Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“What the fuck?”
“Felicia was able to work out some things on her end, too. The gardener tipped her off to looking like his best friend’s wife. Like to the T. So Felicia did some digging and found her mother. They got to talking and found out that Felicia is biologically related to her. That’s when they started looking into Gail and me.”
“Jesus,” I said before taking a swig of my coffee. “And last night? What happened there?”
“Gail found out that Felicia knew. Caught her snooping in her private office. Blackmailing commenced. And Felicia is not pregnant. She’s not naming her baby Julep.” He looked apologetically at us. “She’s sorry for deceiving you. That whole thing was Gail’s idea.” Denver sighed. “Gail told her she should kill your wife, or she’d kill her mother. And that was a credible threat, too. Gail would’ve done it.”
“I called my dad.” Ida Bell paused in her words. “Kurt. I called Kurt.” She looked at Sawyer with a sad smile on her face. “He didn’t answer. He’s totally out of communication with me. He’s done it before, but this time, I think it’s forever. It’s never felt so final before now.”
“What’s the story there?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Has Gail ever acted like your mother?”
She absently rubbed at the scar on her chest. “No, never. She was just a friend of my dad’s. And to be quite honest, my dad wasn’t really even my dad. He was my caretaker. He always made sure that I had food in the fridge and went to school. But I can’t remember a single time he actually acted like he loved me.”
Sawyer’s jaw ticked as he clenched his teeth together.
“I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Gail,” Ida Bell admitted. “She came over every few weeks to talk with D-Kurt. They always kicked me out of the house when she came over. I wasn’t allowed to be inside at all.”
“What happened if it was the winter?” Koen asked curiously.
“Then I got cold.” She shrugged.
Sensing that Koen was about to lose his shit, I changed the subject.
“What is the point of all this?” I asked after taking another sip and handing it back to Boone. “What’s the end goal?”
He took it back and took his own sip as Sawyer said, “I don’t know. Why fuck with so many people’s lives? Felicia’s mother doesn’t know, either. She says that all that was said was that she wanted a healthy baby.”
“This is all just so insane. I mean, she’s ruined countless lives. She’s made me miserable for years. She stole our baby from us. Which would make sense if she actually cared about Boone at all, but she doesn’t. She colluded with my parents and had her fingers in the church’s pies. She had her finger in another pie with Felicia. Then there’s Ida Bell. Then there’s stealing from your company, Sawyer. What is her endgame here?”
“Maybe there’s not one,” Boone surmised, curling his hand over my hip and pulling me into him before offering me his coffee. “Maybe her entire goal in life is just to make everyone miserable. Steal some money from my dad in case she needs to disappear. But you’re right. She’s done nothing but make me and the rest of my family miserable. You. Everyone she meets, she makes miserable.”
“Wish we could ask her and get an honest answer out of her.”
I finished off everything but the last swallow in the cup and handed it back to Boone, who didn’t hesitate to swallow it down and place it on the counter by his hip.
“To be quite honest,” Josephine, Denver’s daughter, said quietly. “Why don’t you just divorce her, Uncle Sawyer? And you, Boone. Stop talking to her. Stop listening to her. Cut her off. Everyone just cuts her off. You have an iron-clad hold on the company. So she takes some money. You don’t need it all. Not to mention, what I’ve overheard Dad talking about she’s squirreled away, that’s only a small percentage of what the company makes a year. Cut her off. Stop catering to her. Let the FBI figure it all out on their own. It’s not your job anymore.”
The girl had a point.
“When’d you grow up on us?” I asked.
Josephine smiled. “Last year when I turned sixteen and you never came to my party.”
“Hey, I was playing in Europe. I tried to get home in time, but you wouldn’t wait.”
Joe grinned, unbothered that I’d missed it. I’d made it up to her by taking her to a Taylor Swift concert.
“Maybe we should take Joe’s advice,” Sawyer said quietly. “Maybe we’ve given her too much attention. Maybe that really is all she seeks. Let’s see where this leads us. I’ve had those papers ready to draw up for years. I file. You all cut her off. We get on with our lives and see what she does with the freeze-out.”