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 have a splitting migraine. “I don’t know,” I lie. Evading on instinct. It’s ingrained down to the bone. Do not blow their covers. Do not incriminate yourself or others. Do not tell anyone what we really do. And even now, when I wish the plague and eternal hell upon my mother and father, I’m still protecting who they are and what they’ve done.
My phone buzzes.
This text isn’t from Phoebe. It’s from a burner phone.
Tell them everything.
The black heart emoji is Hailey’s signifier. We each picked one out when we were teenagers.
Even knowing my sister withholds information from us, I trust her with my life, but she hasn’t slept in fuck-knows how long. So, yeah, I’m hesitating to take direction from Miss Sleep Deprivation.
“Your parents are con artists,” Jake realizes. “And they raised you doing…this?”
Before I can respond, another quick text vibrates my palm.
They can help us.
I don’t disagree. But Carter is also their forger, their contact. In my head, he is no more loyal to us than he is to them.
Carter’s phone pings. His brows do a weird crinkle. “Huh.” He looks up from the message. “Your little brother just sent me a middle finger.” He laughs, his charismatic grin filling the whole galley. “Is he listening in? Are you wearing a wire?”
I pull down the neck of my shirt to show it taped to my sternum. “Say hi.”
Jake bows to me with eagerness. “This is great—we can bring them in.” He’s a puppy that just saw a bone, and I want to take it away. I can’t tell if I’m being protective or petty.
“Hi, Ailey!” Carter calls out. “Miss you, hugs and kisses. Let’s grab a bite while I’m in town, yeah?”
“Bring them into what?” I ask Jake.
“You all go after bad people, right?”
“A ‘bad person’ is subjective. To many out there, we are the bad people.”
He isn’t tearing away from my gaze. “You’re the insidious ones who take from those who abuse their power.”
“Not always. We’re not fucking Batman. Sometimes we just take because there are easy marks.”
“Am I an easy mark?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not actively conning me, though. Why?”
Maybe I am, I could lie.
I grind my jaw, struggling to be anything but honest with Jake Waterford. Ever since I first met him, it’s been unnatural deceiving this upstanding, morally driven, do-the-right-thing Abercrombie model.
He is right in one sense.
The six of us try not to fuck over people like him, and as much as his hero antics annoy the shit out of me, he is that. Good. Protective. Caring.
“They genuinely like you,” I tell him. “Phoebe. Hailey. Even Nova. But what we think about a person’s character means less to our parents. They wouldn’t care about you. You’d either be the main mark or a poor bystander getting fucked by association.”
“They call the shots? Your parents?” Jake wonders.
“They’re pulling away from them,” Carter answers first after a sip of beer. “Ailey didn’t say why. Just that she and Phoebe needed distance after a bad job. Hence, the fresh start. ’Bout time, if you ask me. Their parents sank their claws in deep. I’ve wondered when they’d tear them out.”
Could he be on our side then?
Hope.
It’s so foreign, it feels like a tumor in my chest.
Jake focuses back on me. “Your parents don’t want you in Victoria, but you want to make a new life here,” he says, seeing our goals in bright Technicolor now. “A safe life after all the crimes you’ve committed, everything you’ve done and maybe still plan to do. What if we can achieve that together?”
I’m suspicious.
Doubtful.
Cautious.
“How?” I ask. “With your so-called influence?” I sit forward, closing in on him. “You don’t own this town. Your mother does, and even then, you’re not the firstborn or even the second born. You are the third-born errand boy to your mother and brothers. You take care of the leftovers. The real estate. The rentals. The country club. You are nothing more than a gopher to them.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he retorts. “How they treat me—it’s not even why I hate them.”
I nod. “You already told me they were controlling toward Kate. That they suffocated her to the point where your sister tried to take her own life.”
“It’s even more than that,” Jake professes. “You don’t know my family. You can’t even imagine what they’re capable of.”
“I’ve been around hundreds of people just like them my entire life. I think I can crack a fucking guess.”
“Then you know they shouldn’t have this much control over an entire town. There are good people here who get bulldozed and abused all the time by them.”
“That’s life.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Jake is grasping for an ideal world. “I’ve watched girls be torn down by my mother for too many years. Most especially the ones she sets me up with. And the greatest effect I’ve ever had stopping it was Phoebe.”