 by Anne Malcom.jpg)
Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Can we name a bigger, or better cliché?
Despite my ideas about the deep misogyny associated with this particular one, I’ve somehow found myself in the middle of it.
Except, I’m not the good girl. I’m exceptional at playing that role. But I’m not. My secrets make sure of that.
And he’s not a boy. He’s a man. Older than me by decades. An outlaw. A villain.
A member of one of the most notorious MCs in the country. The Sons of Templar.
More importantly, my stepfather is one of his brothers. That means I’m off limits.
He’s off limits.
But that doesn’t stop us. Nothing will. Not until there’s nothing left but the charred remains of the lives we once knew.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
ELDEN
My brother was holding a gun to my head.
I’d expected this to happen from the second I laid eyes on her.
The second I touched her.
Tasted her.
She tasted like perfection and my eventual demise.
I knew that this was a ticking time bomb. That we were a ticking time bomb. I also knew that it was a matter of when he found out I was fucking his stepdaughter. Not if.
I could’ve avoided this.
If I’d been strong enough to leave her alone. To say no to her. To get the fuck out of this club and as far away from her as I could’ve.
But that had been beyond my control.
Everything to do with Violet was beyond my control.
And on some level, I’d been willing to die for her. If it was a choice between a bullet and never knowing what it felt like to be inside of her, I’d choose the bullet.
Every fucking day.
“I should blow your brains out right here, right now,” Swiss seethed.
I didn’t argue with him, though I did disagree.
Violently.
I knew my brother was hanging by a thread right now and that there was a reason no one had stepped forward to try to do anything. Even though he was a husband and a father, he was still fucked-up, impulsive and unpredictable when he was mad. He was still very fucking dangerous.
And he’d just found out I’d been involved with his stepdaughter for years.
So he was mad.
Therefore, his piece was pointed in my face.
“There was a time in my life when I probably wouldn’t have fought you,” I told him. “A time when I might’ve just let what happened happen. When I didn’t care much if I was living or dying. Because I didn’t have anything to live for.”
I didn’t stare at him. Nor the barrel of the gun he was pointing in my face.
No, I stared at the indigo eyes of the woman I loved. The mother of my child, tears streaming down her face.
“Now I’ve got somethin’ to live for,” I said, not to Swiss but to her. “I’ve got everything to live for. Not gonna argue with you that this got fucked-up. That I made some bad fuckin’ choices in the midst of this. But you’re never gonna get me to wish away what I did. Because if I did, I wouldn’t be standin’ right here.”
I kept my eyes on her as I tensed, waiting. I wouldn’t go down without a fight. Fuck no. But if he was that far gone and was going to pull the trigger, she was going to be the last thing I saw before I left this world.
Chapter One
TWO YEARS EARLIER
VIOLET
I was sitting on a roof at three in the morning with a bottle of Jack Daniels in my left hand, a joint in my right.
The roof of an outlaw biker compound, it’s important to point out.
It was three in the morning.
The witching hour … when the veil between worlds was thin, when demons were more capable of sinking their talons into you, scoring your skin right to the bone… If you believed in such things.
I did, as it happened, believe in such things.
I was somewhat of a cliché for my generation. I liked crystals, astrology—I was a Scorpio rising, Sun in Sagittarius—and loved to read spicy fantasy novels with a strong female lead. I believed in magic, angels, demons, sprites and the Fae.
But my demons were not of the metaphysical variety. They didn’t come from the underworld or from mystical realms either. They were much too common, much more cliché. Uninteresting. Which made everything worse. If I was going to be battling demons, at least life could make them interesting, worthy of a chapter in my autobiography.
Violet Edwards, demon killer… It had a nice ring to it.
As opposed to Violet Edwards, just another fucked-up, rich kid with daddy issues.
I didn’t normally hang out in outlaw biker compounds. Nor did I drink Jack Daniels or any other dark kind of whisky. While in France, I had developed a taste for Pinot Noir, a crip rosé from the South when it was hot out.
But when in Rome and all that.
And my particular situation called for Jack… A crisp rosé wouldn’t do shit to dull the edges.
The night was unusually quiet. Even though I’d only been here a few days, I’d come to understand that silence, even in the middle of the night—especially in the middle of the night—was hard to come by at an outlaw biker compound. All of the married members, my mother’s good friends, lived in houses of their own. Which meant that it was only the single men who lived at the clubhouse. And they liked to party. Party freaking hard. They also liked to do a lot of other stuff that shocked even my not so naïve eyes.
No one seemed worried about sexual acts being performed in public after certain hours. To the contrary, it seemed some of them liked being watched. When that started, I took that as a sign that that was the time to be putting myself to bed—especially considering my current condition. But something had also awakened inside of me, a want to stay. A need. And every time, my eyes had always found blue ones, my body pulsating as we made eye contact, as it became clear he had been watching me too. The weight of that stare and my current condition had me scuttling back to my room, heart beating fast and shame covering me like sweat.