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)
“The profit is distributed fairly.”
“My sister needed more. My niece needed more.”
“The club helped her—”
“But it wasn’t enough,” he yells helplessly. “I had to do something. I couldn’t stand by and watch my niece suffer. It was killing my sister. Her old man ran out on them. Quit because it was too hard. What was I supposed to do, let them both suffer?”
“You talk to Beast. You don’t betray the club.”
He swallows thickly, ashamed. His eyes are red and glassy. “It wasn’t meant to go down this way. It was only meant to be a one-time deal. I didn’t think they would come after the Knights. But then the Bratva found me, and that’s the thing about these guys, once they’ve got you, they want more and more and more from you, and they push and push until you find yourself doing shit you never thought you would.”
He shakes his head as he recalls what he’s been going through.
“At first, they said they would rat me out to the club. Tell you what I did if I didn’t start giving them something useful. So I fed them little bits of information. Useless shit. But they knew it. So they threatened to hurt my sister and her kid if I didn’t start playing ball. Then they started paying for shit. A specialist appointment. Medication. My niece started doing better. They gave her a chance, and in return, all I had to do was occasionally feed them a little intel. What choice did I have? I was screwed if I did and screwed if I didn’t. I chose my sister and niece over the club. You would’ve done the same.”
“No, I wouldn’t have sold clean routes to the fucking Bratva in the first place. I would’ve spoken to my president. My club brothers. Not betray them.”
“That’s easy to say when you haven’t got anything to lose,” he says. “When you don’t have anyone you care about enough to do anything to save them.”
He’s wrong. I have fucking everything to lose.
And I’m here trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I grit my teeth. “You led us into an ambush.”
“They made me do it.”
“They make you kill Cheezy too?”
“I knew all roads would eventually lead to me. But when suspicion fell on him, I thought killing him would keep me in the clear.”
“You thought wrong.”
I think about the prospect lying dead in a pool of blood.
“Scotty is dead because of you.”
By the look on his face he didn’t know, and I see the genuine remorse move across his face.
“You’ve spilled Knights’ blood,” I say. “You know what comes next.”
When a Knight betrays the club, he becomes a Nameless Man. Stripped of his cut and banished. But when a member betrays the club and spills a Knight’s blood in the process, then he has to die.
Tears spill down his cheeks. “I know.”
Accepting his fate, he lowers his weapon.
My finger slides along the trigger. He is beyond becoming a Nameless Man. Instead, he will rot at the bottom of The Well in the clubhouse dungeon. Where those who have betrayed the club have rotted before him.
He closes his eyes. “Please just make it quick.”
I don’t want to shoot him.
But I am the enforcer.
It’s up to me to enforce the rules.
No matter how much the burden gnaws at me.
My finger rests on the trigger.
Damn you, Rogue. Why did you have to do it?
I force back the feelings of regret.
I’ll do what I have to do.
But before I can pull the trigger, the business end of a gun is pressed into my temple.
Fuck.
“Biker scum,” says a voice in a thick accent.
Viktor Olicheckoff.
“Drop it,” he orders.
I do as he says and my gun clangs as it hits the marble floor.
“I shall enjoy killing you,” he says. “For touching her. For filling her pretty cunt with your dirty biker cock.”
“Fuck you,” I growl.
He digs his gun deeper into my temple.
“You might have taken what was mine and stained her with your filth,” he says, every word burning with menace. “But I have her sister, and I will make her bleed for her sister’s betrayal with you. And then I will take Ella, and I will force her to her knees, and she will suck my cock every single night for the rest of her short, miserable life.” He comes closer to whisper in my ear. “I wanted you to know that before you die.”
Images of Ella flash before me. Her smile. Her dimples. The sound of her voice. The comforting scent of her hair. The heartbreaking thought of not seeing her again.
“You touch her and I will—”
“You will do nothing because you will be dead.”
Across the room, Rogue roars and lunges for Viktor, and the barrel of the gun quickly vanishes from my temple and fires in his direction. Hit in the chest, Rogue falls to the floor.