Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81009 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81009 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
I turned my attention back to Pepper. A single high heel shoe dangled from her fingers. That was odd, but I didn’t care why.
“She was here with her boss?” I asked. Why the fuck this mattered I didn’t know. The man was dead.
She nodded. “Yeah. They came in once or twice every week. They weren’t dating. Not that he didn’t want to. He had a thing for her, but she was either blind to it or ignored it well. Regardless, she saw his dead body on the ground with blood seeping out of his mouth. It’s going to be hard on her. She’d just began a fresh start too…” Pepper trailed off.
“Time to clear out,” Micah’s voice called out as he walked from the exit over to Dolly, who had been walking in front of us with Jars and Nina.
I watched her run to him, and he opened his arms for her to bury her face in his chest. I’d feared that his love for Dolly would make him weak. Seemed it had done the opposite. He was more focused now. Unlike Liam, who I knew was ready to hand the role of president over to Micah. His family kept him away more often than he was there or here. The fact that he even made it to church anymore surprised me. Every time I left Devil’s to head back here, I wondered if it would be the last time I called him Prez.
I waited until Micah caught up to me before falling into step beside him and Dolly. There were several things pressing on my mind right now, but one sat at the top spot.
“What are we going to do with Salem?” I asked him point-blank.
He glanced at me over Dolly’s head. There was a small pucker between his brow as he frowned, like he didn’t know who I was talking about. He’d just had a man shot over her.
“Is that the bit—woman Lick saved?”
I didn’t have to look down to know Dolly was scowling up at him for almost referring to Salem as a bitch. My own hand had started to fist. I knew it meant nothing. Just the way we talked, but Salem wasn’t a club slut or one of the girls who worked for us.
“Yes,” I said, trying not to clench my teeth and snarl at him.
“You know her?” he asked. He pressed a kiss to the top of Dolly’s head and winked at her.
He wasn’t taking this seriously enough. There were dead men in Pepper’s fucking bar, and we’d just made the head of a pretty damn big gang our enemy.
“That shit in there,” I said, pointing back at the bar, “Lick killing Hatter, just started a war. You’re aware of that, right?”
Liam would be.
Micah nodded his head once. “Yep. Lick chose to do that. I hadn’t planned on letting them take the woman. I think she’s a friend of Pep’s. I’ve seen her there more than once.” He sighed. “But Hatter pushed Lick’s crazy and got himself popped off. So, we go back to the compound. Lock it all up, get Liam on a call, and make our plans.”
We reached the others, and Pepper ran from behind us, where she’d been walking with Jars and Nina, to Salem. I allowed myself a moment to study her. Reassure myself she was okay. That the blood splattered on her creamy, flawless skin wasn’t hers. Her pale complexion and wide eyes didn’t ease me. If anything, it made the shit pounding in my head worse.
“You know her,” Micah said.
I jerked my gaze off Salem to look back at him.
No use lying about it.
I nodded. “Yeah. She lived with my mom for a few years. Bad home life. She was a student of my mom’s. She was special…to her. There with me when Mom died.” I left out the part that she’d been the air in my goddamn lungs.
Micah swung his gaze over to her. “I didn’t realize that. Then she’s more than just Pep’s friend. She’s important to you too.”
I hadn’t said that. “She was important to my mom.” The words were just there, on the borderline of sounding strangled.
He nodded. “Understood.”
I looked back toward Salem to find her eyes on me. The impulse to go ask her if she was okay was slowly inching its way up my spine, and it was getting harder to slap it the hell down. Especially when those cornflower-blue eyes looked relieved to see me. There was even some fucking color returning to her face.
Fuck.
“Tex!” Nixie cried out my name.
I reluctantly tore my gaze off Salem to see the other woman rushing to me. Tears running down her face, as if she’d been the one inside with the gang and held at gunpoint.
She hurled herself against me, grabbing on to my cut. “Oh God, I was so scared.”