Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 73043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“Uhh,” Kayla said. “I’m not sure this is a road.”
“It is.”
Then Rafe didn’t say another word as we crawled carefully over the uneven road.
Minutes later, he pulled out onto the other side of the main highway again, right on the other side of traffic.
I’d lived in Kilgore my entire freakin’ life and not once had I seen that road.
Otherwise, I would’ve taken it a whole lot more than just freakin’ once.
“How did you find out about that cut through?” I questioned.
Rafe shrugged. “Research.”
And that was the last word he’d said until we pulled into Free ten minutes later.
Chapter 2
There are two kinds of people in this world. People with guns, like me. And people with stupid, smug faces. Like you.
-Rafe to Janie’s ex
Rafe
I was going to die if I had to sit next to Janie another goddamn second.
She smelled like sunshine and flowers, and I wanted nothing more to haul her into my lap and devour her mouth.
But, a dirty old man like me couldn’t be seen kissing the young daughter of a friend.
Why?
Because I valued my last surviving ball, that’s why.
Twelve years ago, I’d been shot in the upper thigh. That shot hadn’t taken out my ball. What it had taken out was the blood supply to my testicles. Unfortunately, when blood supply was restored, my favorite testicle was struggling. And, two days into my recovery, it was discovered that my left testicle had given up the ghost. Meaning, I’d gone back into surgery to have it removed.
I’d been asked at the time if I had any desire for a fake ball to be placed in my sac, but at the time, I hadn’t given a fuck. That fuck had changed when I got my first good look at it after surgery—then I had to have it fixed. Swear to God, it looked awful, and the moment my prosthetic ball was in, I felt immensely better.
“Are you okay?” Janie asked, drawing me out of my ball contemplation.
“Fine,” I answered. “Your parents change the gate code lately?”
Janie nodded. “Once a month like clockwork.”
I sighed. “Are they going to make me jump through hoops to get it this time?”
Because, if I was an honest man, that really pissed me off.
I’d proven myself time and time again with them, and time and time again they made me prove myself all over again.
I should be used to it by now, but honestly, it was annoying.
I’d been loyal to them for over ten years now. I’d done everything they’d ever asked me to do, and yet they continued to treat me like the unknown. As if I was the man they always suspected me to be.
See, when I was a child—twelve or thirteen at most—my father had done something to a few people.
And one of those few people had been someone that the men of Free had known. An old Army captain of theirs that had just been starting out in life. One who’d invested in my father’s Ponzi scheme and had lost his entire life savings—right when his wife was due to give birth to their first child.
From there, my father had just moved on to another unsuspecting soul. While Jerrod Teeterman, later known as Captain Teeterman, had struggled to keep up with what life had thrown him—which had been a wife who died shortly after giving birth to their very sick little boy. A very sick little boy who had struggled to live for four years before passing away when I’d just turned sixteen.
At sixteen, I hadn’t realized that a man was losing his world a thousand miles away from me. What I had known was that in my own personal hell, life sucked. It was my sister and me, struggling to not get on my father’s bad side.
If we got on that bad side? There would be hell to pay—there was hell to pay. I’d also found that out the hard way.
Lucky for me, after receiving the beating that put me in jeopardy of losing my life, my father had been taken into police custody.
It was then that they’d discovered not just the sins that had brought him under police scrutiny, but they also uncovered schemes he’d been a part of when his mug shot was plastered all over the news for his part in nearly beating me to death. They found over three hundred poor souls whom he’d cleaned out of their life savings and left floundering.
But life didn’t get better after my father was in jail. Nope. Not for me, and certainly not for Raven, my baby sister.
How could it get worse?
Going from the devil that you knew to the one that you didn’t.
Raven and I? We weren’t strangers to bad situations. We’d spent years in fucked up situations.
After our mother’s overdose, they’d placed Raven and I both in foster care. I had six months to realize that the life with the foster care family we’d been placed with was no better than the house we’d come from.