Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
“You hurt my sister, and I’ll pull your fingernails out and feed them to you,” I promised him, my voice cold, unfamiliar.
He laughed, pulling my hair harder so pain exploded in my scalp. “Big talk from someone about to be chained to Stone forever. Which, for you, may not be long.” He leaned in and laid a long kiss on my lips, shoving his tongue in my mouth.
I bit it.
“Bitch!” he yelled, rearing back as if to hit me in the face before remembering Stone’s instruction.
Another kick to my ribs. More warmth flooding my body.
I hoped that he had punctured something vital. Then I’d die, and Daisy would be safe. But would she?
There was no way to be certain of that. All it would‘ve ensured was that my bright flower of a sister would be utterly alone in a wasteland full of violent criminals. Not an option.
Dying and leaving my sister alone in that world wasn’t an option. Even when grieving, toxic parts of me wanted to escape into whatever afterlife Knox was in.
I had to stay alive, I told myself as darkness clouded my vision.
Stay alive, I told myself.
As if I had any kind of control over that.
Nineteen
Knox
“You’re sure this is where she is?” I asked Joey as we pulled up to some piece of shit motel over the state line in the middle of nowhere.
The sun was just about completely set, the dull glow of twilight doing nothing to improve the appearance of this ramshackle place. Only two cars were parked in the lot—an ancient Ford pickup and some cheap Toyota packed to the gills with crap. No black SUVs to be seen, no sign of Stone’s men.
Joey nodded beside me. “I was supposed to meet them here after I waited to see if you turned up,” he explained. “Then we’d take Piper back. For the wedding. Or…” he trailed off, swallowing, understanding the energy in the car right now and how fucking loose of a hold I had on the beast inside me.
“Or we’d be burying her body once we were … done with her,” he continued, fear in his eyes. Though there was also a touch of bravery for his honesty. “If Stone didn’t like the state she was in, if she refused him.”
Joey was right to be afraid. He was just the messenger, and he was helping me, but that didn’t make much difference to the urge inside of me to smash his head against the dash until his skull cracked and his brain was leaking out of his ears.
I’d never had so much blind, violent rage inside me before. I didn’t lust for blood, gore. Didn’t find the need to drag out a death for some kind of thrill. The snuffing out of life, quick, clean, painless—that satisfied me plenty.
But right then, with Piper gone, her fate undetermined, her mental and physical state unknown, there would be no satisfaction until every person who’d had a hand in this was drenched in their own blood. I would tear them apart limb from limb with my bare fucking hands if they took her from me. If they broke her. They were dead, for merely laying hands on her, but the nature of their deaths was to be determined.
Joey was still watching me. I knew he was on guard, waiting for me to strike. He wasn’t exactly a genius, but at least he was smart enough to understand that he had been seconds away from death since he’d made his presence known.
I held it together only because he had helped me.
He’d informed me—after taking the gun from my head but still unarming me because he’d rightly deduced I’d kill him on sight—that he was ordered to kill me if he found me.
It was clear that they’d thought that I was long gone, leaving Joey with the shitty job because he was likely suspected of being a weak link. I didn’t doubt Stone had seen his real feelings for Daisy and was biding his time to end him. Fuck, he might’ve been counting on me coming back and killing Joey on sight, doing his dirty work for him, ensuring that the blind loyalty his henchmen had for him in the name of ‘family’ remained intact.
Joey had quickly said that he was going against Stone, that he didn’t give a fuck about his orders. He was in love with Daisy. A twist I hadn’t seen coming. I’d been sure she was nothing but a quick fuck to him, and he was a loyal solider of Stone’s, since he was a kid. That’s how Stone made his soldiers, after all. He preyed upon the young men malleable enough to be romanced by the life he promised them. The wealth, the brotherhood, the riches. He got his hooks in them then stole another piece of their humanity with each act of violence he ordered them to commit. He coaxed out a cruelty that was latent in most men.