Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 121578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 608(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 608(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Not that I have room to judge.
If anything, I’m impressed.
I’ve seen darkness before. Hell, I’ve lived it. But Margot’s is different. Her darkness isn’t a choice. It’s a calling. A fight against the horrors in her small corner of the world.
I watch her for a long moment, trying to untangle what I’m feeling. Protective, sure. Drawn to her more than ever, yup. But there’s something else. Something I can’t quite name.
Awe. Knocked-on-my-ass kind of awe.
My brothers have sent plenty of fuckers to the demon’s dinner table. Hell, we eliminated half of the South of Satan MC a few months ago. Before that, we offed a few of their associates and a college kid who went after Murphy’s ol’ lady. With the help of our Virginia brothers, Rooster and I rescued Shelby when she’d been kidnapped by one of her crazy stalkers. Rooster let me go at the guy’s fingers with the garden shears, but we had to turn him over to the cops, so I couldn’t kill him like I wanted. None of that violence was done on a whim. We were reacting to the situations we found ourselves in.
Margot, though. She chooses her “projects” carefully. Her targets don’t even know they’re on her radar. They never see it coming. My own tiny, curvy blonde angel of vengeance.
She stirs, her fingers curling into the pillowcase.
I should stop staring at her like a goofy fanboy and let her rest.
The door creaks and cool air drifts over my shoulder. I turn my head toward the widening bedroom door. Gretel pokes her nose inside, then pushes it open wider and stalks across the room. Ah, here comes the black, fuzzy alarm clock.
This morning, she’s quiet, though. No warble to announce her arrival. She gracefully leaps onto the bed, landing light as a feather.
“Oh, so you can jump lightly,” I whisper, extending my arm and rubbing my fingers together to entice her closer.
She purrs and bops her forehead against me, her silky fur sliding over my skin. Then, like the disrespectful little beast she is, Gretel climbs onto my hip and walks her pokey paws over my ribs. I scoop her up before her sharp claws have a chance to pierce my bare skin not covered by the blanket and settle her on the bed in the space between Margot and me. She flops on her side, facing me and purrs louder, kneading her paws against my chest.
Margot’s nose twitches. She reaches for Gretel without opening her eyes. “Furball,” she murmurs, rubbing behind Gretel’s ears. The cat’s purring revs up another few decibels.
“You’re still here.” Margot brushes her knuckles against my chest, then opens her eyes.
“Told you I wasn’t going anywhere.” I wrap my fingers around her wrist, tugging her closer. “You sleep okay?”
“I really did. I had the softest, fuzziest, most pleasant dreams.”
Maybe unburdening herself was a good thing. “You’ve really never told anyone…what you told me last night? Your dad doesn’t know?”
She closes her eyes as if she hadn’t planned on waking up to this conversation. “God, no. I don’t ever want him to know that about me. I think it would break him. He’s very ‘normal moral.’”
“Normal moral? What’s that mean?”
“I mean, I don’t consider what I’ve done immoral.”
“Agree. But my morality lives in the gray area anyway.”
She chuckles lightly. “They were a clear and imminent threat to innocent lives.” The smile slips off her face. “I have access to so many creepy, sad, and uncomfortable secrets no one thinks about. And when we take someone into our care who’s been violated or abused…I don’t know. I can’t help myself. I want to know everything and then that knowledge makes me feel like I have a duty to protect others.” She winces and shifts her gaze to the cat. “Wow, that sounds like I have some crazy God complex, doesn’t it?”
“No,” I whisper, completely caught up in every word.
“I don’t like killing people,” she continues in a harsher tone. “It’s not a crazy itch I need to scratch. My targets come to me. In a manner of speaking.”
“I understand what you’re saying.” If anything, I want to be the Joker to her Harley—without the crazy, just the devotion.
Her phone buzzes.
“Ugh.” She rolls over and grabs her phone, swiping her thumb over the screen and quickly scanning the text. “Yes, Dad, I know,” she mutters, quickly typing out a reply. “Rose-colored light bulbs. I know. He acts like I didn’t spend a semester studying color theory and stage lighting or something.” She sighs and returns the phone to the nightstand.
“What?” I ask, curious. “Color theory?”
Pink spreads over her cheeks. “Well, yeah. Sometimes, it’s grisly business creating that peaceful facial expression families see at the end.” She bites her lip as if she’s afraid to gross me out with her mortician secrets. “But in some circumstances, even after embalming, the skin remains a bit grayish. So, we’ll set them under rose-colored light bulbs during the visitation. He’s just reminding me to add them to an order I need to place today.”