Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Personally, I’m not looking to develop any heart problems.
I definitely don’t have to worry about developing any when it comes to the one man who knows how to get on my every nerve.
Odin Mayer is the most offensive, black-hearted, no-good, very-bad, surliest man I’d ever met.
He was Grumpy with a capital G, a biker to boot, and never missed a chance to make me see red.
Just as I’m convinced there’s no good side to Odin, he shows me differently, saving me when I didn’t ask him to.
And, of course, I have to spend the next few weeks with him after we both get chosen for the same trial to perform our civic duty.
Jury duty was not on my Bingo card.
Nor was falling for the jerkoff.
But there I was, somehow lingering in the middle space between fuck you and I want to fuck you.
Odin knew what he was doing, too.
Teasing and taunting me at every turn.
Then he had to go out of his way to be a hero, and I forgot that I was supposed to stay away
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue I
Common sense is like deodorant. The people who need it most never use it.
—T-shirt
Odin
There were times in your life when you had to admit to yourself that you were in an impossible situation.
On one hand, you could do what’s right and pay the ultimate price for it.
On the other hand, you could bury your head in the sand and act like nothing ever happened, while also casting your morals aside and being unable to live with yourself.
In this particular situation, I’d come to the uncomfortable truth.
I couldn’t let this go.
Not and live with myself afterward.
And sure as fuck there was no way I could live in the same state as the governor that had literally had a hit taken out on his wife and child, and everyone knew it, but couldn’t prove it.
The little girl had been so sick when she’d first come to me.
My mind had whirled with possibilities, and those possibilities had solidified into one hard truth.
The governor of Mississippi was poisoning his child.
After weeks of trial and error, the mother had discovered the truth.
Discovered two truths.
That not only was her little girl being poisoned, but so was she.
We’d gotten the little girl on the mend, and only when she was doing better did I notice that the mother was also experiencing symptoms of poisoning, just at a much slower rate.
And who was doing the poisoning? Man Wise, the so-called “governor” and “family man” who “loved his wife and child to pieces.”
His public face had been a façade. He acted like he was so in love, while simultaneously poisoning their daily tea that he’d known the wife and daughter took seriously. They’d been playing tea party, for Christ’s sake. A game. Every morning, they’d sit down and enjoy a cup of steaming tea while eating cookies they’d baked the day before. Innocent and pure.
And Man Wise had fucking ruined it.
The people who wanted to know the truth about Man Wise knew it. They protested in the streets. They filled out petitions. They even wrote the president—hell, I’d done all of those things, too.
But then there were the people that saw money when they saw Man Wise. They saw the cash cow that he was, that did the things that they wanted him to do, and didn’t question his morals. Didn’t see any problems with him killing his wife and child for who-the-fuck-knew why.
And let’s be really clear here.
Everyone knew he did it. No one was denying that.
It was just some people cared and protested, while others didn’t care, as long as Man Wise kept their coffers filled and the incentives rolling in.
Corrupt was too tame of a word for the likes of Man Wise.
As he walked out of the courtroom with a huge “gotcha” smile on his face and his people surrounding him slapping his back and carrying on as if he hadn’t just gotten away with murder—literally—I’d made my decision.
I slipped the safety off the gun in my suit jacket.
I waited until the smug motherfucker was inches away from me, that stupid fucking smile on his face that screamed “too bad so sad” and lifted the gun.
Before anyone could do anything—not his bodyguards, not his stupid smug asshole personal assistant, not the cops at his back, and not the new wife at his side that had likely been a part of the killing of his wife and child—I shot him square in the face.
His head exploded like a watermelon dropped unceremoniously to the ground.
The crowd screamed.
Cameras clicked.
And my world changed.
For the fucking better.
Prologue II
Don’t kiss me if you’re afraid of thunder. My life is an emotional storm.
—Contance’s secret thoughts
Constance
Wendy smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes anymore.
My heart literally ached as I pulled the covers up to her chin and swept the hair back from her face. “I love you lotsa.”
“I love you lotsa and lotsa,” she replied sleepily.
And, even though it wasn’t nap time, and she’d gotten up for the day only two and a half hours ago, she was headed right back to sleep.
She’d take several of these naps a day, and still not feel any relief from her exhaustion.
That was just how her life was now.
One moment, we’d gone from being super happy and carefree, ruling the kindergarten halls and taking selfies in the mirror with zero cares in the world.
Then everything changed.
One day, she’d woken up, spent the day with her Aunt Essie in the garden while I’d worked at the Raptor and Wildlife Rehab Center and gradually deteriorated. By the end of the day everything that was my little Wendy was gone.
In her place was a shell of a girl.
We’d gone to the hospital immediately, and I’d found out a few things that day about my special little girl.
One, she had a rare genetic disorder called beta thalassemia intermedia that resulted in slower production of beta-globin chain production. Thankfully, in Wendy’s case, she wasn’t making zero. Just a lot lower than was typically normal for a healthy individual.