Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
She raised her brows up at me, but didn’t get up.
I shook my head, letting her know that it wasn’t a big enough issue that we needed to do anything about it now, and went back to my seat.
“That the douchebag?” Huxley asked.
When Hux had gotten there, I didn’t know, but I nodded anyway. “That’s him.”
“I see the resemblance,” he said as he looked at Iris, who barely acknowledged my return to the table. “Gonna be hard to hide that.”
“It wouldn’t be hard if he would go back home.”
“Then why not give him the life insurance payout and call it a day? It’s not like you’re hurting for money, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t look like you’re ever going to leave her,” Hux asked.
He was right, of course.
Or he would’ve been right if it wasn’t as much money as it was.
I explained the situation that had risen after the talk with Cain, and the table went silent.
“I have a million-dollar policy on myself,” Romeo said. “And that was the highest policy that my company allows. How the hell do you get a two-hundred-million-dollar policy? And on someone that, and don’t take offense to this, Beau, because it’s not meant to be offensive, is a practical nobody. She had no high net worth. No properties. No job that made her and her family millions. How are they getting these policies?”
“You forgot to give Hopps my order.” Apollo pushed me to the side, forcing me to take the seat that Iris was in and pull her into my lap. She did nothing but lean into my chest as she continued to watch her show. “Also, I have the answer to that. Look.”
I looked, but saw a bunch of nothing that I could make sense of.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
Several of the closer club members also looked on and saw nothing.
“This is his brother.” Apollo pulled up a photo of Cain and his family smiling. “The one on the left is Cain’s twin brother, Able. He works at this insurance company.” He switched what was pulled up on the screen. “And wouldn’t you know it, this is the same company that gave him the two-hundred-million-dollar policy on his dead fiancée. His fourth dead fiancée.”
I closed my eyes and groaned. “Great. There are two of them that we now have to worry about.”
I whistled and Magnolia looked up.
Jerking my head to get her to come my way, she reluctantly got up and started dragging her feet.
I would’ve laughed at her reluctance to do so had this not been serious.
TWENTY-TWO
Here’s a reminder before you lose your shit today: They don’t serve alcohol in prison.
—Text from Magnolia to Beau
MAGNOLIA
Was it against the rules of the world to have fun and be carefree? To enjoy your life?
Because that was what it was beginning to feel like.
Each time that I felt happy, something would happen to steal that happiness away.
Fucking Cain.
He had a way of ruining everything. And the impressive thing was, he was just existing at this point and he was ruining my life.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He pulled me in to rest on his free knee and said, “Look what Apollo found.”
I leaned more fully into Beau, but also gave my attention to this near stranger beside me. “What am I looking at?”
The computer whiz next to me, Apollo, gave the full rundown. Then Beau told me about what had led him to the conclusion.
“You’re telling me that Cain has a twin. And those two twins are actively ruining women’s lives?”
He nodded.
I buried my face in my hands.
Beau pressed a kiss to the side of my face, and I couldn’t help but lean into his touch just a bit more. “It’ll be okay.”
He smelled so good, and he calmed my anxiety better than Xanax.
“Were they all suicide?” I wondered.
I was aware of the rest of the men at the table remaining silent, but I could feel their eyes on me nonetheless.
They weren’t talking, but they were definitely taking in every scrap of information. Likely so that they could provide backup for Beau if he needed it.
I loved that he had that support.
That, by being Beau’s, I also had that support.
“Done!”
I looked over to see the documentary that Iris was watching was over.
Before either Beau or I could reach for it—because Beau had turned into someone I could truly rely on when it came to Iris—Shaw, also known as Thumper to the club, took the iPad from her and started to scan through it. “I watched a really cool one called My Octopus Teacher last week. You should watch it. It made me cry.”
I looked over at Shaw.
Shaw was having a hard time of it.
According to Beau, when Shaw was still a prospect for the Dixie Wardens Montana Chapter, he’d met a girl named Katana, who happened to be Hux’s cousin. They’d had their fun together, then they’d separated just as fast as they’d hooked up, both happy to go the other way and not look back. But shortly after Shaw had become a fully patched member of the Dixie Wardens MC, Katana had found out that she had cancer and was also pregnant with Shaw’s child.