Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
Gage nodded. “Blaise’s younger brother.”
“He’s so young.”
Gage chuckled. “Baby, he was born to the Mafia boss. It’s in his blood. Blaise had already seen some bad shit by the time he was Trev’s age. It’s past time that Garrett put his youngest out to train.”
This world was going to challenge me and shock me at every turn. I studied the food in front of me. Thinking about how the boys born into this family had no choice. It was what they did.
“You chose this life.” I looked up at him.
He nodded. “I fought for it. Had to prove myself to Garrett. I wanted this.”
I didn’t understand why.
Gage looked at me for a moment, and I could see the turmoil in his eyes. “This is a story for another time. Just let me feed you,” he replied.
I appeased him by letting him feed me the rest of the cinnamon roll. Then, he moved to an egg dish I didn’t recognize, and I managed to eat a few bites of it before I shook my head. I couldn’t eat any more.
He put the bite in his mouth instead and winked at me. As much as I wanted to crawl on top of him and forget everything but how good his body felt, I wanted to understand him and this life he was in more. I needed to understand it. After watching him kill a man, I had to know why Gage wanted to live this way.
“Please, tell me why you’re a part of this. Why did you want this?”
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to tell me. He seemed tense, almost angry that I’d asked. I hadn’t meant to mess up our morning, but there were things I had to understand. I knew so little about him, about these people. We couldn’t live in this room and fuck all the time. Facing the reality of our situation was important.
“The family I had been born into was one I didn’t want to keep. My mother died from a drug overdose when I was four years old. My father was likely the cause of her addiction. He began beating me when I was six. The older I got, the worse the beatings were. When I was eleven years old, I hit a growth spurt. This fucking face I have now began to mature, and women noticed me. I came home from school one afternoon, and there was a woman with my father. She paid him for my virginity. It didn’t end there. Others came, and I either took the beating or fucked the women.”
I moved over and wrapped my arms around him, needing to comfort him and myself. He tensed under my touch, but I didn’t back away. If he was going to share this with me, then I wasn’t letting him suffer alone.
“I was fifteen when he brought home the first male. He held me by the throat and slammed me against the wall when I refused to let the man touch me. That day, something snapped inside of me. I hadn’t known it was there. But I became someone else. I wasn’t the boy who was afraid of his father or death anymore. I was someone else. My father was on the floor, unconscious, when the haze finally cleared, and I stood there, staring down at him. There was blood coming from his nose. For a moment, I thought he might be dead, and I didn’t care. The man he’d brought in to fuck me was gone. I sat there, watching him breathe for over an hour. Trying to decide if I was going to let him live. If he hadn’t opened his eyes when he did, I can’t say I wouldn’t have taken the gun he liked to threaten me with and used it on him.”
I buried my face in his neck and inhaled deeply. His arms slipped around me and held me against him.
“I walked away that day after he stood up, wiping his bloody nose, threatening me. I packed a bag with the only things I needed and left that house. With nowhere to go, I slept at a park that night, and the next day, Blaise found out I was homeless. He talked to his dad, and I was moved into a man’s house by the name of Waylon August. He was in his late sixties, but he’d been born into the family. He wasn’t in great health, so he wasn’t active within their ranks. He became the father my real one had never been. He liked you. Warned me you were too damn young, but he understood it. Two years ago, he died of a heart attack.”
I pressed a kiss to his chest. He had lived through hell and survived. The family had saved him. They’d been there for an abused kid with no one. I could understand that. I wished I’d known earlier. I wouldn’t have questioned so much. There was darkness in this life they chose, but it didn’t have their souls.