Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 133182 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133182 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
He was never in control.
No, Chief Cronin lost all power and control when he signed a deal with the Devil.
It was probably something as simple as Lucifer telling him specific details about a rival crime gang’s activities. It’s always that way with him. He gets you through the small things, the little nothings. He gets you under his thumb and then he slowly erodes away all true control from you. He’s done it to all of us to some extent.
Even me, if I’m being honest.
Looking around, though, I can still see the world like I think Sophia does. Unlike her, I know it’s all a sham. Nothing good ever really exists in Garden City, it all eventually fades to gray.
Not Sophia, dammit.
I don’t want that for her.
But I don’t want her to be the innocent wife who wears blinders. That’s not for her either.
My hand aches with the desire to just reach over and grab hers. To give her some sort of comfort.
But I know she doesn’t want my comfort. She doesn’t want my solace. I saw that in the graveyard. I saw the look of revulsion when she saw me. She saw the dark and dirty world she’s been thrust into when she saw me.
She saw the dark ink blot on my soul.
Most of the women I’ve been with are drawn to the darkness they feel within me. The exciting danger they put their lives in. They know I’m not the right one for them. They know I’m the hurricane that will sweep into their lives and destroy everything.
And they know I’ll fade out of existence as soon as I’m done.
Those women crave me and what I do to them.
Sophia doesn’t.
She doesn’t want the bad boy who kills people. She probably thought she’d marry the nice boy next door and live a life of normalcy.
Shit, she probably could have too if she hadn’t been taken all those months ago when the Russians decided to fuck around in Garden City.
Her life could have been so fucking different than it is now. She could have had a path that led to normal old boring shit. But it can never be that again. Not after the Russians hit Johnathan’s bar and I was assigned to rescue her.
Kind of like fate, I guess.
Fate put me in the way of her suffering a life worse than death. I know the dark shit she could have been sold into. The short existence she would have suffered until she was no longer of use.
I could try to tell her all the things that could have happened to her, but I don’t think she’ll hear me. I don’t think she’d really and truly get it either. She got a taste, but she got away. She was saved by my hands.
She’s been saved by my hands since then too.
But she doesn’t know any of that shit and I don’t think she ever should.
“Where the fuck are you taking me?” Sophia snarls at me as I drive us through the pouring rain to my house.
“My house?” I say in confusion. “Where the fuck else would I take you?”
Dropping her chin, she glares at me. “I need to go home.”
“Exactly what I said,” I say back to her.
“What?” she questions.
“What?” I ask back.
This shit’s confusing. Where the fuck does she think I would take her?
“Take me to my house, James. I have a cat I need to take care of, and I can’t play any more stupid games with you,” she says and turns away.
“I can get all your stuff brought back to our house,” I say.
Stuff isn’t worth your life is what I really want to tell her.
“Take me to my home now, James, or I’ll walk my ass there,” she tells me quietly and with less emotion than she should be showing with those kinds of words.
“Fucking hell,” I spit out and turn the car around at an intersection.
The wheels of my car squeal as I whip a U-turn and push the pedal down.
The rain is coming down heavily right now and I can’t have her trying to walk her ass back to her old house dressed the way she is. Her heels alone would fucking kill her feet before she even got halfway there.
“And don’t drive like some frat boy douchebag,” she adds before turning her eyes back to her window.
I growl out, “I—”
“Yeah, you were.”
I’ll fucking choke her. Gonna make her fucking gag on my cock, I swear it.
Shit. Her calling me out is getting me fucking hard.
Growling quietly, I push my finger against the screen on the console and call Simon.
“What is it?” Simon snaps at me.
“I need two guys on perimeter around the Cronin house, immediately,” I growl out and hope it isn’t full of the resentment I feel right now.
“Why?” he asks.
Peeking over at Sophia, I watch her body tense at the sound of the good ol’ germaphobe’s voice.