“This wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t yours either,” Scribe insisted.
I closed my eyes as my body swayed with the weight of everything that had happened in the past twelve hours. Twelve hours and my life was completely upside down. My perfectly dull life now resembled the plot of a book or a movie.
And not a blockbuster hit, or a bestseller.
No, my life was a soap opera. With spouses coming back to life and mobster fathers who, once they found out, would also show up alongside my brother.
“Oh God,” I gasped. I looked at my mother; she opened her mouth to speak when her phone rang. “He called him!” I hissed.
My mother smiled. “It’s not him.” She lifted the phone to her ear and answered joyfully, “Freyja, it’s so good to hear from you.” My mother’s smile dropped, and she said, “What?” Shewas nodding. My mother was nodding her head as if Freyja could see her.
Freyja, who was with Duncan.
My father’s right-hand man.
“Thank you for calling, Freyja. Yes, we’ll be ready. I appreciate it.” My mother hung up and sighed.
“Benny?” King moved closer to my mother. The question wasn’t voiced out loud, but we all knew what it was, and I already knew the answer.
“Your father is on his way.”
“Already?” I asked. “Did King call him the second he got off the phone?”
I began to pace restlessly. My father was coming to Rosewood, and everyone knew who he was. Which meant he wouldn’t stay in the shadows. He wouldn’t keep to the privacy of my home.
“King didn’t tell him. Freyja did.”
“Fucking Lucille,” Scribe groaned.
My eyes bulged out of my head. “Lucille?Lucille Ballratted me out to my father?” I looked at the ceiling. “Are you fucking kidding me?!” I shouted.
“Freyja didn’t know what was happening; Lucille only told her that Sal needed to come to Rosewood. That you needed him.”
Staring at the ceiling, I whispered, “Thank you,Lucille.”
Because she was right; I needed my dad.
It was my dad who healed my first broken heart. Frankie Reads was my first boyfriend. We were fifteen years old, and he asked me to the school dance. Halfway through, he left me and disappeared.
Devlyn and I found him screwing Marlene Hubbard. Yup,thatMarlenewho was always a whore, even in high school.
“Benny, why don’t you take Morgan home? It won’t take O’Malley nearly as long as it will take King to get here.”
I spun around and looked at King. “I’m so sorry for barging into church. I wasn’t thinking, I just... I just reacted.”
“I know.”
I looked at him with a frown. “You don’t seem surprised to know who my dad is.”
King smiled. “Because I’ve always known.”
My mother stood beside me, and I heard her grumbling about asshole men and their egos.
“O’Malley came to me after you moved here. He asked me to keep an eye on you both.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, shaking my head, trying to fit something into place. “You knew? All this time you knew and never said a word?”