Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
I nod, swallowing more nausea. “She’ll need smelling salts. We promised her…” I meet Oliver’s eyes, and he exhales heavily into a nod.
“Promised her what?” Jake looks between us, confused.
“If this were to happen, she made us promise to wake her up. Even for just a minute or two.” I don’t tell him that most medical professionals would advise against it. The smelling salts won’t counteract the drugs in her system. They’ll just make her alert for a short while, but no one is going to go against Phoebe’s wishes on this one.
Oliver turns to his sister. He scoops her up like she’s a Disney princess lost in a forever slumber. While he carefully cradles her limp body in his arms, her head slumps against his chest, and his gaze returns to me.
I take the shirt from Jake. Sticking my arms through the mesh fabric, I fight with the material as I roll it down my stomach, and I collect her purse and heels.
Oliver passes me and whispers, “Did they touch you?”
“Please, Olly, I don’t want to cry again.” I glare at the sand to subdue the wreckage I feel. Jake presses a comforting hand to the back of my neck as he walks beside me, his thumb stroking me, and I ache to grab hold of him.
I try to slow my pulse with measured breaths. Phoebe compartmentalizes, purposefully forgets, but I don’t know how to. All I do is remember. My skin still crawls from the meaty hand over my mouth. From the thumb against my tongue. From the hands that I couldn’t see but I could feel on my body. “Just go,” I breathe. “Jake, call Rocky.”
He’s likely out of his mind right now.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rocky
Trent finds me before I find him.
I’ve led him away from the east grounds, away from any place where I think Phoebe might be. On the stone backyard patio, I step over cigarette butts, deflated inner tubes, and abandoned sandals.
I subtly check my phone to see if anyone found her. No new messages. No updates.
My insides are being shredded alive with every passing second I’m separated from her. My eyes are enflamed, and I have trouble seeing farther than ten feet in front of my fucking face.
The unknown is very slowly, very excruciatingly, thrashing through me like an uncaged animal.
I can’t produce a friendly smile.
I can barely level my voice.
To force myself from glaring, I concentrate on the sweat dripping down my temple. The sensation quickly grates on me, and I scrape the heel of my palm against the side of my face.
“You need to quit helping my brother,” Trent bemoans again, running fingers through his dark brown hair, then outstretching his arm to the humongous lap pool where the DJ is serving tinnitus and an idiot cannonballs off the second story into the red-lit water. Topless women lounging on flamingo floaties squeal as waves rock into them. “You really want to stop this, Grey?!”
“I’m helping you!” I shout over the music and pop of fireworks. “Jake could so easily sue you—”
“Please!” he cuts in with a laugh. “My little brother?! He’s too fucking soft!” Trent has both my shoulders in his grip, stopping us in a puddle of water near the pool. “He’s not like you and me! He never will be!” His slanted smile stretches with arrogance I can barely withstand right now. “If he were, maybe he’d still have Phoebe!”
I am visceral rage. But only inside.
“And what if Jake never caves?!” I grimace at the C-rate wedding party DJ as if it’s beneath a Koning’s status.
“He’ll cave! In the meantime, have some fucking fun.” He rattles my shoulders, and the urge to punch him intensifies. My general disdain for Trent lives underneath a more ruinous emotion that I can’t name. It feels catastrophic now.
“You know this isn’t my scene!” I yell back. “I find these parties to be too inclusive!” It’s a shallow dig. “It’d be better with a smaller guest list!” I check the time on my watch, needing to cut loose from him.
Needing her.
It’s a desperation, and I can’t let him smell it on me.
“Couldn’t agree more! But you have to look at the bigger picture here!” He pats my face lightly, seeing what he can get away with, and I slap his hand off me. It’s a warning.
“Don’t bust my balls, man! I’ve had a long, long week with work!” I’m in the CIA and he’s the only special fucking soul I’ve offered this confidential intel to—not even my ex-wife knows. Another check of my Rolex and I tell him, “I need to meet up with my wife!”
“Ex-wife!” He shouts back the reminder, testing my boundaries.
But I’m not a beta bitch. He’s liked that I’m an alpha who won’t let his bottom-feeder friends run all over me, but I am never to run over him.