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)
Joey was softer than the rest, not that I’d paid much attention to him beyond subtly learning him like I had everyone, lest I need to take them down.
Just because he was softer, didn’t mean he was weak. He’d killed on command, he’d never once disobeyed Stone’s orders, viewing him as the father he didn’t have.
But apparently, having your mentor threaten to have your girlfriend killed so he could forcibly marry her sister took the shine off the relationship.
He explained how they’d found me—not from Daisy’s trip there. Thankfully, even Joey didn’t know about that.
Stone was smarter than I’d imagined. He’d been tracking me since the moment I left the city. Or tried to. I’d dropped off the face of the earth because I was good at what I did. They never would’ve found me if not for that day. What might’ve been classed as the best day of my miserable existence. When Piper had been unafraid to expect something more of me, deceiving me by running into that store, knowing my cock was hard, and I couldn’t immediately chase her. I’d been off kilter. Aware of too many male eyes on my woman. Hungry eyes as if they had the right to look at her.
I’d been so clouded by fury I’d used the wrong credit card. Such a pedestrian mistake that could be the difference between Piper’s life and death. My life and death. The card was one issued to one of my aliases, so it should’ve been safe, but it was easier for Stone to track. The one I’d been using for supplies would never have shown up on his radar. Simply grabbing the wrong card was my crime. Evidence of just how dangerous this weakness was. How the simplest error had turned our world to fucking ruins.
Joey explained all of this, and how they’d taken Daisy from him two days prior, after they found me and watched us.
Watched us.
He’d flinched when he said that, eyes averted so I understood just what they’d watched. I’d dig their fucking intestines out, whoever had laid their eyes on my fucking woman.
Joey didn’t give the information to me up front, smart enough to know I’d kill him the second the words left his lips. I could get the location out of him with a few swipes of a knife, but I didn’t have the time for that. Every minute counted when Stone’s men had Piper. Every second once Joey informed me Groves was one of the men tasked with taking her. That sick fuck.
I’d stoked the fire within her, the spark of survival, of fight. She wasn’t one to go down quietly. Fuck, she might’ve been brave—and stupid—enough to refuse Stone only to get raped…
“Our life is like living in Alaska,” Joey interrupted the thought that had me gripping the steering wheel so hard, I was surprised I didn’t pry it off.
I had no fucking clue how our life was anything like living in Alaska, but no way was I going to inquire into his reasoning. Hopefully, he’d shut the fuck up so I could think. Every instinct I had was screaming to run into the motel in case Piper was in there, but I needed to scout the area a little longer, to ensure it wasn’t a trap.
“You know, living in perpetual darkness.”
I wanted to shake my head. I didn’t bother to do that or tell him that was only in specific regions of Alaska, and the darkness wasn’t perpetual, it was seasonal. But there was no point.
He was a fucking idiot.
“That’s what it is,” he murmured. “Not even shadows. True darkness. And I was so accustomed to it that I didn’t realize how dark it was until I saw Daisy.” He paused, a slack-jawed, dumb look on his face. “Until I saw sunshine.”
I didn’t respond to him, which I doubt he expected in the first place. I didn’t speak superfluously or discuss overly romantic shit.
Though his stupid fucking words struck me somewhere vital. That’s what it was. The feeling over my skin that I’d been unable to pinpoint. It was sunshine. After living in darkness for so long.
“We need to go in,” I said, taking out my gun then checking the clip and screwing on the silencer.
I didn’t need to feel right now. We were going into a situation where I needed to be emotionless, cold. I needed to rip apart anyone and everyone keeping me from my woman. I needed to wear the blood of anyone who had touched her.
It was unbelievably easy to find out where Piper was. The proprietor of the motel had informed us that one room had been rented by, “your buddies,” after taking one look at our suits and making a correct assumption.
Joey was adept at picking locks—granted, the motel lock could’ve been picked by a toddler—and I let him, although the fire in me itched to kick the door down.