Daniel > Recent Status Updates

“It’s Halloween. You’re dressing up. Jones is sending you both costumes. Joker’s Sin has a huge bash tomorrow night. He will be there, Halloween is a night he has emergency deliveries because things sell out.”

“You want us to kill him in front of people?”

“I don’t give a flying fuck, Bill! He dies tomorrow or don’t bother to call me the next morning.” He hung up.

“Looks like we are going trick or treating.”

“I don’t know how, or when, but I stopped hating you. I started looking for you. I’d get up and wonder if you beat me to the coffee. I’d take a shower and feel just a little better knowing you were just in there and I was standing in the dampness you made. Now, as we sit here in this car in front of a safe house, hiding from a homicidal maniac and hunting him at the same time, I’ve never felt more content.”

“You’re not your father. You’re no boss, no leader, no God. You’re a wannabee gangster wearing his daddy’s ugly-ass suit, pretending he has clout over a city that is way too powerful for him. I’ve seen men like you try to rule time and time again and you know how it ends?” He was turning bright red as Bill hammered into him. “It ends with Christopher Manos standing over your dead body.”

Get him, Batman!

“There’s a lot of innocents in here.” I wasn’t saying it to make Mace doubt me, but I knew that was exactly what I had done.

“No one is innocent. Never think they are. Get it through your fucking head that any one of these people would do the same thing if someone they cared about was at risk of a long life of pain, torture, and eventually death. And that’s what Snow’s future will be if we don’t do this.”

“I like this place.”

“You should come more often, you’ve got a fan club.” I gestured to Quill, who was wiping the counter slowly as he gawked at Black.

“The kid?” Black seemed shocked. “He’s what, sixteen?”

“Twenty-two,” Quill shouted from the counter.

“Has great hearing, too.”

“I’m old enough to be his father,” Black grumbled as he gathered the garbage.

“I’m fine with that.” Quill winked at Black.

Time for some bad guys to get unalived! 🤨

Here’s how this will be going down, Mr. Manos. I will tear through all of Haven Hart to get Julian. I will rip every little finger from your nephew’s hands. I will kill your staff slowly. I will leave a mark on your life you will never forget. But I will leave you standing. That is so you never forget that the Marks family always rises from the ashes.

“You work harder than all of them. I know you don’t think Christopher or I know, but you linger over Simon’s room. When the house is asleep, you check my and Chris’s bedroom one last time. In your own way, you love us, we’re your family. Well, we love you too. You’re our family as much as Frank, Jerry, Donny, all of them. You’re like a brother. One who lost his way for a long time, but eventually found it.”

I’d seriously underestimated the power of a killer orgasm. My knees were jelly. My foot slid on the tile and I grabbed for the safety bar. I gripped it with a sigh of relief… until it came out of the fucking wall. Danny’s eyes widened with alarm as I scrabbled for purchase. He grabbed for me. It was a losing battle. We went down like the fucking Titanic, no iceberg necessary.

“I did say it was too slippery.”

“What do we have if we don’t have hope?” I ask.

Cassie laughs. “Reality.”

“But maybe sometimes what we hope for becomes a reality.”

“Maybe,” she says.

The reality is that ***** is dead. And it hurts.

I will die. And it hurts.

Breathing is life. And it hurts.

All life ends. And it hurts.

I need to live.

Even if it hurts.

Excited for the re-read ...
been four and a half years! 😁

I'm damned determined to finish this ...
but my GAWD! ... it's a chore! 😫

“I’m glad you’re up. Have you seen my cereal bowl?”

“What?”

“My cereal bowl."

I rolled over and put my arm across my face. “For Pete’s sake, we have more than one bowl.”

Clearly tired of my dreamy staring, he raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

“It could be in the dishwasher.”

“It’s not. I checked. Any other ideas?”

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know where your cereal bowl is. I do know where your gun safe is.”

“I embrace babies whose mothers shot up every day and their little bodies are fighting to break free. I hug people who are lonely, lost, and forgotten. I wish I could come face-to-face with the ones that hurt them and make them feel the hurt they do.”

“You do amazing things, Teddy.”

“I do, but I’m not balance, Riordan. You face monsters and you make them disappear so they can’t hurt the ones I embrace.”