Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
I carried that guilt with me every single day, but I knew I needed to move on.
My mother asked me to visit Edric with her, so Aurelia and I went along. It was Aurelia’s first time visiting the grave, and we all stood together in silence as we looked at the lettering on the headstone.
Now that I knew his remains were there, I felt closer to him than I had in a long time. I felt like his spirit could truly be free, knowing what was left of him had been honored. He wouldn’t want us to be sad over his death. Would much rather we move on . . . especially my mother.
She stared at the headstone in silence, the flowers cradled in the crook of her arm, not a hint of a tear on her face. Then she stepped forward and placed the flowers on his grave before she kissed her palm and placed it on the top of his headstone. “I hope you can find peace now, baby.” She held her hand there for a long time before she stood upright and moved back. “Every day I’ve visited him, I’ve cried myself dry. The wound has always felt so raw, years and years afterward. A part of me wonders if I always knew he wasn’t here, that I couldn’t rest or truly grieve until he was exactly where he belonged. Because the moment I came here and felt the disturbance in the ground, it felt different. Felt like someone else was here with me. And now . . .” She took a breath, the breeze moving through her hair. “I feel like I can finally find peace.”
I sat on the couch on the patio with Medusa beside me, staring out at the sea in the distance, the wedding band on my left hand where I would keep it forever, night and day, in the gym and at work. And even though I was happy, I wasn’t quite healed from what had happened. It might take longer than a week . . . or a couple weeks.
Medusa turned when the back door opened, and she immediately leaped down to greet the person.
I knew it wasn’t Aurelia because Medusa wouldn’t jump off the couch if it were, not when she’d just seen her in the house a couple minutes ago. I turned to get a look at the person and saw it was Rocco. “What are you doing here?”
“Decided to drop by and catch up.” He gave Medusa a quick rubdown before he sat down on the couch across from me.
“Just decided to drop by?” I asked suspiciously.
“It’s only an hour flight. As convenient as it gets.”
“You gotta get there two hours early, and then it’s an hour drive here—”
“Not when you fly private.”
“But still,” I said. “It’s not that convenient. So why are you really here?”
He sat forward slightly, rubbing his hands together, and then gave a slight smirk. “Your wife texted me.”
I gave a slow nod in understanding.
“She said you’ve been down lately.”
“Hard to bounce back, I guess.”
He stared at his hands as he continued to rub his palms together. “It sucks it happened, but what are you going to do? Feel guilty forever? There’s not a single person in your life who wants you to feel that way, Con.”
“A lot of bad shit happened under my watch.”
“And you think bad shit won’t happen under mine?” he asked. “I absolutely guarantee you it will. It’s a tough job, Con. You’re running all the criminal enterprises of the country yourself. You police the guys the police can’t even police. And Darius was a well-connected, rich, corrupt motherfucker. Look, I thought he was dead too. Everyone thought he was. And even if he wasn’t, no one thought he’d pull that trick out of his hat.”
“Rocco, I appreciate you trying to make me feel better—”
“It’s all done now, Con.” He cut me off with his tone. “You can keep living in the past, but where’s that going to get you? You’ve got a beautiful wife who wants to fuck your brains out, and you’re sitting here staring off into space. You’ve got a baby on the way—”
“Whoa, what did you just say?”
He shut his mouth and stared at his hands again.
“She told you about that?” We hadn’t actually consummated our marriage yet. After everything that had happened, I just wasn’t in the mood, and when she’d tried to get something going a couple days ago, I told her I wasn’t ready.
“She may have mentioned it.”
I shook my head as I chuckled. “Wow, woman’s got it bad, huh?”
“She said she just got hit with a new batch of hormones, and she’s . . . a bit frisky.”
“She told you this?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
“We talk,” he said with a shrug. “And friends always help friends get laid.”