Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
“I can’t be bought,” I blurted out, more as a reminder to myself.
A slow, sexy smile that held a touch of evil in the way it curled over his lips only made my panties wetter than they already had been.
“If I thought you could be, I’d already have paid whatever price you asked.”
I had to get out of here. Distance. Space. Air that wasn’t saturated with his alluring scent.
“I’ll get your drink,” I said to him needing a reason to escape.
“No need. I didn’t come for a drink. I came to see you,” he replied. “Good night, Fawn.”
Then, he walked away, leaving me there with an empty tray, racing heart, and a sudden feeling of loss.
Eleven
Garrett
I walked down into the underground cellars on my ranch and followed the sound of my oldest son’s voice. He was taking over more and more of this side of the business. I found myself stepping back and trusting him with something new weekly. I wasn’t sure when I would hand the reins over to him, but I knew the day was sooner rather than later. When the time came, I would know. I wasn’t there yet.
When I stepped into the concrete room, I saw the man hanging by his wrists from the chains attached to the ceiling had already experienced Gage Presley’s blade. The man loved his knife and inflicting it as a form of torture.
He’d not been born into the family, but he had become my son’s best friend in school. Blaise trusted him as much as he trusted the boys who had grown up in this life with him. Add the fact that Gage was a crazy son of a bitch and lethal as hell, and he made a great waepon. I liked to think that fifty years from now, Gage would have a son to stand behind my grandson, Cree, as he took the role as boss. Especially since the psycho had found the only woman on earth who seemed to ease his tortured soul.
Blaise looked at me. “He’s not said much. Which Gage has only enjoyed,” he told me.
I grinned at Gage, who had blood on his knife and hand with that crazed look in his eyes he got from this kind of thing. The kid had some dark shit in his past, and that made him unstable, but loyal. He’d die for Blaise. That was the kind of loyalty my son needed when he took over as the boss.
Walking over to the bleeding man who looked full of rage, I wondered if we would get anything out of him. I knew he hadn’t stolen from me, but he was protecting the man who had. I scanned his chest and the place where his right ear had been. It lay on the ground now, just beside where his toes brushed the cold, blood-soaked cement.
“He enjoys this,” I told the man, then nodded toward Gage. “The more you refuse, the more joy he will get until you’re nothing but sliced-up pieces.”
The guy spit at me and began cursing at me in Spanish. Gage was beside me then, seething with his knife ready. I reached over and plucked it from his hand. Then turned back to the fool who’d dared to disrespect me. With a smile, I grabbed his hand and took off his pinkie while he screamed in pain.
“You won’t walk out of here alive,” I told him calmly, taking off his pointer finger next.
He thrashed and wailed.
“We might not get the name from you, but I will find out who it was. He’ll die a death just as gruesome as yours. Gage will enjoy every moment he gets to feel his blade sink into warm flesh. And what will be the point of your death then? Hmm?”
I laughed as he moaned in pain and blood poured from the places his fingers used to be. His eyes didn’t show any sign of giving in.
I handed the knife back to Gage as I turned to leave. “Make it brutal, boys. Then dispose of the pieces,” I told them as I headed for the door.
The man shouted out in Spanish, calling me a monster and a cocksucker and telling me to rot in hell.
I looked back at him and replied in his first language, which I spoke just as clearly as he did, “You first.”
The wails of pain eventually faded until they were completely silent as I reached aboveground.
Heading to the main house, I let my thoughts go to the golden-eyed beauty I intended to have begging for my cock before the week was out.
Twelve
Fawn
When I stepped into Garrett’s lair the next night, he was taking a cigar out of the case. Leo had already said that in all the four years he’d been working here, Garrett had never frequented the club this often. He usually came in on Thursdays, and sometimes, he showed up one other day within a week, but it was rare.