Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 31295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
“Matteo was an apprentice at a tattoo shop in Atlanta. Want to guess what his waiting list is like?”
I had a feeling I knew where this was going and agreed with Wizard, Matteo could be a great addition to the Hounds of Hellfire.
“How long?” Ace piped up.
“Six months.”
“Holy shit,” Ash muttered.
“Is he interested in working at Hellbound?” I wasn’t about to make it a condition for him to prospect. That would be like buying his loyalty. However, our best two artists after Onyx had both left recently, and we hadn’t found anyone who could even come close to replacing them.
“Onyx told me he’d already talked Matteo into considering switching to our studio. After Matteo agreed to apply, knowing that he wanted to join an MC, Onyx suggested he consider becoming a prospect for us.”
I scratched the back of my head and exhaled slowly, contemplating all the information I’d just absorbed. Eventually, I made order of the chaos in my mind. “Bring him in to meet me. We’ll hash it all out, then I’ll make a decision.”
Wizard pushed to his feet. “Will do,” he agreed before strolling out of my office.
“If he’s as good as Wizard is making him out to be, gonna have to hire even more staff,” Ash mused. He handled the legal shit for everyone we employed, so I wasn’t surprised that’s where his mind had gone.
“Might even need to expand,” Ace said thoughtfully.
Then he and Ash stood and walked out of my office, deep in discussion.
Nothing was gonna happen until I met the kid, but that wasn’t stopping them from making all kinds of plans.
Putting it all out of my mind, I focused on more important club business until after midnight. Calling Cerberus, I waited until he was at my side before we walked out of my office and down the hall to the back of the clubhouse. I didn’t live in the dorm-like rooms in the clubhouse, but I didn’t have far to go to get home. Pierce had built a house as an extension on the back of the club. I’d taken it over when he retired and moved out. It was the best of both worlds—close to the club but I had plenty of privacy.
Not that I had any reason for it. I’d never had a woman in my house. Honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even felt the least bit of interest in one. Which didn’t really matter. I was too fucking busy to deal with the bullshit that came with a relationship.
1
STELLA
Rolling over for about the hundredth time since I went to bed, I grabbed my cell from the nightstand and glared at the screen. I had plenty of notifications, but none were from my dad. “Dammit.”
With how I was raised, I wasn’t one to panic. But I was definitely headed in that direction this morning.
My childhood wasn’t like other kids. My parents’ divorce was probably the most normal thing about it, except for the lack of animosity between my mom and dad. She’d gotten tired of the toll his job had taken on our small family, and he didn’t blame her for wanting to walk away. Which had been tough to explain to my friends since I couldn’t talk about my dad’s job with anyone.
When I was thirteen and he sat me down to fill me in on the family secret, I thought having a spy for a dad was so cool. Not being able to tell anyone that he worked for the CIA quickly dimmed my excitement, though. And knowing he was out there keeping our country safe and saving lives only helped so much when he missed milestones in mine.
But when he was home, my dad put so much effort into being the best father possible that I always forgave him. He did everything he could to make sure I knew how much he loved me, and when I went off to college four years ago, we made a pact that we wouldn’t grow apart. Even if we just fired off a quick text letting the other know we were alive, we always touched base with each other every other day.
When he was in the field for work, those messages usually only consisted of a safe word so that I knew he was okay. No matter what kind of assignment he was on, my dad had never missed a check-in with me. Not even when he’d been shot in the line of duty last year. Since the op was over for him, he sent a photo of his bandaged arm along with a joke about it merely being a flesh wound. Then he got pissed that I was upset about him being shot instead of laughing over the line from his favorite movie that he’d made me watch about a dozen times.