Did Not Finish by Nicola Marsh

Author:Nicola Marsh [Marsh, Nicola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parlance Press
Published: 2022-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

AXEL

* * *

Mia is making cute snuffling sounds in her sleep, and I carefully cover her with the blanket and leave her to slumber. The sofa is comfortable enough she won’t wake with a crick in her neck. Besides, considering I heard her tapping away at her keyboard until five this morning, she needs a nap. I do too, but I’m expecting an email from Chrissie about a possible foreign rights sale in Germany for my last book and I need to see if the deal has gone through.

I know it’s a bad habit, compulsively checking my inbox, but I can’t break it. Ever since I received that first email from Chrissie a decade ago with AUCTION in the subject line, I like to think good things happen via email.

Back then, each email Chrissie sent had been better than the last. She wouldn’t write anything in the actual body of the email, she’d just put the highest current bid in the subject header. I watched those numbers start at twenty thousand, jump to fifty, one hundred, two hundred, then a whopping two hundred and fifty thousand. I could scarcely believe Rolf Shelville, who edited greats I could only aspire to be like, wanted to pay that much for my first book. It had been a dream come true.

Paula had been just as excited, and we’d gone out to celebrate the night I inked that deal. I still wonder how different things could’ve been if we’d decided to stay in that night or gone to a bar three blocks further from my grungy apartment in Venice Beach.

Instead, we’d chosen to have drinks in the dive bar on the next block, and that’s the night Paula had met Billie Adams and her life had been irrevocably changed.

I hate myself for subduing the flicker of doubt I had about Billie from the start. No guy is that charming from the get-go, but he’d seemed nice enough and Paula glowed in his presence. He’d even bought me a celebratory tequila shot that night. I haven’t been able to touch the stuff since.

A year later, Paula had been admitted to hospital with a fractured pelvis, her left arm smashed in two places, and five broken ribs, from being shoved down the stairs by Billie. It was the first time I learned of his abuse, and I cried so hard that night I almost passed out.

While I’d been high on my self-importance as a soon to be famous author—Rolf had fast tracked my manuscript to be published eighteen months after I signed the contract—working with my assigned publicist to figure out the logistics of doing book tours, countless television interviews, and online publicity while busily writing the follow up to No Lies, a predicted bestseller by all in the industry, my sweet, trusting sister had been living with a monster and I had no clue.

That’s when I knew I couldn’t publicize my identity to market my book. Paula’s safety was paramount and after Billie had

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