Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Beside me, my mom shakes her head sadly. “I’m sorry, son.”
What do I do?
I drop my head to my chest.
I don’t know how I feel.
I’m too numb to cry.
My girlfriend.
My baby.
Both gone.
Suddenly, all the numbness inside me goes, and I feel everything. All the pain. All the rage.
I lift my head. “I want to see her.”
Beast helps me into a wheelchair, and my mom takes me downstairs to the morgue where the morgue assistant leads me over to Alice.
Her eyes are closed, and she’s still dressed in the clothes she was wearing at the park. A T-shirt with a sunflower on the front, the white fabric now stained with red. Three other people died in the park today. A Knight and his old lady, along with a club girl who’d just moved into the clubhouse with her older sister.
All of them are lying in the morgue with sheets over them waiting for the medical examiner.
Knowing I was coming, the morgue assistant has pulled the sheet down so I can see Alice for the last time.
My breath leaves me at the finality of it.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” the morgue assistant says, but I barely hear him.
All I can see is her.
All I can think about is how wrong this is.
I take her hand in mine and it’s stone cold.
Seeing her makes it all real. Feeling how cold she is breaks my heart.
They’re both gone.
I think about the beanie with the Knights of St. Boniface emblem stitched into the wool sitting in a drawer in my room at the clubhouse, and the pain that twists in my heart is like nothing I’ve ever known. Overwhelmed, I fight the wave of agony, but can’t hold back my tears. My face crumples and I let the tears fall.
I’m sorry, kid.
You were unexpected but I wanted you.
My gaze sweeps over Alice’s sweet face and I breathe in a rough breath.
I bring her hand to my lips and press a kiss into her knuckles.
I’m sorry I didn’t love you back like I should’ve.
I thought I had time to fall.
Forcing myself to swallow back a new wave of tears and guilt, I let the darkness rise inside of me. A darkness I’ve always known was there, but one I’ve always fought to contain.
Now I decide to let it rise.
To protect me.
To distance me from this in the future.
To give me the strength to do the things I need to do to avenge this.
I let go of Alice’s hand, knowing life is different now.
I don’t know what lies ahead.
All I know is this fucking hurts.
And I don’t ever want to feel this way again.
I blend in with the shadows. Watching. Waiting. I move when he moves.
This man is the last of the three men I have been hunting for the past eight years. Three men who were in the car the day bullets rained down on a Knights of St. Boniface family day in the park.
After my old man and the president of the club waged war on the syndicate behind the attack, these men scattered to the wind. They disappeared into a cloud of protective smoke like they never even existed.
But I knew I’d track them down.
One after the other.
No matter how long it took.
In the meantime, I became a fully patched member of the club and sank deep into club life. Women. Sex. More sex. Anything to keep me numb.
Now I’m being considered for the enforcer role within the club. A role that requires strategy, strong instincts, and the brute force to back it up.
Hunting these men, I’ve learned all of that and more.
It’s almost a shame that this target is the last one.
First to go was the driver. I found him in an upscale brothel in Chicago, getting fucked by a six-foot blonde wearing a strap on. I slipped into the bathroom undetected and waited behind the shower curtain. When he came into the bathroom to piss, I stepped behind him, slid my hand across his mouth and whispered in his ear. “This is for them.” And I ran my blade along his throat.
Second to go was the front passenger in the car. The son of the slain syndicate leader. But he wasn’t nearly as rewarding as the first. I found him almost dead with a needle in his arm. But I brought him back to life, so he was conscious and coherent enough to know exactly what was about to happen. With satisfaction, I watched it click in his head. Saw the moment he figured it out and waited with my arms crossed as the pleading set in. Then I killed him.
Looking back, I didn’t make him beg enough.
But this one.
This is the one I intend to savor.
He was the man who pulled the trigger and brought blood to the Knights of St. Boniface doorstep that day.