Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
It took two and a half days for my life to fall apart.
Sometimes people think they’re at rock bottom and they’re not.
I’d seen rock bottom, though.
I’d studied the structure of it.
I’d learned that once you were truly there, there are only really two ways out. To be killed or kill yourself.
I know that people would say differently.
But those who say differently haven’t seen the actual bottom.
They don’t know that once you’re down there, there’s no way out.
There’s only pain and torture.
There’s suffering and silence.
There’s no getting better. There’s no bright side to look at. There’s no other way out.
My doorbell rang and I looked at the door, wondering if it was even worth it to get up off the couch.
Maybe I could just lie here and die.
The door to my house was opened then, and I barely spared a look to the side to see who it was.
I was just too tired.
My eyes closed, and I willed the pain in my chest to go away.
A scent hit me, and I opened my eyes and glared.
Irrational anger surged through me and I sat up, my anger aimed at the woman in front of me.
It wasn’t her fault.
None of it was her fault.
Yet, I blamed her anyway.
If it wasn’t for her, none of this would’ve happened.
“What are you doing here?” I snarled.
Sage.
Sage Jane Rice.
Daughter of Mitzi and Dominic Rice. Shit eater of the Irish Mob leader Sean O’Sullivan. Intended of Mario O’Neal, nephew to Sean O’Sullivan. Mario O’Neal that was now deceased by my hand.
She sat down on the coffee table and stared at me with those sad, broken eyes that had gotten me here in the first place.
She picked up a toy and studied it for long moments before setting it back down exactly how she’d found it.
My heart hammered when I glanced at that toy.
She pushed it behind her, and my breathing slowed.
“I need to ask one last thing of you,” she said softly. “It’ll help the both of us out.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I highly doubt it.”
“It will,” she promised.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Marry me.”
One
We should have a national quiet day. Where everyone just shuts the fuck up for twenty-four hours.
—Sage’s secret thoughts
Sage
Five years later
I wrote another letter that I knew would go unanswered.
I told him about my day—which wasn’t good.
I told him about what was up next for me—a nursing job in the ICU.
I told him about Neo—the Belgian Malinois that he’d brought me the day before he’d gone into prison.
I told him about my plans for next week—nothing with a side of work.
I told him about how I saw this week’s family dinner going—not good.
I poured my heart and soul into the letter, because he was the only one that I could do that to.
Everyone else wouldn’t care.
I was the pariah of the family.
My dad hated me because I’d defied him—apparently getting married to the man who killed your so-called fiancé was a no-no in the mob world.
My mother hated me because it was her duty to hate me if her husband told her to.
And then there was my brother, Devin.
He had a special place for me in his heart.
And it wasn’t a good one.
His heart was evil and black, and there wasn’t a single piece of his heart that wasn’t decaying from the evil that he lived and breathed on a daily basis.
Plus, he still hated me for getting Mario, his best friend in the whole wide world, killed.
In the Irish Mafia world, you did what you were told. You gave when it was expected of you. And you did not fight the man that was to be your husband when he wanted sex from you.
Something that I’d been unwilling to give to him.
Ever.
That was where this entire mess started.
I’d been leaving school, heading to my car, when Mario and his brother had spotted me.
Dario had dropped Mario off right in front of me, and I’d had nowhere to go to hide.
I’d been in an almost-empty parking lot in the middle of a deserted school thanks to a late-night makeup test that I’d had to take in the school’s computer lab. I cursed myself for stopping to get coffee after I was done, making it possible for Mario to find me.
I froze, my limbs going numb as terror struck like bolts of lightning through me.
I had nowhere to go.
My car was too far away.
And I couldn’t run back into the computer lab because it locked behind me when I left before I’d gone to the coffee shop.
The closest building that might have some people in it was half a mile away—a frat house that was likely full of men who would help Mario and Dario instead of me.
Fingers and lips numb, I came to a stop and stared at the two men through the window of their car.