Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
"Yes."
"You go to the hospital?"
"Not for that one. Not for most of them. Just two."
"Which two?" That one came from me. Me, who had personal knowledge of all of them. Me, who maybe just exposed that he had personal knowledge of all of them.
"Had a through-and-through above my knee that needed to be looked at. And a punctured lung."
"Broken rib?" West asked, regarding her with an oddly blank look.
"Yeah. That one was... close," she admitted, giving her father a careful look.
"Choking on your blood sucks balls," he added, making her lips curve up ever so slightly.
"Yeah."
"If we stuck you in an X-ray, how many breaks would we find?" West demanded.
"More than you could count."
"How many of them healed clean?"
"Not many," she snorted. "I am going to be a wreck when I'm fifty."
"You two done commiserating about your reckless pasts?" Reign demanded, shooting West a look that said he better drop it.
"It's not my past," Ferryn told him, voice just a tad softer than was normal. Tentative. Like she didn't want to break what she thought of as bad news to her father.
"Say that again?"
"I'm not done."
"Yeah, you fucking are."
"No, I'm fucking not," she countered. And if I wasn't mistaken, Reign's lips twitched just the slightest. In the past, they always did when she got smart or pushed some boundary. You had to figure that a man who ran an arms dealing MC did appreciate a little bad behavior now and again.
"You gave it nearly nine years. That's enough."
"It's not enough."
"When will it be enough, then?"
"When there are no more bastards selling women against their will for sex."
"You and I both know that's never going to happen."
"Then you understand why I can never stop."
"There are other people who do this sort of thing."
"You're not seriously trying to tell me to leave it to the cops, are you? You, of all people?"
Oh, I couldn't imagine it felt great to be called a hypocrite by your own child.
"They have task forces and means."
"They have red tape and you know it. They answer for every bullet that leaves that gun. Even if they were putting down animals like these traffickers. You know as well as..." she trailed off as her phone dinged in her pocket.
I felt myself shift straighter in my seat. Because as far as I could tell, only two people had that phone number. Me. And whoever messaged her about a job. Otherwise, it was completely, unusually silent.
Judging by the tension in her jaw, I was right about it.
Her hand moved into her pocket, pulling out the phone, scrolling through.
I knew she was gone the second she shifted her legs off the arm of the chair and placed them on the floor, her body still curled over her phone, finger moving up then down again. Like she was trying to confirm that she read what she thought she'd read.
"We're not done here," Reign declared. And it was the most fatherly thing I think I had ever heard from him.
"We seemed to cover it all, I think," she objected, tucking her phone into her pocket. "My mind got fucked up in that basement. I decided I have a mission in life. I trained for it. I paid my dues. And now I take down human traffickers. I might be back, but I am not retiring. That, I think, covers it."
"How the fuck am I supposed to let you just run off when I know you're almost getting your throat slit and collapsing a lung when you go?"
"I'm good at what I do, Daddy. I know you don't like this. But I have to remind you that you were the one who demanded to know. If you couldn't handle the truth, you shouldn't have asked it of me."
With that, she moved away from us, heading toward the door.
"West," Reign demanded, a silent command that West had no problem hearing.
He hopped up, rushing across the room, getting to the door just a blink before Ferryn did.
"Move."
"Got orders."
"West, move," Ferryn demanded, voice damn near as authoritative as her father's.
"Can't do that, Prez..." he started, cutting off when Ferryn whipped a hand into and out of her pocket, holding a curved blade to his throat before he could even know what was happening, let alone react.
"I'm not scared of you, Sweeney Todd," he told her, smirking even as the blade cut in enough to make blood prickle up on his skin.
In another move almost too fast to even see the individual steps, her arm pushed, her leg kicked, and West was on the ground.
"You should be fucking scared of me."
With that and nothing else, not even a glance at her father, she was outside.
"Not trying to tell you how to parent, Daddy Reign," West said, getting off the floor, swiping the blood from his neck casually, not seeming the least bit fazed by the whole ordeal, "but I am pretty sure that girl should have her allowance docked for a week or two," he added, laughing as he got himself a shot, jabbing his finger into the liquid, then running it over the cut.