Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 118333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
My hands fell away from Mae, and I had to step back. My fingers curled into fists and my jaw clenched. “It was her older brother,” Mae said. I closed my eyes and just tried to fucking breathe. I may have been a stone-cold killer, one of the most lethal Hangmen to ever wear the Dark Lord on his cut, but this club didn’t tolerate that shit. In fact, I’d rip the rancid cock off any fucker I knew did.
Happily.
Especially after Mae . . . after seeing what she and her sisters went through. What it did to them, how it fucking destroyed them for most of their lives. Kept a part of them forever fucked up.
But my mother . . . the woman I barely remembered and never tried to. The one who left me to the fists and daily ridicule of my father . . . My mother had a brother. Something else I never knew.
“He was a lot older than her. Her mother and father weren’t around much. Her father was lost to drugs, and her mother killed herself when your mother was only nine.” Mae took a deep breath. “Styx . . . she was only eight when he raped her for the first time. Her older brother. He was sixteen.” I saw that look in Mae’s eyes, the one that showed pain and . . . fuck . . . sympathy, because she knew exactly what that felt like. She’d been eight too when that bastard Brother Jacob had raped her in that joke of a cult.
“M-Mae.” I shook my head and picked up my beer from the table next to me. I downed it and tossed the bottle in the trash. “St-stop.”
Mae’s shoulders sagged. She held that fucking journal against her chest like she was scared I’d toss it in the fire if she let it go. She was right. I would. I didn’t wanna know shit about my mother. A shitty life was no excuse for leaving me behind for the Diablo prez. Fuck, I had to work alongside Chavez most days now. It was his old man my mother had shacked up with.
I didn’t wanna fucking know.
Kissing Mae again, I went into my office and shut the door. I slumped behind my desk and took a long fucking breath. My cell buzzed.
Ky: They’ve made it to the first check-in.
Me: Good. Any trouble?
Ky: Not yet. But we’ll no doubt hear the alarm come morning when Quintana realizes the bride has been taken.
A sick kind of smile spread on my lips. I wanted that fucker to suffer. I wanted him to know I was coming for him and that his days were numbered. I rubbed my hand over my head, then texted back.
Me: Good.
The email intercepted by Chavez and Shadow, explaining what the cartel planned to do to us in an attack, lay on my desk. I looked down, and I felt like punching the fucking wall when I read the section that had stood out to me.
Take the mute’s slut of a wife and unborn kid and sell them to the contact. They’ve been looking for someone like her. But make the mute watch her being beaten to within an inch of her life before you slit his throat and burn that fucking club to the ground. Nazis are taking too long as always. We’ll kill them in one quick attack.
My heart slammed in my chest as I tried to calm the fuck down. I reached for a smoke and the Beam that I kept in my desk drawer. I took a long drag. The python in my throat was like a vise, choking me the fuck out. I shut my eyes, but all I could see was Mae in some Mexican’s arms, Charon in her belly, as she was kicked to shit. And me, held back by the cunts, unable to do a fucking thing about it.
I pushed back from the desk and marched to the living room. I stopped in the doorway. Mae lay asleep on the couch, with that journal open on her chest. Moving her shoulders, I sat down and laid her head on my knee. My hand trailed through her hair. Still as long as it ever was. Still just as black.
My own fucking Persephone.
She only got more beautiful by the day.
Mae’s stomach shifted. I reached out and laid my hand over her dress, my lips hooking into a smile when I felt my son kick my hand again. I exhaled a long breath as my hand moved upward and landed on the journal. I stared at that leather book like it was a fucking grenade.
“Get the fuck in here, Mute,” my pop said. He walked back into his office.
“What the fuck d’you do now?” Ky asked.
Shrugging, I walked into the office. I didn’t know.