AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
She felt sick. So sick.
She was trembling when she found the note at the very back, this one handwritten and unsigned, though she immediately knew who it was from.
It would be a shame for this to make its way to the authorities, wouldn’t it? Your father would be seventy before he was eligible for parole. Half his life wasted. Your mother alone.
And the only thing it costs to stop it is one night.
One night.
One night.
Lightheadedness swept through her brain, bile climbing up her throat as she tried to process what the man was propositioning.
She understood extortion.
Blackmail.
She could call Frederick’s bluff. Toss it back in his face as bullshit.
Ignore it altogether.
Or she could go to the authorities with it. But Frederick had power and reputation. She knew it could easily be swept under the rug.
And if this was real? If the proof he was showing her was true? It would expose her father. His sins.
She didn’t go down that night. She couldn’t look at her father and question what he’d been involved in. Couldn’t stomach the truth. Couldn’t fathom the way it would tear apart their family.
One night.
One night.
A war waged inside her as she flopped uneasily in her bed, horrified by the proposal. By what it would mean. At what she’d be giving up. The disgust she would feel.
But if one night could protect her father…
She gulped as she came to a decision, tears leaking out of the edges of her eyes as she succumbed to what she felt was the only choice she could make.
But maybe she was naïve, after all.
Naïve to the extreme because she truly didn’t know what Frederick Winston was capable of.
TWENTY-ONE
RIVER
Hadyou ever taken a turn down the wrong road and traveled it anyway just to see where it would lead?
Knowing the path was treacherous and riddled with potholes and cracks, and you’d already received the warning that there was a dead-end up ahead, but you continued on because the scenery was so awe-inspiring you’d convinced yourself it wouldn’t hurt to take a detour through paradise?
Guessed it was so as I sat like a dumb fucker with his first crush grinning at my phone at just after seven in the morning.
Maybe that’s exactly what I was.
A dumb fucker who had his first crush because I wasn’t sure that I’d ever felt this way before. Fucking antsy as hell, anticipating her next text. Wondering exactly what she’d say and how it was gonna feel, but knowing every time her words did come through, I felt like I was flying.
We’d been texting back and forth for the last week, and with each one, I felt myself getting more caught up.
