Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 119454 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 597(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119454 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 597(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
This is book 1 of a three book series. This is a standalone. No cliffhangers.
Axel Hendrix is six feet, three inches of lean muscle and mischief. Born and bred in Portland, Kentucky, he is a sight to behold, covered from his neck to his ankles in tattoos and scars—both on the inside and outside. Industrious and quick-thinking, he eagerly works a grisly job that requires a stomach for the morbid and macabre: a crime scene cleaning business.
But now, Axel has attracted trouble with a capital ‘T’ by witnessing something he cannot unsee and drawing a target on his back. In over his head, he attempts to fulfill a promise, make peace with his inner demons, and get his life in order by eliminating the threat looming over him. But even a stone-hearted man like him has his kryptonite…
Enter English Price.
English is already aware of Axel’s reputation. Seeing him in the flesh sends unexpected chills and thrills up and down her spine. In spite of the instant chemistry, she refuses to give in to his lure. Besides, bad boys are bad news, and she’s had enough unsavory situations in her life to write a book. The brief chapter of rough neck men is closed, never to be re-read again.
But from the moment they meet, a chain of events is set in motion, and the attraction cannot be denied. Their future is already written in stone.
Come along on a dark, twisted ride chock full of pain, payback, and passion. Axel has three assignments, and he plans to pass them with flying colors…
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Glints of shattered light stretched across the serrated blade of the gleaming knife in my hand as I rotated it against my inner palm. The house floorboards repeated uneven crackles and truncated creaks from the prowler’s weight crushing them.
I listened in the darkness of the small room that smelled of time gone by, and mothballs. I closed my eyes, my senses heightened. I could hear every breath, every step, and every thought in his fucking brain. A small, crooked fan blew in the corner of the bedroom, oscillating from side to side, forcefully flipping the pages of a nearby magazine to and fro, as if handled by a ghost frantically reading an article about the local graveyard. Everything was now acute. My life was on the line. Again.
Between the exhalations of the broken, rusty swing in the backyard swaying in the night wind, and the crickets in the overgrown blades of grass, there, in the chorus of the country nightfall, were the bastard’s irregular sighs and pants between heavy breaths—the pointed exhales and inhales of a man afraid to do what he’d come to do. Kill me dead. He was in the life. Not me. I’d never spent a day in prison. Although I was far from being an angel—some joked I was an abomination, in fact. Yet here I was, pretending to be a sitting duck. How ironic. Shouldn’t the vessel of fear be the prey?
Another chicken shit afraid of his own shadow…
I sat there. Waiting. Growing impatient. Picking up my cigarette, I studied the orange glow of the embers, then brought it to my lips. The smoke soon surrounded me like a pair of foggy feminine thighs, strangling me with their supple beauty and the promise of a killer good time. Placing the cigarette down, I listened…
The motherfucker tried to quiet his breathing. I knew it because I heard him swallowing and pausing, too. He opened one of the bedroom doors down the way, the one with all the junk in it. Minutes later, he withdrew from that unoccupied room, coming farther down the hall towards me. I heard his gun click. Now I had to reassess my options.
I could get up, go out into the hall, and rush him. I could kill him fast, and make the call to the cops slow. But I decided to just wait. To sit there. To meet him eye to eye. This was my fate. My fortune. It was either him or me. One of us had to go, and as far as I was concerned, I was too sinful to die so young. The flooring lent way to his bulk once again, groaning with each timed step.
He wasn’t close, but he wasn’t far. I looked around me, listening to him open more doors and creep around like some stinkin’ roach in search of crumbs. The bedroom I sat in was pitch black, just as I liked it when I placed my head on this old, smashed pillow that smelled of mold. I took a toke of my cigarette again, listening to the breeze flow through the trees just beyond the window, and a dog bark in the vastness of the night. Placing the stub in the ashtray beside the mattress on the floor, I waited as he stepped toward me, slowing down as if to think things through.
Maybe he figured he was too loud and he needed to pace himself, thinking of me in here sound asleep. A sure advantage for him, so he could pump me full of bullets while I dreamt of Hell and wished for Heaven. This was my life—where my bad choices had brought me. I didn’t ask for this, but they’d caught up to me. They always catch up with us…
It was perhaps providence, for all the harm I’d caused in the world. I had a business nobody else wanted to mess with, and I was making money hand over fist, a killin’, as the head honcho. But just my luck, as soon as my life was getting better, the one thing I’d never want to happen in my line of work did happen.
I walked in on the wrong thing, at the wrong time. And then, I had to handle it right away. A door closed a bit too hard—the small closet by the bathroom—jarring me from my thoughts. My heart beat harder, faster, pounding in my chest like woofer speakers from the hillbilly dope boys that caroused the streets in their souped-up cars late at night, blasting the sounds of Yelawolf.
And then, things went quiet.
I swallowed an acrid taste of resentment the moment I’d heard the son of a bitch break the glass window minutes ago, and now, that horrid flavor burned my throat once again. Destiny wanted to party. I gave her a fake address, but she found me anyway, came over uninvited, and she’d brought along her bitch of a twin sister: Karma.