Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
But to leave her breathing afterward.
An important distinction, since I don’t walk away from a job without blood on my hands.
That’s how I like it. How it needs to be.
I’m comfortable with death. Pain. Cruelty.
No conscience troubled me when I took Piper Matthews deep into the Appalachian woods, intending on fracturing her mind, destroying her.
I never imagined she would destroy me instead.
With her smile. Her laughter. Her forgiving heart that isn’t mine to take.
The heart she gives me despite my blackened soul.
My mangled, ruined heart beats only for her. And the feral beast inside of me will tear apart all those who think they can hurt her.
Now my job is to take down the man who employed me to break her so the could own her.
No one in this world will own Piper. No one will hurt her.
Because that pleasure is reserved solely for me.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
One
Knox
The room I stood in reeked of expensive cigars and bespoke aftershave.
My body craved the scent of iron. Blood.
Soon.
The man in front of me was a necessary evil, one who thought controlled me. I’d let him believe that as long as he served a purpose—offering me an endless supply of victims.
“I need you to catch someone for me.”
“Catch?” I repeated, even though I’d heard him just fine.
He nodded once, steepling his fingers as his elbows rested on the oak desk between us. “Catch.”
I was standing in front of him. He’d offered me a chair, as he did every time I was in this room. And as always, I stood. My posture didn’t change, my expression stayed the same—blank, uninterested. But Stone knew me as well as anyone could truly know me. Which meant he understood that I was questioning his request.
He leaned back in his chair, smiling. “When I say catch, I mean alive. And she stays that way until you hand her over to me.”
I felt the dynamics of our relationship shift as I processed this request. “You want me to catch, not kill, a woman?” I wasn’t one to ask rhetorical questions, but this ventured far outside our regular formula. Stone and I had enjoyed a stable, predictable and mutually beneficial relationship over the years. I enjoyed stability. Predictable. Controlling all the variables.
He thought that I worked for him. His rabid, dangerous dog who obeyed his every command and never stretched the leash.
Maybe he thought it was because I was loyal to him or because he paid me well or because I was scared of him.
None of that was true.
Without a leash, I was scared of myself.
His leash kept the world safe from monsters like me.
“Catch, not kill,” Stone said for the third time. “And keep her safe. Whole.”
Irritation bloomed in my gut, yet I didn’t show it, giving him a flat stare. “You want me to babysit. I don’t babysit. And I do not keep people safe.” It annoyed me that he even asked this of me. He was stretching the limits of what I would tolerate.
Stone chuckled. He did that, laughed often and easily. He had a decade on my forty years with creases in his face to show it. The creases did not just signify his age but the variety of expressions this man wore, plenty of them smiles.
He was tall but not overly so, fit but not cut with muscle. His hair was cropped close to his head, a sensible cut. He was always clean-shaven. He wore exquisitely tailored suits, one of the only shows of his wealth. Otherwise, he looked like any other middle-aged banker.
He did not look like the don of one of the most dangerous and lethal organized crime syndicates in the country.
Most of the time, he looked and acted like the American archetype of the ‘fun uncle.’
I’d seen him peel the skin off someone who’d betrayed him without breaking a sweat. You’d be very unwise to let his demeanor lower your guard or think you could best him.
More than one Made Man had been stupid enough to try to steal power from him. I’d killed them myself.
That was my job, after all.
Killing.
He did it when he needed to get the point across, but mostly he didn’t like getting his hands dirty. Literally or figuratively.
Hence our mutually beneficial relationship.
“I know this job may seem beneath you.” He stroked his chin. “But rest assured, there is no one else in my organization I want in charge of this. Of her.”
“Her?” I questioned again. Women were unusual but not unheard of in my role. And the way he spoke of this woman was different. Possessive. My instincts prickled with warning bells.
His smile turned predatory. “Yes. My future wife.”
I didn’t let my surprise show. Stone liked women. He always had them around. Young, shallow, stupid, unaware of how dangerous he was, blinded by his wealth. He used them then discarded them. Alive, luckily. But a little wiser to what the world truly was.
“It’s time,” he told me, as if I’d questioned him. “For me to settle down, make a family.”
Again, I didn’t react, but the idea of this man inflicting himself on a child was vaguely sickening to me. And for me to say that meant something.
“And your wife needs…” I stare off unsure of what my role was to be in this charade, though I could take an educated guess as to why he was involving me. It did not speak of a mutually consenting courtship.
“She needs some convincing that marrying me is the best and safest decision for her.” He spoke carefully, reasonably, as if what he was saying was completely sane. To him, it was. “I need you to break her.”
He needed me to scare the shit out of her and let her know that death was the only way to get out of this marriage.