Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 72496 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72496 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
The same guy who saved me and kissed me was the same guy who wouldn’t think twice about killing me and believed I’d do the same.
The worst part about all of it, I thought as I followed a few feet behind him to the parking lot.
He was right.
He was right.
Shit. He was right.
Monsters, after all, stick together—until it’s time to fight.
CHAPTER NINE
“We rarely see ourselves for who we truly are, instead we rely on others to tell us what we’re afraid to face, most ignore that too, until it’s too late, until, in our work, the blood… tells all.” —King Campisi
Ivan
I compared the car ride home to the coldest day I’d ever seen in Chicago, where it got down to negative twenty and I wanted to sit on a campfire just so my ass wouldn’t fall off.
That was Bella right now.
Her mouth was doing that thing, the thing it did when she was mad and afraid to speak. Sometimes she did, and it came out more as a verbal attack than a conversation, other times like now, she was trying like hell to keep that full mouth closed.
It would be so much easier if she wasn’t pretty to look at, I could at least have every single reason to despise her, instead now I felt bad, because I saw the way she was wringing her hands together, the way she was hunched over in the seat. The seatbelt was digging into her neck while she continued to clench her teeth and stare straight ahead.
“Hey.” My voice sounded weak, raspy. “I know I’m an asshole, but this would be a perfect time to just punch me or yell, it makes me more uncomfortable when you’re quiet.”
“I know.”
Hell. This girl was her father’s daughter. Manipulative to the core. I had to remember that.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
She shrugged like it didn’t matter, but I took it like I didn’t matter, I always did. I would always be left wanting and she would always be in her tower looking down, no matter what shit I said to her.
I hit the accelerator.
She said nothing.
I pressed it down to the floor, thank fun that someone had swapped out my bike with one of the Maseratis, which they often did if it was supposed to rain, I didn’t even have to text them, I’d just go to my normal parking spot and there would either be the motorcycle I drove or a random car from the Family with a man in a black suit standing and reading the newspaper. He’d hand me the keys and walk off.
Literally, it was the dude’s only job; he was called ‘the guy.’
The guy.
Basically, he was the car guy, the getaway guy, the driver, the one that just appeared and disappeared without a trace. He never spoke, just handed the keys to me and I always said. “Good?”
“Good,” was always his response.
In all my years of dealing with him when he got hired, which was at least six, I’d never seen his eyes, and I’d never said more than that one word to him.
Same for him.
Her hands dropped, her right went to the door handle and clung on.
I smirked and stared back at the road. “What’s wrong? Too fast?”
“Too slow,” she grated out, her voice sounded more hoarse than mine. Had I made her cry?
I shifted and got past one twenty, there was a curve straight ahead, followed by another, it was dangerous. And I thought it. They would miss us, I knew they would, but did it even matter?
What were we living for anymore?
Our only job was to, what? Kill? Be killed? Serve the Family? Sure as hell, nobody was ever going to love me, and really, did love even exist? I saw it in some of the bosses with their kids, with Bella and her dad, I felt it at times with Phoenix… he tried, he really did.
But I had no control.
Over anything.
Maybe I should have been the one that died, instead of my fourteen-year-old cousin. He would have been a better recruit, stronger, for the Abandonato and Nicolasi thrones.
Killing. Killing. Killing.
Money. So much money.
My breaths came out in fast bursts, just like the acceleration, until a soft hand touched my arm. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul, to take.”
It was the only thing I truly remembered my dad saying to me, over and over again, and the Lord, he did take his soul, by way of Nixon and Chase Abandonato’s bullets.
I released the accelerator and slowed down and pulled to the side of the road, dust from the gravel flew up around the car.
My heart thudded in an adrenaline kicked rhythm against my chest. Bella’s soft fingertips were still pressed against my clenched hand.