. But Sunshine’s parents did die two years back. Maybe we can assume they left something to Savannah.”
But not to Sunshine?
That was interesting.
“Neither women appear to have significant others. And as far as anyone can tell, Savannah’s father has never been in the picture. It really all points to this being about us, not them. But it was worth checking into. Did you come up with a list?” Luca asked, and I rattled off the names. It was a short list. And I didn’t truly believe it was any of them.
“The thing is, they were amateurs,” I said. “Who comes in, guns blazing, that early in the morning in a public place? I worked out that morning. They could have gotten me coming out of the gym. There was no one in the lot. Or when I was at Matteo’s house, working on the car in the driveway. It makes no sense. No pro would do shit like that.”
“It’s bad luck about the cameras,” Massimo said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I am going to fix that. I don’t think they’re in any danger now, but I owe them a security system at least.”
“Yeah. I hear the women are planning on practically paying their rent and utilities as soon as they reopen,” Lucky said.