Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Surrounded by the deepest, darkest night.
Shouts echoed around us. Organized mayhem as Crows ran through the carnage, piling fallen bodies, liquids being spilled and dumped, no question erasing all traces of their involvement.
All evidence eradicated.
Once again, they had become soldiers the way I’d thought of them the day that man had come in the office to drag me to Kent as an offering.
Precise and efficient.
This motorcycle club so different than I imagined. Its importance hung on the horizon, tickling at the edge of my awareness and scored on my conscience.
I wanted to beg for Silas’s forgiveness, but I couldn’t do anything but cling to his neck as he strode with me across a vast lawn. My eyes were wide with shock as I peered over his shoulder.
At the fire that suddenly leapt high, quick to consume that massive building.
Silas didn’t stop. He carried me into the thick of the woods and dipped us through a hole that had been cut in the fence, his feet sure and his hold strong as he angled us down an embankment and up the other side.
A second or an hour passed as I clung to him, I couldn’t discern, before I was back on his bike, planted in front of him the way he’d had me before.
Fierce, unrelenting arms surrounded me as he gripped onto the handlebars and rode us out of the labyrinth of the twisting, twining forest.
No words were said except for the whispers of his breath that he released into my temple as we rode.
He took the roads like a puzzle. Riding further south into California before he wound around and headed north again.
He didn’t slow until we crossed the border, then he pulled off onto a rugged, worn path and weaved us back into the sanctuary of the woods.
The stars were beginning to fade as night slowly gave up its hold.
Silas stopped under a canopy of verdant trees, planted his boots on the ground as he killed the engine, then he shuffled me around. He wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled my chest to his.
His arms unrelenting as he held me against his rigid, perfect frame.
“Brinley.”
I never would have thought my name could hold such meaning.
Relief.
Love.
Redemption.
But it was all there, surrounding me like I had earned any one of them.
I crushed myself against him. My own relief. My own redemption.
A love so big and heavy that I feared maybe I’d succumbed from it.
Maybe I’d died back in that room and this meeting was otherworldly.
Because how could Silas shower this kind of mercy on me after what I’d done?
“I’m sorry.” It was a muddled, disjointed cry. “I’m so sorry.”
Silas’s arms only tightened, and his head shook, his stubble brushing over my cheek. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I almost got you killed. All of you.”
His head shook again. “No, baby. We found out he already knew we were coming for him. Your actions actually confirmed it. We would have been walking into a full ambush if all of this hadn’t happened.”
There was a low, searing pride in his voice before it cracked with dread. “Not that I ever want you to put yourself in that kind of danger. I was so fucking scared.”
Tears kept spilling, and I had my face pressed into his neck, his warmth heating me through. “I should have come to you.”
“Yeah, you should have. But I was keeping secrets from you, and how is a person supposed to fully trust when they’re in the dark?”
I sniffled. “But I should have. You’ve proven it to me time and again, and I…I panicked. Those letters…”
I trailed off. Still not knowing how to make sense of them. Of what they meant.
A ripple of aggression rolled through Silas. “Wasn’t me.”
My spine stiffened. I could feel that something was coming.
Something big.
That energy thrashed and thrummed.
“It was Phoenix.”
Anger burst in my blood, and Silas pulled back, palms coming to my cheeks as he stared down at me through the faint light that began to suffuse the air.
“I know you’re mad, baby. I was fucking furious. Thought I was gonna have to put a bullet in one of my best friends. But—”
He clipped off, hesitating before he rushed, “He truly believed Dereck was setting us up. That this whole thing was somehow a ploy at infiltrating our crew.”
I blinked, giving him an invitation to explain.
“You see, I’ve been trying to get to Kent for years. Ever since he killed my mother, even though at the time, I didn’t even know his name. I wanted it out of vengeance. Out of a thirst for revenge. I thought it was the only thing that was left for me, so when my grandmother packed me and my siblings up and moved us to LA where her sister lived, I fell even deeper into the game.”
His tongue stroked over his lips as he gazed at me, eyes flicking everywhere like he was looking for understanding.