Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“I get it. And we can discuss this more later. I’ve got to go.”
Would he kiss her goodbye?
Did she want that?
Hell, yes. She absolutely did. And she waited with bated breath. However, when it came, it was just a brush of his lips over her forehead.
Disappointingly brief. And without the heat and fire that she’d experienced this morning.
But she tried to tell herself that it was fine.
Everything was going to be fine.
However that knot in her stomach seemed to be growing even larger.
Harvey cursed himself as he drove to meet Paddy.
What had he been thinking? He always had to push too far, too fast, didn’t he?
Lily couldn’t handle that. She was delicate, fragile. She needed to be handled with kid gloves. He needed to take things slower, or he was going to terrify her.
So from now on, he’d take a step back. No more making too many demands. The one thing he couldn’t do was let her leave, but he should listen to her about everything else.
That was going to be difficult for him, because he liked being in control. Everything went out the window when it came to Lily, though.
She was going to be his forever girl.
And he had to do this properly.
He parked outside Lily’s family home. This place looked cold and forbidding, even from the outside. How had Lily’s mother been running a house this large with no money?
Paddy pulled up behind him in a different vehicle than last night. A Rolls Royce Phantom.
He sighed as his younger brother climbed out.
“Have you ever considered trying to keep a low profile?”
“Sounds boring,” Paddy said cheerfully. “I’ll leave that to you old codgers.”
Old codgers sounded like something their grandfather would say.
Harvey just shook his head and turned toward the house. “Let me take the lead in there. You’re just here because Lily was worried I’d need a witness.”
“A witness? What are you planning on doing, brother?”
“Nothing like what I want to do. I don’t hurt women physically, but I am planning on turning her life into utter and total misery.”
“So just another Thursday afternoon for you, is it then, brother?”
Harvey shook his head at Paddy’s antics and walked over to the door, knocking firmly.
There was no reply.
But he’d kind of expected that.
“Mrs. St. Clary? It’s Harvey Gallagher. I’m here to talk to you about your daughter Lily.”
Still nothing. He glanced over at Paddy.
“Bit of B&E?” Paddy asked. “Should have come in the darkness of night for that.”
Agreed.
He knocked again, not ready to give up. He wasn’t leaving until he spoke to Roberta.
“We’re not leaving until we speak to you, Mrs. St. Clary”
Finally, the door creaked open, but it wasn’t Lily’s mother’s face that peeked out at them. It was a slightly younger woman with her hair pulled back into a severe bun.
“What do you want?”
Harvey raised his eyebrows in surprise at her tone.
“That’s a nice way to greet people at the door, isn’t it?” Paddy said cheerfully. “We’re here to speak to the old bat.”
“What? How dare you!” The woman attempted to close the door, but Harvey had had enough of playing Mr. Nice Guy.
He pushed his foot between the doorframe and the door, stopping it from closing entirely, and then he slowly pushed the door.
“Hey, you can’t do that. I’ll call the police,” the woman said, glaring up at him.
“Really? You’re going to call the police? Is that what your employer would want?”
She flinched back slightly, and he could tell that she wouldn’t be calling the police. It was all a bluff.
“Where is Mrs. St. Clary?” he asked.
“You still have no right to do this.”
“Well, she had no right to abuse her daughter for years, did she? And I’m sure the police are going to be very interested in what we have to tell them.”
Another flinch.
“Oh, this bitch knew all about what the old hag was doing to Lily,” Paddy said, moving closer to the woman. “I don’t like that. Do you like that, brother?”
“No, I don’t like that at all.”
“Selena, Selena! Where are you? Where is my coffee? And who was at the door. Ahh . . . it’s you.”
Roberta St. Clary might have been an attractive-looking woman if it wasn’t for the fact that the evil inside her distorted her outside appearance.
“Where is my daughter?” she demanded. “You took her from me. You kidnapped her.”
“Really? Did you see her protest as I carried her out? No, because she wanted to leave your evil clutches.”
“I will call the police and report you.”
“God, this conversation’s getting boring,” Paddy said as he walked over to a side table and picked up some wax apples that were sitting in a bowl. He started juggling them. “We all know you aren’t going to call the police. If you were, you would have done that already. But you know that we have shit on you that the cops would just love to know.”