Birdee’s face showed pure shock.
“Listen, Mother,” I said, jaw set in stone. “I don’t want anything to do with Birdee. I don’t want to talk to her, see her, or even hear her from a distance. If you want us to reconcile, that’s your mistake. Because there’s no reconciliation on my end.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” my “mother” drawled. “You’re being a little extra, aren’t you?”
No, no I wasn’t.
The only reason I’d agreed to this farce was because I was desperate for some freakin’ food that wasn’t cooked by my own hand. I hadn’t been able to afford to go out since the night before my almost-wedding.
I was, however, a few months away from getting all of my money back.
I was lucky to have a great friend who was a lawyer.
She’d taken my case pro bono and was in the process of suing the pants off of Birdee.
She may not have any money, but my stepmother did.
The only reason she was likely here was to try to talk me down from the lawsuit.
I would never be talked down.
In fact, if I could bring more on, I would.
Cody, my best friend, assured me that I was going to win.
I didn’t care if I won, to be honest. What I did care about was making sure that she hurt for what she did to me.
“Don’t you want to know where your dog is?”
I froze at that, turning around so slowly that it was almost comical.
My eyes narrowed on the smug look on Birdee’s face, and I had to physically stop myself from launching myself across the superbly set table and raking my fingernails down her arrogant looking face.
“What are you saying, Birdee?” I asked carefully, trying and failing to control the temper that was about to be set loose.
“Oh, nothing.” She hummed. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
This. Fucking. Bitch.
“What did you do with my dog?” I asked.
“I didn’t do anything with it.” She shrugged. “It’s such a shame that he went missing, though, isn’t it? Such a beautiful, distinct looking dog. What was he again? A brindle mastiff? Or was that a bulldog? I can’t remember.”
It was a sable mastiff.
Which she fucking knew because she’d grown up in a house that had housed them.
My dad had been breeding mastiffs for show since before I could walk, and hadn’t stopped when my stepmother and stepsister came into the picture.
Brawny.
God, I missed him.
It’d been an awful six months without him, and every day I wished someone would call me with the news that they’d found him.
I answered every single phone call that came my way. I’d even fought tooth and nail to get my old phone number back just in case the new phone number that I was forced to get—thank you again, Morris, you asshole, for insisting that we share an account and then refuse to give me my line back—didn’t reach me.
I searched far and wide for Brawny. I was on every single social media available to me sharing his picture on every site that would accept the photos. One day, he’d come back to me. I just knew it.
