Own My Soul (Sixty Days 3)

I’d accepted them without question.

I’d accepted everything from him without question.

My gut pained at the thought that my father wasn’t anything like as immoral in his business as Drake had painted him out to be.

It was one thing to accept Frederick’s revelations that both my father and Drake had put Amelia up to accepting the cash before they played out the episode before my eyes, but it was another thing entirely to think the whole disastrous pit of shit ended with people dying over it.

Please, for the love of fucking everything, please don’t let it have cost me the lives of the people I fucking loved before my heart turned to stone.

But of course it would have.

I knew full well Henry Drake was one of the most dangerous people in existence, he just hid it behind a sheen of utter power and professionalism. I just figured my father was of the same line of sinister.

But if he wasn’t…

What the holy living fuck would it mean if he wasn’t?

I flicked through to one of the final pages, and it was horror. My fucking life, it was a horror.

He’s going to kill me. I know it.

Over the coming days he’s going to kill me.

I’m going after Amelia George, because she’s the one person with the links in the chain of how he came after her, but if I don’t make it. If I don’t manage to catch her before she heads down river after her Boat Inn meet up next Wednesday evening, he’s going to come for me.

If I do, I just hope someone fucking comes for him in return.

But no.

Seriously no.

My father fell to his death in the river not far downstream of the Boat Inn on that same fucking Wednesday evening. He fell in drunk. Stumbled apparently. Just an accident of a drunk man, which everyone was whispering was suicide.

I scrunched the papers up in my hand before I could stop myself. It took every scrap of resolve to let go of them and smooth them out again.

Drake had killed my fucking father.

He’d helped send the love of my fucking life away, then killed the man who was the rest of my everything.

There was no way on this planet he was going to take shit from me ever again. Not a hope in fucking hell he was coming back from this.

I remembered Frederick’s words as he’d tried to calm me. His words he’d insisted on before I’d made to batter down the back door on my mission to tear Drake’s limbs from his body earlier.

You need to speak to Amelia George’s sister. She knows enough to make a case against him. Really, Mr Grant, sir. You need to speak to Amelia George’s sister. I have an address for her!

I pulled out the address from my pocket. Two hours across to the Welsh coast, to a little seaside town I’d visited once as a boy.

I should be able to get there before nightfall.

I was in the driver’s seat when my phone started ringing with an unknown number flashing on screen.

And Eric’s voice was barely more than a whisper when I answered it.

“I’m in,” he said. “And holy fuck, I have some fucking news.”Chapter SeventeenBrandonSo many words wanted to blast from my mouth across to my brother on the other end of the telephone. But they stopped. They backed up in my throat and stopped in a flash as Eric’s news bashed its way across the ether.

“It was scary shit,” he continued. “He didn’t want to believe a sliver of anything from me, not at first. Asked me the whole fucking story over and over and fucking over before he patted me on the back and said I was welcome back on team Drake.”

My hackles danced. “Welcome back on team Drake? So fucking tight to the heart of team Drake that you’re down as head fucking sir for the girl I’m planning to spend the rest of my fucking life with?”

He paused for a beat. “Fuck, Bran. Don’t shoot me down. I got in here, Drake told me what I was doing. Wasn’t my choice. I’ve no fucking interest in fucking my future fucking sister-in-law.”

I wanted to believe him.

Every cell in my body wanted to believe him.

I wanted to believe that the newfound brother connection I’d been valuing so fucking hard as this new wave of crazy ate me whole was real. Was worth it.

That he was worth it.

“I mean it,” he said. “I don’t want to lay a hand on your girl. Not for a second. Don’t give a shit about anything other than keeping an eye on her and keeping Drake on side til we sort him.”

“But you are going to lay a hand on her,” I countered, pulling the car over to the side of the road and shutting down the engine. “You’re going to lay plenty of hands on her while that piece of shit demands you push her to the fucking limit for the viewers.”