Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
I give him a look. “How many dystopian melodramas have you been watching?” I bite on a screwdriver and try to pry this fucking bolt out of the air vent.
“Can you hurry up?” Nova barks up at me. He’s gripping the metal ladder, keeping it steady while I have my bare feet near the top rung. I’m attempting to unscrew the ceiling vent.
“Can you shut up?” I mumble back, mouth full of screwdriver.
Oliver slows his lengthy eight-step morning routine, eyeing his brother. Light rarely dims inside Oliver Graves, even when he’s concerned about those he loves, even when he’s in the center of a grotesque job neither of us really want to be in. He is a people-pleaser. Peacemaker. Pacifist.
A true middle child in the fact that he’s never celebrated or patted on the back enough for all he’s done.
Sometimes I envied how he could find joy in a youth that seemed joyless.
He reties a white cotton towel, wrapping it low around his sculpted waist. He just took a shower, and his wet, dyed hair looks closer to his natural dark brown shade. He has the same olive skin tone as Phoebe. Same dimpled chin. Hell, even Nova has a chin dimple. It’d be stranger if they weren’t siblings.
Despite Oliver obsessing over his appearance, he’s still partially focused on his brother. “What are you thinking, Nova?”
I realize how darkly Nova is staring off at the Italian painting on the wall. The art is insignificant to me. Just a canal in Venice. A gondola under a bridge.
He could have an aversion to Italy just as much as his mind could be five thousand miles away from the country. I’m good at reading people, but I’m not in his head.
Yet, I know him better than ninety-nine percent of the population. He attempts to walk an ethical line in this immoral lifestyle, but all ethics will be thrown out the window if it means going into battle for his siblings. Loyalty over integrity is the Nova Graves way.
Also, he currently has a fucking mustache.
I’d say he looks comical, but he was bestowed with good genes. Am I jealous he can pull off the heinous facial hair? No.
“I’m thinking we should leave.” He clenches the ladder with two hands like he’s strangling the metal. “We should all grab our shit. Get the girls on board. Get Trevor. Never say a word to the godmothers, the godfather. We escape them. This town. And we’re gone. Together.”
“And then what?” Oliver asks.
“Then we pull a job somewhere they can’t find us.”
“They’ll make it their goal to find us,” I chime in, screwdriver in my hand. “We’re assets twenty-five years in the making. You don’t throw that away this fast.”
“We’ll keep moving every time they track us down.”
“Says the getaway. All you know how to do is run.”
Nova jostles the ladder, and I seize the top so I don’t fall off. When I’m stable, I give him a middle finger.
He glowers. “You have a better idea, asshole?”
“Yeah, fuck-face, we stay and figure out why they want us to leave Connecticut so badly.”
“I’m not surprised.” He runs his hand back and forth across his buzz cut, then motions to me. “You always want to do the antithesis of what they ask. They say leave, you say never.”
“You want to give in to what they want, Winchester?” I use his nickname from Supernatural. “You want to go back to sucking the godfather’s toes? We don’t even know who the fuck he really is. He could’ve been a serial killer in the seventies and dumped bodies in the fucking Everglades.”
“I know!” Nova yells. “God, I fucking know. I can’t stand the idea of any of us around them, Rocky. And now, we’re setting up a family dinner. To discuss what? How they fucked us all over? Are you packing or am I? Because they might kill us before dessert.”
“Again, you don’t get rid of assets twenty-five years in the making, and we’re using the dinner as a way to get their DNA.”
Oliver tips his head to Nova. “You should take the Glock.”
“I am taking the Glock.” He’s staring up at me. “They don’t want us here. It’s still safer to leave.”
“Your sister wants to stay, too.” I remove the ceiling vent and glance over at Oliver, who’s suddenly very preoccupied with tweezing an eyebrow hair. “And so does your brother.”
Nova twists around to him. “Ol, it’s better if we go.”
“There are answers here, Nova.”
He lets go of the ladder. “Those answers could come at a cost I’m not willing to pay. What matters is our survival.”
“Not getting answers could come at a higher cost, Nov.” His brows rise. “I might not need them, but Hails does.” He drops his voice to a whisper, but I strain my ears to hear him. “I spent five hours just trying to get her to close the computer yesterday. She’s blaming herself for not seeing this sooner.”