Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 77160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
That, combined with no longer being in such close proximity to Milo and all his disarming attractiveness, made me think a lot clearer.
And the dominant thought was: what the fuck?
One could make a case for the money drowning out any argument against doing this.
The money was still incredibly tempting. Especially since my TV was becoming pixelated and my laptop had been glitching so hard that I could barely use it anymore. There were upgrades my life needed. And, yes, an exit. A future.
Milo’s money could provide all that.
That said, the risks for me were high.
My relationship with Frank was tenuous at best. It was a careful dance, one where the music and steps were changing constantly as it was. Making me have to engage with him more was only going to make it harder to keep myself safe.
Also, I was aligning myself with a man I didn’t even know. I didn’t even know his real last name.
But I was trusting him.
To pay me, first of all.
And to keep me safe if things went bad.
“Maybe I have two investigations to work on,” I told Alley as she climbed up on the arm of the couch to hang with me.
She wasn’t an affectionate cat. She didn’t make biscuits on my leg or figure-eight between my legs. She never climbed on me to ask for pets and only tolerated touch if she knew a treat was coming her way. But she did enjoy hanging out with me wherever I was. And she seemed to like when I talked to her.
Since I had no actual friends to do it with, I liked talking to her too.
“I can earn my money by trying to look into Frank. But I can also start looking into Milo too. If I’m going to align myself with someone, I should at least know who it is, right?”
Alley slow blinked her one blue eye.
“Exactly. I don’t want to be anyone’s pawn. Well, it’s time to tidy up. So you might want to go hide under the bed because I’m going to have to take out your arch-nemesis,” I warned her, meaning the vacuum.
I climbed off the couch and gathered my supplies. Because I was usually too busy during the week to catch up on housekeeping. But also because I thought better when I was cleaning.
So I started my cleaning routine the same way my grandmother taught me when I’d been staying with her. I shook out the curtains, cleaned the blinds, and used a wall mop to clean any dust and cat hair off.
I grumbled, like I did every week, that I wasn’t allowed to paint the ugly stark white satin finish paint that looked shiny no matter how low the light was in the space.
I tried to soften it by having several large art pieces on flat canvases in light, feminine shades.
The couch, too, was a shade of dusty rose.
This was a girl’s apartment—just Alley and me—so I didn’t care about it being too girly.
The front room had a large window that opened to a catwalk, which meant that people passed by my apartment day and night.
From the looks of the place, I was relatively sure it had once been a cheap motel for tourists but had been renovated (if you can call it that) into apartment units. Which would explain the layout: the postage-stamp-sized living room and the bathroom where the door slammed into the tub, and the sink was attached directly to the wall because there was no room for a cabinet below.
The kitchen was laughably tiny. It had an apartment-sized fridge, a sink that barely fit a plate, let alone a pot, and no oven. Just a microwave and a hot plate that was so old I was too afraid to ever actually use it.
I’d learned to be a big fan of salads and healthy sandwiches since I moved in here.
The bedroom was barely big enough for the full-sized bed I had in it, but I was glad to have a roomy closet with a mirrored door.
I’d been so used to living out of hotels in my life that the noise was something that I barely even noticed anymore. Even if I did sometimes worry about how easily strangers could access my apartment.
Or, you know, not strangers.
I had a chronic nightmare about Frank showing up at my door.
On the plus side, the minuscule space meant that from climbing off the couch to when I lit my ‘everything is clean’ candle was only about an hour.
As I showered off, then got dressed and grabbed a ride to the pet store, there was a nervous, jumpy sensation in my veins, a fluttering of my heartbeat.
I had the feeling as I walked through the sliding doors of the pet store that it had nothing at all to do with the potential danger of this situation I was agreeing to do… and more to do with the man I was going to be working with.