Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“That’s Annika,” Mya whispers. “Ryder’s wife.”
“And the one beside her is Sophia. Rogue’s wife.”
Sophia has a mass of red hair falling around a stunning face, and she sways her hips with determination with every step.
“Beside her is Rina. She and Gambit were married last month.”
Rina is wearing a killer pair of thigh-high boots over her jeans. She’s also pregnant and rests a hand on her round baby belly as she walks.
All three of them look so put together it makes me regret not wearing one of the dresses Mya picked out for me. And brushing the wind out of my hair.
“They don’t look very friendly either,” I whisper.
Mya smiles brightly. “Oh, they’re lovely. We’re all friends.”
“They don’t mind the club girls hanging around their husbands?”
Mya looks at me like it would be a crazy idea if they did. “The first rule of being a club girl is not to hook up with a biker who has an old lady. That would upset the apple cart faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind. I’ve seen it happen only once during my time here, and it was a big blow up.”
Isla leans in. “Meaning the club girl who messed about with one of the old ladies’ men got two black eyes, a concussion, and thrown out on her ass. You want to enjoy your stay here, then stay away from the old ladies’ men. We club girls know our place, and the old ladies respect it as long as we respect theirs.”
“We’re all family here,” Mya adds.
I watch Sophia and Rina sit beside their husbands, but Annika slides onto the lap of a man with dark hair and broad shoulders. He wraps his big arms around her waist and she smiles. It’s a devastatingly beautiful smile, the kind you wouldn’t ever forget. But when her gaze comes back to me, her smile fades quicker than a whisper of smoke disappearing into the cold night air.
There is no friendship in those eyes.
Only a warning.
CHAPTER 16
BEAST
“It’s a fucking disgrace,” Opie mutters, holding up a lab dish of off-white powder. We’re in one of the brightly lit rooms of the laboratory that runs beneath the clubhouse.
After leaving Belle outside her bedroom, I was on my way to my room to get changed when Opie texted me about the fake phantasia.
Dressed in a white coat over his cut, he pushes his thick glasses up his nose, offended by the powder he’s spent the afternoon investigating.
“How anyone mistakes this for the real thing is beyond my understanding,” he says, shaking his head. He’s right. The fake phantasia is missing the white sparkle of authentic phantasia. This stuff is dull. Almost yellow. Like piss on snow.
The door opens, and Lars and Gambit walk in, fresh from the party upstairs. Lars looking unimpressed by the text message I sent summoning them to the lab.
“We need a clause that says any disruption to a party is unbrotherly and unjust,” he grumbles as they approach the lab bench. “There’s something to be said about being able to disconnect from your boss outside of work hours, you know.”
I give him a sharp look. “There’s also something to be said about being able to disconnect your tongue from your mouth that I’m happy to help you explore,” I growl.
Lars ignores the threat. He knows when to quit.
Gambit nods toward the powder in the Petri dish on the lab bench in front of us. “Is that the synthetic phantasia?”
Opie nods. “Disgusting stuff.”
“What did you find out about it?” Lars asks, instantly switching to business mode.
“It’s one hundred percent synthetic.”
“And the effects?” Gambit asks.
“Designed to mimic the real stuff but it’s unstable. The high won’t be as clean. Users can expect varying reactions.”
“Similar to what?” I ask, trying to gauge what we’re dealing with.
“If MDMA and GHB had a baby and dipped it in cocaine with a bump of meth, this is what it would look like. Users start to feel good, feel horny, get hard, then the nightmare kicks in, the agitation, the over confidence, the paranoia, followed by a plummet in mood and alertness. Finally, if they’ve consumed enough, their respiratory system fails and they die.” He puts the dish on the counter. “And if that’s not bad enough, it’s highly addictive. It makes heroin and meth look like nervous school kids.”
Fucking great.
“Has Bram been able to find anything that ties this to the Psychos?” Lars asks me. “My gut tells me they’re responsible, so it’s only a matter of time before he finds something.”
Fucking Psychos. I’m going to bring the hammer down on their drug trade and pulverize it until there is nothing left.
“Unfortunately, time is not something we have a lot of,” Opie says. “If this is out on the street, then we’re going to see more than one dead girl in an alley.”