Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
She was across the room, shaking where River had wrapped her in a blanket.
“Obviously,” Otto said, frustration dripping from his tone.
River dragged both hands over his head. Knowing the situation he’d put his crew in, but that didn’t mean he felt any regret.
He’d do it a thousand times over.
Even if it meant he was going to jail for the rest of his life.
“How the fuck we’re going to keep her quiet is the question we should be asking,” Kane said.
It was Cash who spoke up from where he leaned hidden in the corner that halted the conversation. “We need to get her a new identity. She can’t exist anymore. She needs to disappear.”
“How the hell do we make that happen?” Theo asked.
Except we all knew.
Cash was Iron Owls’ hacker. The one who made whatever he wanted appear…or disappear.
Money.
Cars.
Mostly records of people the club had put in the ground.
“You can do that?” Otto’s brow twisted. “Fully do that, and she can start a new life?”
“Yeah. But that means she has to go all in. Accept that it means she is no longer Angela Burkin. And she can never say a fuckin’ word otherwise.”
“And you trust her to do that?” Skepticism poured out of Theo, and he was looking at River when he asked it.
River hesitated then moved. The woman flinched at his approach, though there was something in her expression that made him press forward. He dropped to a knee in front of her, his voice soft. “You want a new life?”
She laughed like it was absurd. “What do you mean, a new life?”
“To start over. As a different person. We get you someplace else. Set you up. Angela Burkin no longer exists, and neither do we.”
He let his eyes convey what that meant.
His life was riding on this, too.
Her gaze dropped then she said, “I had no life. Maybe now, I can.”
THIRTY-THREE
CHARLEIGH
I blinked my eyes open to the filmy dimness of the room, nudged awake by the quieted movement in front of me.
During the movie, Nolan had slipped off his father’s lap and had climbed over to me and had snuggled into my side. I’d wrapped my arm around him, covered him with the blanket, and had held him while we’d watched the movie play out.
At some point, we’d both drifted to sleep, and I woke to him sleeping in my arms, his little breaths panted into my neck.
My heart beat steadily, slow and full, and I hugged him to me for a moment before I realized it was River who’d stirred me from sleep.
Carefully, he pulled a slumbering Nolan out of my arms and into his, and the child made a happy, unintelligible sound as he was picked up. River’s voice was a mere breath in the quiet as he spoke to me. “Stay right there, I’ll be right back.”
He rose high, covering me in a wedge of his darkness, appearing so massive where he was backlit by the screen that had been running credits.
A fortress.
A tower.
Stony, majestic beauty.
Looking at him right then was like standing at the edge of a cliff in the middle of the night and peering into the depths of a raging, toiling sea below. Fear drumming through my senses because I knew I was in danger, all while there was a heedless part of me that urged I take a step forward and fall into the abyss.
Holding Nolan, he crossed the room, and in the hazy grogginess, I drifted off again in a comfort I shouldn’t possess, but instead felt wholly cocooned in the sanctuary of it.
I didn’t know how much time had passed before my eyes were blinking open again and River was there, on his knees in front of me.
So big that even on his knees he loomed.
Shorn hair distinct in the night, the outline of his rugged, gorgeous face hidden in the shadows that eclipsed the room.
He pulled the blanket off me, tossing it aside before he slipped his hands beneath me so he could pull me into his arms.
He stood, and a breathy sigh whispered out of me as I curled my arms around his neck.
Trusting him the way I’d told him that I did.
Still, my insides quivered. Both in trepidation and anticipation. My stomach in knots and my heart battering wildly at my chest.
“Got you,” he rumbled, and he carried me out of the room. The thud of his boots was muted as he slowly climbed the stairs. At the landing, he went right down the hall, though he passed by the guest room where my things had been left and carried me all the way to a set of double doors at the end.
He shifted enough that he could undo the latch, and he led us into the lapping shadows of an enormous bedroom. There was a giant bed covered in black linens in the middle of the far wall, but rather than take me to it, he crossed to the left side where a loveseat sat against the wall near a rock fireplace.