Page 48 of King of Bad
Chapter 1
“What about this one?” Jessie Winslow sat at her parents’ kitchen table, her laptop open to house listings, as her mother, father and four sisters hustled around. Her older sister, Caroline, sat next to her, eating a bowl of oatmeal with fruit cut into it. Jessie had a bowl of Froot Loops. That counted as a fruit, right?
Caroline leaned her elbow on the table to get a better look, her face falling before she plastered on a smile. “It’s nice … It just might need more work than we could manage on our own.”
If there was an award for nicest human on the planet, Jessie was pretty sure Caroline would have snagged it every year she’d been alive—she was an angel. She glanced at her sister, with her cherubic blond mane, hazel eyes, and sweet smile, and chuckled. She even looked like an angel. Quite different from Jessie’s brown hair, weird yellowish-green eyes, and snarky demeanor. So Jessie took her “more than we could manage” to mean “this place is a dump.”
Their youngest sister, Cecilia, skipped by, eating a bagel. “It’s a dive.”
Cecilia sat between Diana, the middle child, and Maggie May, the second youngest. All of the sisters were named after songs Ma loved. Maggie May was hunched over her own cereal, looking exhausted. Not that that was a surprise. She and Cecilia shared a room, and their giggles could be heard throughout the house late into the wee hours of the morning most nights. Maggie May just didn’t have the same kind of boundless energy Cecilia did.
Their ma, Sophie, stepped away from the stove and squeezed in between Jessie and Caroline to get a better look. She rubbed her hands down her bright sunflower apron and tutted. “I don’t know what this sudden desire is to move out.” She went back to cooking her bacon and eggs. “I went straight from my parents’ house to your father’s.”
“When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: [but] he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken,” Diana quoted from her Bible app, not bothering to look up from her phone. She wiggled her nose, moving her big framed glasses around.
Sophie pointed at Diana with her spatula like there’d been something in Diana’s comment that made her point for her.
Their dad, Mark, lowered the edge of his paper, the weather section, from his place across the table and raised a brow.
Caroline blinked. “Thank you, Diana.”
Jessie rolled her eyes. “You were nineteen when you got married, Ma. Caroline is twenty-seven, and I’m twenty-six, and there are no gentleman callers to sweep us off our feet and into houses of our own.” Plus, living in this house was worse than trying to herd cats. She needed space. Freedom.
Caroline pointed to another little house—a cute little bungalow with a large front porch. “What about this one?”
Jessie clicked on it. “Oh, yeah. This is cute. Not too far from downtown, either.”
They scrolled through the pictures.
“How much is it?” Caroline asked.
Jessie went back to the listing, and both sisters cringed.
“Is that for real?” Caroline asked.
“It’s a seller’s market,” Dad said. Dad was an accountant—it’d never made him a ton of money, but it’d made him savvy about money. “Everything is going to be expensive right now.”
Jessie furrowed her brow. “You know, I think we could do this. We’d need to save about fifteen thousand more to make the down payment, but the monthly payments would be within our income range. Especially now that I’m taking on more editing jobs. I’m meeting with Emma Lee Bradford today. She texted me last night with another job. If we economize and I use my bike more in the spring, it could be doable.”
Caroline pushed a lock of her flaxen hair behind her ear. “Do you think?”
It was a lot of money, but they couldn’t stay here any longer. The matchmaking attempts by their mother alone were enough to seal the deal. If Sophie pushed Jessie or Caroline at Brandon Carroll one more time, Jessie wouldn’t be held responsible for her actions. Not that she didn’t like Brandon, but he was really a lot older than her, and she was pretty sure her cousin Allie was into him. And as much as she loved her younger sisters, there was only so much she could take of their silliness and having to share a bathroom between the five of them. “We’ll have to pinch our pennies, but yes.”
Caroline perked up in her seat. “I’ll call the realtor and make us an appointment.”
Jessie’s phoned chirped, alerting her of an update on Instagram. She knew without looking because she’d saved that tone just for this. Her heart rate picked up speed as she stood from the table. “I’ll be … right back,” she said under her breath to no one in particular.
Dad slanted a glance at her, one brow arching. The look said it all: “Well?”
She shrugged, then hurried out of the room before Cecilia decided to take notice. She went into the hall and opened her phone, going straight to the post in question. She’d started an account with a fake name for the sole purpose of following one person.
She went to his page and found the new post.
And there he was. Daniel Whitley. The man who’d stolen millions of dollars from dozens of townsfolk, including her cousins, Jo and Allie. He was the reason so many were struggling now, the reason Jo and Allie had lost their family farm.
His smug, handsome face, with those warm brown eyes under a mop of brown hair, smiled up at her from her screen. This time he had a blond bombshell on his arm. And like almost every time he posted, it was an extreme close-up. The post said, “This is living.”
She’d bet it was. Easy to be when you were living of the fortunes stolen from others. Why she had ever dated the guy, she couldn’t recall. He’d obviously been a serious lapse in judgment. She scanned the photo for any identifiable landmarks. But his lying, thieving face took up too much room.
