Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
“Won’t get you involved in that.”
“Look around us, Kane. We’re all neck-fucking-deep. It’s our destiny. Ridding the world of the scum, because sometimes what it takes are monsters to wipe it clean.”
He glanced down the street, his voice dropping low. “Because there are innocents who need us…just like them.”
I shifted so I could see where his focus had gone.
To a dark-haired woman who was coming up the sidewalk with a little boy’s hand in hers. She wore a willowy floral dress that swished around her ankles. She appeared so downtrodden it made my insides ache.
Another stark reminder of why we did what we did.
It grew thicker.
A dense severity that blazed in the space.
Theo stirred, and I could almost hear the screaming of his spirit. The way aggression and rage slipped beneath the surface of his skin at the sight of her.
“Look at them.” Theo’s words barely broke the air.
“It’s why we’re here, brother.”
That strain climbed and climbed, becoming suffocating as they approached, the woman completely unaware that we’d come for her where we were concealed behind the hedge.
Thinking she would go on living the life that she was living.
No more.
This was it.
“Go,” Theo ordered the second they were close enough, and we both clicked open our doors and flew out.
The second we rounded the hedge, she whirled in our direction, a gasp of shock and crippling fear tearing out of her before it turned into determination. Into the same kind of fight I’d seen out of my Little Warrior.
The determination to survive even when the light had been dimmed.
“No.”
Before we could explain ourselves, she grabbed her son and swept him off his feet, guarding his head as she turned to run.
Theo’s voice curled like a dart behind them.
Deep.
Quiet.
Piercing.
“We aren’t here to hurt you. Morgan sent us.”
Sophia stalled with her back to us, her shoulders heaving up and down with her harsh breaths. She didn’t turn to look, ready to bolt back into action at the first indication that she needed to.
Theo took one step forward, and his words curled on the breeze. “She asked you that if you had the chance to get out, if you would take it. This is that chance.”
Silence hovered thick. She continued to face forward with her son pinned to her chest, the child not making a sound, though I could feel the terror wafting from him.
A type of terror so distinct.
So familiar.
The same kind I’d been in for my entire childhood.
Finally, she turned a fraction, her son’s face buried in her neck, chaos bounding around her.
The pounding of a violent storm.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Help.” Theo stated it simply.
Her chin lifted. “What do I have to do?”
Theo gestured with his chin at the outline of the Suburban barely visible through the foliage. Only noticeable when attention was brought to it. “You get in the SUV, and you never look back.”
Incredulity flared through her features, and she tightened her hold on the child.
“And I’m just supposed to trust you? What if he sent you?” Her tone went raspy at that.
Rage flared between me and Theo. No question, we both were thinking the same thing as we saw the sheer panic the idea evoked in her.
The traumas she’d been inflicted.
The agony that she’d sustained.
Theo was right. We should just end him. Wipe out that possibility.
“Morgan said…” She blinked as she processed through the memory. “I…I thought she meant it hypothetically.”
“The question is, did you mean it when you said yes?” My question hovered in the dense air.
She shifted, fear darting her attention left and right before she turned her fierce gaze back to us. “Yes.”
“Then we need to go, and we go now,” I told her.
She hesitated for one more beat, glancing back and forth again, before she came running our way. We hurried her to the SUV and ushered her into the back seat, the blacked-out windows obscuring that she was there. We already had a car seat ready, and she fumbled to get her son buckled while I jumped into the driver’s seat and turned over the ignition.
It roared, and Theo jumped into the back with them, sitting guard as I slowly pulled from our hiding place. I took it cool and casual as we bounced along the side road as if we were just another person going about their day.
While two fragile lives were getting ready to change.
Gravity pulled in the cab of the Suburban. Confusion and hope. Dread and fear.
“Is this really happening?” Sophia whispered into the disorder.
“It’s real,” Theo rumbled, and I could hear the frenzy he was holding back. The violence that pulsed through his veins as he watched for things to go south.
“What happens now?” she asked, disbelief in her voice.
“We take you to a safehouse where you’ll stay for a few months until you’re ready to move on to your new lives,” I explained.