Hell or High Water: A Second Chance Mafia Romance (Boston Syndicate Book 3) by Michelle St. James

Author:Michelle St. James [James, Michelle St.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackthorn Press
Published: 2018-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

12

Bridget looked down as she waded through the ashes and debris that used to be her house. Nolan had gotten permission from the fire chief for them to see if there was anything they could salvage, and while she’d initially been happy for the opportunity, she was beginning to wonder if she should have bothered.

The sides and back of the house’s frame were intact, but most of the front was missing, either taken out in the initial explosion or in the fire. The staircase that had led to the second floor rose into the air, attached to nothing, a ghostly spectacle standing amid the blackened remains of the house.

Nolan put his arm around her and squeezed, then moved toward what had been the kitchen. “I’ll take this side,” he said softly. “Be careful where you step.”

She nodded and toed the debris with her boot, then pulled out the gloves she’d stuffed in one of her back pockets.

She bent down and nudged aside the ash on top, gently moving stuff aside while she worked to get to the bottom of the pile. She’d been feeling stronger when they left the hotel this morning, buoyed by her newly discovered anger, her determination to stop hiding and start confronting her unfinished business.

Seeing the house had been a bigger blow than she’d expected. The night of the explosion, it had looked almost intact, flames licking from the windows, giving the impression that some part of the structure might be salvageable.

But in the harsh light of day it was impossible not to face the truth: the house was a total loss. She’d be lucky to find anything worth saving. The only saving grace was the fact that her parents had taken most of their day-to-day belongings to the island, and Bridget had done the same when she’d moved into the Seaport with Nolan.

On the other hand, all the things stashed in closets or cupboards, the things that had survived several household purges — photographs and records and handmade trinkets given to her parents when she and Owen were kids — were gone.

She caught a flash of something shiny under a scorched plank of wood that might have been part of her grandmother’s old sewing machine cabinet and used her gloved hand to lift the object out of the ash.

It was a silver picture frame, the cheap metal scorched but still intact, the photo discolored in one corner where the heat of the fire had made its way into the frame. It was a picture of her and Owen, playing in the sand at the beach. In the photo, Owen looked up at her with adoring eyes, his belly protruding over too-big swim trunks, while she looked at something beyond the camera, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun, her own body padded with prepubescent baby fat.

She tried to see the future in her eyes, a glimpse of everything that was to come.

She couldn’t. She was just a kid with her little brother, probably not thinking about anything beyond that moment in the sun.

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