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)
“I don’t have a lot of time left in these bones. I need to know when you wear the president’s badge it’s sewn onto the correct cut.”
“You’re talking insane.”
He grabs me by the cut. “Listen to me, you big fuck. If you’re going to be president one day, then you’re going to have to do things you don’t wanna do. And I want to know you’re up to the task.”
I barely bite back my rage. “Knights don’t hurt women or children.”
“Maybe. But presidents do what needs to be done.”
“Not like this.”
“You do this, or you don’t wear the president’s badge when I’m done.”
“Fuck you and that badge. I’m not hurting her and neither are you.”
He lets me go with a shove. “I should have known you would let me down. You always had a soft spot for the girl. Cried like a fucking little baby when you heard she was dead.”
He looks at me with absolute disgust on his face. “You’re not president material. Born a fucking freak of nature in size but with the same soft heart as the whore you came out of. I should’ve left you to the rats in the tunnels when she brought you to me. I kept you only because my useless wife had failed to give me a son by then. And even when she finally did, it was a sickly child with a black heart. I had hopes for you. The prodigal son. But I can see you’re not. You should be tough. Strong. Powerful. But you’re soft. I thought I could harden you up, after all, you’re half my blood. But I was wrong, and this proves it.” He scoffs. “Don’t send a little boy to do a real man’s job.”
He takes his gun from his waist.
“No,” I growl.
He’s right. I loved Bluebelle the moment I laid eyes on her. She was my best friend. No, she was more than that. Even from a young age, I knew what we had was special. And when I thought she was dead, it felt like one half of my heart was missing.
“You hurt a hair on her head and I will break every bone in your body,” I warn him.
He laughs coldly. “You try stopping me and I will send Gaston to finish the job. You can’t protect her every single day. You have to sleep sometime, my boy. You know your brother has a special kind of darkness about him. He doesn’t do well in the light of day. But in the shadows he is the master. He will slip into this house one night, and the way he ends her life will be a lot less pleasant than how I am about to.”
He’s right. Gaston is a special kind of evil. I have no choice but to end this now.
Too many people have already died for this lie.
I am not a saint. I am capable of malevolent violence. I have taken lives to protect my club. And I’ve done things that weigh heavily on my conscience.
But I won’t let this happen. I won’t let her die.
“Put your gun away, Dodger.”
“If you don’t have the heart for this, then you don’t have the heart to be president of the club.”
“I said put your gun away.”
“There you go, whining just like the weak little junkie whore. You’re just like her. Stupid bitch.”
“You shut your goddamn mouth.”
His eyes narrow. He’s enjoying this. “Your biological mother was a club whore who thought I liked her more than I liked my wife. When she came to me with you in her arms and told me you were mine, she thought I would leave my old lady for her. But I only liked to fuck and leave the junkie slut. She did give me an heir though, and my gracious old lady agreed to take you in. At first your mother fought the idea of another woman raising you. Told me your place was on her tit, not with my barren old lady. I broke her teeth for that comment. But then she gave you up for the price of her next hit—which incidentally killed her.”
“You gave her a hot shot?”
“No, Adam, my old lady did.”
Kaitlin killed my biological mother?
“Why?”
Dodger chuckles. “To warn any of the other whores I was fucking that if they tried to do the same then she wouldn’t stand for it. She was a tough old lady. She did what had to be done.”
I should be shocked. But I’m not. I always knew I was raised by psychopaths.
Kaitlin was cold and unloving. Right up to the moment she died giving birth to Gaston. Her real son, she told me one night as she rubbed her hand over her round belly.
She wasn’t one for hiding her cruelty.
Maybe that was why I would sneak into Blue’s room and crawl under the covers with her. I was five years old, and my parents didn’t care enough to know I wasn’t even where I was meant to be.