Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
“You got careless,” I tell him. “Overly confident. That was always your problem.”
“What do you want?” he fires back.
What does he think? Him? Does he think he can bargain his way out of this and it’s all about him?
“Nothing,” I reply. “You can give me nothing.”
I rise, staring down at him.
“Except what I want to take,” I add.
There’s no turning back.
Glancing at Grady, I nod once. “The curfew can end now.”
I’ve got everything they have anyway.
27
Dallas
I don’t know how much time passes. Minutes? An hour?
But slowly, I realize the police lights are gone, cars with big engines are rushing in, and rain spills over my lips so fast I’m swallowing it.
Was he planning this the whole time? I stare at the ground, and I faintly recognize Army’s and Iron’s voices behind me, but I’m too busy retracing our moments together.
His bed. My classroom. The teacher’s lounge.
When he kissed me by the school doors before I ran out to risk myself for a condom.
A million other questions float around the periphery of my brain—how did he know what we were hiding here? Were his friends in on it? Where did he take everything?
Only one thought keeps digging deep into my chest, though. Was he planning this the whole fucking time?
Was he faking it? The kisses in the weight room. His words as he lay on the floor of the boat. His eyes tonight in the Den.
“What did you do?” I hear Army shout.
I would’ve been able to tell if he was playing me, right?
“What did you say?” Army growls in my face.
I spin away, my clothes hanging on me soaking wet as I trudge past Iron, Aracely, maybe Krisjen…
“Dallas!” Army yells.
I turn, walking backward. “Get the boat fueled up!” I growl. “I’m taking Rip, Tyson, and Trace! We’re tying up that motherfucker and taking him out to the sea! He’ll tell me where the hell our shit went with an anchor locked around his fucking ankle!”
Pivoting again, I charge for the cars, but Army rushes me. I only have time to turn around and catch him before we both fall to the wet earth.
“I will put you in a fucking cell!” he barks in my face. “Don’t make one move out of the Bay until I say so! Do you hear me?”
“Get the fuck off me,” I grit out, turning my face away.
He climbs off me, leaving me in the mud, and I just lie there, combing my hand through my hair.
This isn’t my fault. I don’t know how he knew what was in the tomb. It’s been there for years.
Before Liv left for college, we discovered treasure in one of the graves after Macon realized that Sebastian Louissaint wasn’t buried in his plot. One of our ancestors whose ship was lost at sea on its way to Haiti almost three hundred years ago. We guessed maybe his wife or sons put the grave there as a memorial, but it led us down a rabbit hole of discovering several of the graves were fake. The people either died on Sebastian’s ship or never existed at all. And the few people who might’ve known about the loot hidden in them died before they could let their families know.
A couple of years ago, we moved the wealth we found buried in this cemetery under the guise of laying our parents to rest in the new family tomb.
The elders all knew where it was.
Macon charges past me, and I can’t even lift my eyes to watch him take in the loss. I didn’t tell anyone, but I know—somehow—it has to be my fault.
“Fuck!” Army belts out, charging the ground in front of me like he’s going to kill someone. “What does this mean?”
I hear other doors slam behind me, fat drops of rain kicking up puddles in the overgrown graveyard.
Callum…The whole night was a lie? To distract me, occupy me until he could have a crew clean us out?
“Macon?” Army presses.
I look up at my oldest brother, his body frozen, and I’ve never seen that look on his face. Fear.
He blinks. “It means the government will buy our land from us, against our will, and sell it to him,” he says. “Because he’s going to make it more valuable now that he has two hundred and sixty million dollars at his disposal.”
A lump slides down his throat and right into my stomach. My eyes burn, and I close them, more drops streaming down my face.
What the fuck has happened?
I didn’t just fail. I managed to hurt us in a way we can never recover from, and it didn’t even occur to me to suspect him.
It takes every muscle to stand up. I thought I was so smart.
“He would do that to us?” Iron steps up, searching all of our faces for some kind of hope before he lands on me. “Is there any chance he won’t do that?”