{18+ COMPLETE} For the past three years, Bren Hadaway has been preparing to die.
When he was sixteen, he watched his dad murder his mom. And ever since, he's been counting down the days until it was his turn to be at the end of a gun. And Bren has...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"So, it's Luke now." A rough chuckle. "Not gonna call me dad?"
"No."
There was a pause as he waited for me to elaborate. But I wasn't going to use this time to talk about my daddy issues.
In my silence, he cleared his voice.
"I saw the note you left out. Figured that meant you wanted to talk."
"I do," I said firmly. But when I opened my mouth to say more, he cut me off.
Of course Luke wasn't actually going to let me talk. I should have known that from the start.
"So the Cardairel Hotel, huh?" There was a muffled snort from the other side of the phone. "Where'd you get that kind of cash?"
Well, at least he was talking about what I wanted to talk about.
"How the hell did you track me there? Why the hell did you track me there?" I shot back.
Luke was so quick to not answer my question that it made me want to yell and kick something. Not to mention, the next words out of his mouth made my toes curl.
"Your girl looked good as a brunette, too," he said, drawing the words out lazily.
"Don't fucking talk about Madie."
He whistled in my ear, low with a gravelly chuckle riding the end. "Damn, son. If you put half as much energy into yourself as you do with that girl, you might still become something yet."
"What do you want," I bit out.
If we kept talking about Madie, he was going to goad me into losing it. And I had to focus. This might be my one fucking chance—to get him where I needed him, to stop looking over my shoulder, to end this.
So I needed to know what the hell he wanted. That was what this all came down to, after all.
Luke answered me slowly. I could picture him, toothpick in his mouth, chewing the end over as he leaned back in an office chair. Coat unbuttoned. His shirt a little yellowed because even though he was a businessman, he wasn't a good businessman. We never had the money to have quality shit.
He was subpar at his job. Even worse as a dad. Ten times worse as a husband.
The only thing it would seem that Luke Hadaway was good at was being a stalker and running from the cops.
Maybe he was smarter than I gave him credit for. More messed up, too.
"I just want to talk," he said after mulling it over. "Same as you, apparently."
"Meet me, then," I growled.
Another humorless laugh. It grated on my senses, and I was tempted to tear the phone from my ear. But I needed to know what he was going to say.
