Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“Telling you the truth about the time between then and now is probably enough to change your mind anyway,” he said.
I doubted it. “Tell me, and we’ll see.”
“My father was doing business with gangs out of Mexico, moving various illegal goods—mostly arms. Nothing so ‘unsavory’ as trafficking drugs or humans. It was all very professional, dealing with men in suits carrying briefcases. Except when it wasn’t. We were at a sticking point in our negotiations, and unaware of any of this, Finn decided to go to Mexico on spring break. He was a sophomore in college. We considered telling him that Mexico might not be the safest place for him to travel, but we didn’t.”
Ford drew in a breath, and his eyes, when they met mine, were so sharp with pain I had to bite my lip to keep from reaching for him.
He looked away, fixing those tortured eyes on his almost empty mug. “I think, in retrospect, my father may have dropped enough hints to point his contacts in Finn’s direction. They kidnapped him, trying to use him as leverage. And my father said this was an opportunity to show them what hard-asses we were. That Finn was a liability, and he wasn’t going to come to anything anyway, so he might as well be useful. He was going to let them kill my brother—his son—to get the edge in a business negotiation. He was going to let them kill Finn for money, and not even that much money. It was more about ego, about who’s got the bigger dick, who’s tougher. And for that, he’d sacrifice his own child.”
I took a sip of tea to cover my shock. What the fuck? What kind of father would do that? And this was the man who’d raised this family I’d come to love? Ford carried so much guilt over the decisions he’d made—and from what I’d heard, he should—but he didn’t seem to recognize that he’d been just as much a victim as Griffen or his siblings.
I knew what it felt like to be told, over and over, that you were a disappointment, never good enough, no matter what you did. If I’d had the opportunity to deflect my mom’s criticisms or thought I could rise beyond them, I might have taken it too. Looking back, I was glad my only option was to leave, and so grateful for the Bellinghams’ job offer my freshman year. Without them, I wouldn’t be the woman I’d grown into. They’d given me a home and family, along with a job. They’d taught me what love was supposed to look like.
Ford hadn’t had anything like that.
“What did you do?” I asked him. “After they kidnapped Finn?”
His shoulders rose in a scrunch and fell abruptly. “Nothing,” he said. “I didn’t call the FBI. I didn’t intervene and make a counteroffer or pay the ransom. I did nothing.”
“How did Finn get away? Did your father—”
Ford was already shaking his head. “Prentice Sawyer give in? He would have shot Finn himself before backing down. According to Finn, the people holding him got a little too drunk, and he managed to get away. He called our former chef—the one who’d taught him to cook—and Chef Guérard got him a plane ticket to France and a job when he got there. Finn never came home.”
God. What an awful time they all had under this monster of a man.
“And what happened to you?” I asked.
Ford’s eyes flicked up to mine. “I realized I couldn’t be the man I’d turned into. I’d driven Griffen away, and Finn had escaped, but I still had siblings, and they needed me to be better. I couldn’t stand it—knowing Finn had almost died and I hadn’t done anything to stop it. I’d thought about it, gone back and forth, come up with scenarios, but in the end, I didn’t do anything to save him. He saved himself.”
That explained so much. “No wonder you’re freaked out about what happened in the parking lot,” I said. “He didn’t get hurt, you know.”
“That’s not the point,” Ford said between gritted teeth.
“That’s part of the point,” I argued. “Nobody got hurt.” I paused, gathering my thoughts. “And you guys—I’m assuming—have a plan to catch this guy. You’re working late in the taproom in the hopes he tries again?”
Ford glanced at me, clearly surprised. “Something like that, yeah,” he admitted.
“You can’t fix the past, Ford. It’s what you’re doing now that matters. And what happened in that parking lot wasn’t your fault. Finn said it after it happened. It’s the fault of the guy who tried to shoot you, and whoever hired him.” I’d used my best no-bullshit voice, and it seemed to get through, just a little, given the way Ford looked at me.
“That would be my former lawyer,” he said.