Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Hades had decided the best course of action was shooting the chain attached to the wall holding Sariah in place.
“You got her?” Colby spoke through gritted teeth.
His hands were fists at his sides. He was holding himself still. Rage sometimes made men try to split the world apart, made them spiral out of control. Those men were dangerous.
Others, it gave clarity. A brutal sense of purpose.
Those men were fucking deadly.
Colby was the latter.
I nodded once in answer to his question, realizing he was trusting her life with me.
“Good.”
He didn’t hesitate in turning and walking toward where we’d locked down the sheriff.
I sprung into action then, letting my training take over as I approached Sariah who was clinging to Hades.
It took up all of my attention, taking stock of her horrific fucking injuries and figuring out how to get her to a hospital before she bled out.
CHAPTER
ONE
EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER
Before the Sons of Templar burst into that warehouse and kept my heart beating, Violet Edwards saved my life.
She didn’t know it, of course.
My best friend in the whole world didn’t know who I truly was. Wasn’t that fucking pathetic?
No one knew who I really was.
They thought they knew.
The girl with the designer clothes, the easy confidence, the sexual prowess, who always had a really good hookup for coke or Molly. Who knew where the best parties were and was always best dressed for a costume party.
Surface level shit.
I was well liked. Well respected. I was a party girl and was popular in various circles of our Ivy League campus.
It was nice. Cool. Especially considering where I came from. Who I used to be.
It was still a novelty, this version of myself. The one who wore clothes I’d stared at in magazines I’d hidden from my parents. Who fucked men and women without the Lord Almighty smiting me or the devil dragging me down to hell for my sins.
Yes, I was riding the wave of my newfound freedom, financial, sexual and otherwise. But I knew I would burn bright and fast. My past would catch up with me. Maybe I’d have a drug overdose. Maybe I’d get in the car with some drunk frat boy and die wrapped around a tree. These were all rather predictable outcomes of the lifestyle I was living. Yet it was only in hindsight that I saw what I was doing to myself.
And the worst did happen, didn’t it?
I rejected some rich douchebag who was used to getting everything he wanted. And like any man who was rejected and entitled, he took what he wanted.
I tried my best not to think about that. Which was really hard when you had a house full of friends who cared about you and kept looking at you with worry and pity … like you were the girl who was raped.
Because I was the girl who was raped.
And despite all my logic to the contrary, despite knowing it wasn’t my fault at all, there was a little voice inside of me that told me it was punishment for my sins.
For being loud, loose, and for abandoning the chaste and good life given to me by the grace of God.
So I did the only thing I could do … I partied my fucking ass off, drank too much, did too many drugs and tried my best to bury all that pain inside. Oh, and lied to my best friend in the entire world.
If you didn’t get it, I was already mucho fucked-up before I was abducted and tortured by a serial killer.
But I didn’t know what horrors awaited me when I drove into the town of Garnett, New Mexico. I thought that I’d already gone through the worst of it. That I’d be okay.
What a stupid fucking bitch.
Colby Lee also saved my life. Literally and metaphorically.
Of course, the first time I met him I wasn’t thinking that he’d change my life, save it and ruin it.
I wasn’t thinking about anything other than my best friend in the world being pregnant by the much older outlaw biker she was in love with and was likely in crisis mode.
Violet had told me she was pregnant, so I’d dropped everything to get my ass across the country to be at her side and be there for her.
No, I had no plans on falling in love with an outlaw biker. I wanted to try to be there for my friend like she’d been there for me since I’d met her.
Now, I’m no saint—as my parents and their respective churches could attest to. So in the back of my mind, as I parked my car in the parking lot of the Sons of Templar compound in New Mexico, I was also kind of curious about this club of outlaw bikers.
I’d met two of them: Elden, who got my Violet knocked up and her stepfather, Swiss. They were both patched members and hot as balls in completely different ways that appealed in equal doses. You know, if they weren’t my best friend’s baby daddy and stepfather respectively.