Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 99381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
But I still attempt to eat it.
“Don’t “Mother” me.” She stabs the meat again. “You show up late, and now you want to criticize my cooking?” she snarls, despite no one saying anything.
I’ve never seen someone make such a mess of cutting poultry.
“Red,” River says. Her gaze shoots up to him, and she puts down the knife, a forced smile appearing on her lips. “A deal went bad today. You both know how your mother is when things don’t go her way.” Our father reaches for her hand, and she lets him squeeze it before she pulls it back and looks at the disaster, which is the roasted chicken.
“It’s fine. It’ll be sorted because our sons will be sorting it.” She smiles like that makes her happy, and being the only woman in this house, we sure do love to make her happy. Because when she’s upset, we all feel it.
“And who will we be killing tonight?” I ask. It’s very rare for our mother to ask for our help and not handle a situation herself. But when she does, I think it’s because killing is her love language, which means this time it’s personal.
“A man wouldn’t sell me a ring I wanted for my collection. He tried to haggle with me.” She humphs.
My eyebrows furrow. “So why didn’t you just kill him?”
She sighs and rolls her eyes, then sits on River’s lap. He pulls out his phone, and I imagine it’s because he’s ordering takeout. “Well, he had his ten-year-old daughter in the room.”
Hawke and I are silent for a moment until it dawns on us.
“Wait. Did you not kill him because you didn’t want to traumatize his daughter?” Hawke asks, openly in shock.
She curses with a thick Russian accent. “I’m not a complete monster.”
“Bullshit!” Hawke says, and I look away, ready for the reprimand to come because Hawke can’t keep his mouth shut. But it seems my brother, and I’ll be going on a hunt for this fucking ring tonight, and I wonder how many men exactly we’re going to have to kill for it.
If the man had any smarts, he would’ve fled the country by now. But some people tend to underestimate my mother because she’s a woman. And they discover their error too late.
CHAPTER 7
Ford
Hawke fastens his spiked gloves, and the buzz of energy around him is palpable. I drag my two crowbars—my preferred choice of weapons—out of the trunk of my car. It’s not that we can’t use guns or knives; Anya and River trained us extensively with both, but Hawke was accustomed to using his bare hands when we lived on the streets, and I found an affinity for the use of crowbars. I liked the various ways I could use them.
“All of this for a fucking ring,” Hawke mumbles with a menacing smirk.
Ironic, considering how much of a big deal she’d apparently made about wearing the one River gave her after their wedding. “What Mother wants, Mother gets,” I say, not at all surprised that she’s wildly pissed by someone who won’t give her something shiny she likes.
From our intel, the man is new in New York’s underworld. Anya has had only two business dealings with him, auctioning some of his items on the black market.
He became too cocky, trying to overcharge our mother, but the intel we received from Will Walker showed that he doesn’t even have a child, which means he used some poor kid as a decoy and purposefully undermined our mother.
“Hey, I’ve actually been to this bar before; it’s not so bad,” Hawke muses as we stand outside the bar in one of the outer suburbs. “I wonder what it will look like coated in red.”
“Just don’t get blood on my leather seats,” I make a point to add because Hawke can get messy once he’s in a frenzy.
I don’t believe in God, and there certainly isn’t room for mercy in what we do. I’d called the cleanup team ahead of time.
“How many do you think will be inside?” Hawke asks giddily as we approach the bar that is a front for the illegal dealings happening inside. Everyone here works for Laurence Tate, which is an unfortunate fact.
“Ten,” I guess as I hide my crowbars behind my back. Hawke begins to whistle a tune as he stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“I’m going to say twenty,” Hawke says, and I know it’s wishful thinking on his part. My brother and I are the same in that we like to challenge ourselves. Hawke because it feeds his superiority complex. And I love the thrill of putting my life on the line. I love the adrenaline rush. “Don’t forget to count how many you kill,” he adds because it’s always a competition. And I often win simply because Hawke hyper fixates on pummeling each and every one to death or close to it. Whereas I go for precise and debilitating swings.