Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“Blade! As I fucking live and breathe. What the fuck are you doing with these losers?” Crow finally recognizes me, and chuckles cruelly. “Last I heard, you were icing people for cash. Shitty job if you ask me, but at least it’s respectable. What the fuck happened?”
“Got wiser, grew the fuck up. Some of us do that.” My palm itches to plant a dagger between his eyes, but my life isn’t my own to give right now. I can’t protect Faith while I’m bleeding out on the fucking ground.
Like I said, wiser.
“Is that supposed to hurt me? I’m the one with a club at my back, ain’t I? Aside from your shitty choice of friends, I don’t have a beef with you. Keep your arms down and your hands where I can see them if you want to keep standing. My business is with the girl and her daddy.”
Faith whimpers. This place has to be fucking with her. I wasn’t part of it, but when the shit with Eagle-eye went down, there were plenty of rumors going around. I heard what happened to her and her mom, and it doesn’t take a genius to start drawing lines. There’s only one reason I can think for Crow to still have such a hard-on for our prez.
“Easy. I’m not stupid.” I hold my hands open so he can see they’re empty. “What do you even need the girl for? Let her go. The three of us are plenty of leverage if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“How fucking stupid do you think I am? Shitheads like you are a dime a dozen, so how about you all come quietly, and we don’t gun you all down in front of your bitch.” He gestures at the Clink, a low building next to the clubhouse. I spent a couple of days there after getting into a fistfight with an officer when I was a prospect.
“Why would we trust you not to hurt her?” growls Alpha.
“I don’t care if you trust me or not. As long as her daddy listens to me, she’s useful to me alive. What you do next determines whether you live too. Drop the weapons. All of them.”
Alpha and Ripper glare daggers at him, but Crow is right. We aren’t the ones with the upper hand. At least not yet.
“Fucker,” I hiss under my breath
Faith jumps as she’s forced to let go of my arm. I can see her trying to hold it together even though her pupils are dilated and she’s trembling. I unstrap the knife holsters from my wrists. They’ve been carefully fitted and modified until they work perfectly. Tossing them on the ground is like throwing away a part of me.
Ripper and Alpha nod briefly at each other before tossing their guns on the gravel.
Trusting Crow to keep his word is like trusting a wolverine not to bite when you try to pet it, but for now we don’t have a fucking choice.
“Good boys,” Crow says snidely, grinning like a fucking idiot.
Maybe not today, but soon, I’m going to make him eat his words. That’s a fucking promise. I don’t often think about the man I was before I joined the Screaming Eagles, but for Crow I’ll go back to that dark place and enjoy it.
His men taunt and jeer as they shove us towards the Clink. We form a triangle around Faith. She still hasn’t said a word, and it worries me. On a practical level, it’s going to be a lot harder to get out of here if she falls apart, but it’s more than that. Her recklessness and hatred of what we stand for from the moment she found us in her place has been annoying as fuck, but in spite of that, I respect the way she’s been rolling with everything. She’s got a lot of her father in her, even if she doesn’t want to see it.
“Hold it together,” I whisper under my breath as they shove me and Alpha into one of the cells and slam the door shut. “We’ll get you out of here, and they will pay.”
14
FAITH
The cell door slams like thunder rolling through my brain. It doesn’t chase away the foggy nothingness, but it shakes it up a little, enough for me to claw my way back to myself. A week ago, I thought I was past all this. Grown up. I even owned my own business, but now I’m reduced to a blubbering mess, and I feel so useless.
“Hey. You okay?”
I force myself to look at Ripper, to focus on him instead of the terror. “No.” It comes out much more like a sob than I intend. “I think I might puke.”
“Yeah, don’t fucking blame you.” He guides me to a bench. “Sit down and put your head between your legs. Breathe.”