Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Rory stirred then. He didn’t allow her to lift her head away from his chest. That didn’t prevent her reaction. “Being able to kill another human being doesn’t make you like him, Gideon. He obviously took joy in seeing others in pain. He liked to torture men, women and children. Even animals. That’s not you. I can see inside of you. That was never you. You might kill when you need to, or when justice is involved, but you don’t torture for the sake of gaining pleasure the way he did. You aren’t anything like him.”
“I have predatory instincts.”
“Perhaps you do. I’ve sensed the hunter in you. That makes you good at your job. To do whatever it is you do, I would think you would need those instincts.”
“I hunted him and I killed him. My own father, Rory. I didn’t hesitate. He was celebrating with his buddies, and I killed them too. They were like him, torturing families because the rent wasn’t paid on time or some other misdemeanor. I think I might have gone a little crazy, because I went to the house of their boss. I was covered in blood. I still slipped past the guards and found him in his garden having coffee looking smug. He didn’t look so smug when I finished talking to him. I told him if he tried to come after me or any of the kids on the street with me, I’d take out his family and his men, that he’d never be able to find me. I made him believe me. I told him I just wanted to be left alone and then told him to clean up the mess so the cops wouldn’t be looking for me. He did.”
After a few moments, Rory stirred, and this time, he allowed her to tip her head back. Once again, her vivid green eyes collided with his.
“I imagine I would have done the same under the circumstances, Gideon.” She narrowed her gaze. “How did you manage to slip past his guards?”
His Rory. He should have known she would ask for those details, not how he killed. “I told you, when I was little and I wanted to get away from him, I would hide, or try to. In my mind, I disappear. I practiced disappearing in the shadows. If I was against a wall, I would tell myself I was part of the wall. Whatever was there. I started noticing that Marietta couldn’t always see me right away. Eventually, I got better and better at hiding myself from everyone. I knew it would be useful, and eventually, I practiced all the time. I still do, although I think it’s automatic now.”
Gideon had deliberately brought up his ability to cloak himself against walls, hoping to trigger Rory’s memory of when she was young and she’d saved Rose and Ivy from being captured or killed by hiding their presence. He could hide himself from others, but he couldn’t hide his team members. That talent was extraordinary. Whitney had something very special right in front of him when Rory was a child, and he hadn’t recognized it. Whitney had enhanced Gideon’s talent, but Gideon still wasn’t able to shield his teammates from enemies.
Rory’s lashes fluttered. Long and thick, each time Gideon looked at those lashes up close, where he could see the shade of red tipping the ends, his heart performed strange somersaults in his chest.
“Did he leave you alone?”
“He did. For a while.” He’d promised her the truth, but he didn’t want to look into her eyes any longer while he relayed any more of his sins to her. She saw too much of him. It was strange that she could see into those vulnerable places, when he was around his GhostWalker brothers and sisters, and had been most of his life, yet they hadn’t seen inside him—not the way she did.
Once more, he palmed the back of her head and urged her to lay her face against his chest. She didn’t fight his command. She laid her ear over his heart, but not before she pressed a kiss there first. His heart jumped. Clenched. He couldn’t lose her. He had to find a way to win her back.
“His name was Elio Barone, and he kept claiming more and more territory, which meant there was always a bloody war with other rival families, who weren’t nearly as brutal as he was. He ordered drive-by shootings in neighborhoods and would burn businesses to the ground to prove the other families couldn’t take care of their people. His enforcers had been trained by my father, and they were vile men. They used machetes to hack up families. They rammed big trucks into cars coming home from work or school.”
Deep inside him, that black shadow—which was so dense he sometimes thought it had taken over not just his soul but his entire being—darkened and spread again until he was choking on it. He felt his throat close, as it did so many times in his sleep when he awoke sweating and tangled in his sheets, unable to breathe.