Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 105709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
“I can’t just let them keep her! What will they do with her?” She stops, and both Beast and I share a look. One that says we can think of a couple of things, but we’re not about to pile that onto her right now when she’s still got to process the fact that she can’t save her sister.
Her shoulders sag, and a sob leaves her mouth. “She’s all I have.”
“You have Olive.” I say it gently, brushing the tear that slips down her cheek away.
She stares at me. Through me. She wants to argue but can't find the words. Just when I think she’s gonna cuss me out or slap me, she pushes up from her chair and leaves. Everyone watches her go. No one speaks.
Once she’s gone, Beast dismisses everyone. They probably know more than they should now anyway, not that it matters. Yana and the girls head upstairs to find Melissa, and when it’s just a few of the brothers left behind, somehow the silence feels heavier than it was when the clubhouse was packed.
I turn to my brother, the fucking one constant I’ve counted on more than I like to admit. “You think there's a way to get Millie back?”
He holds my stare. “No. Listen, I’ve seen them once before. Well, Triple Zero.” Beast’s jaw clenches. “Long fucking story for an interaction that didn’t last more than thirty-seconds so I won’t bore you with the details, but our conversation was intense as much as it was short. It could mean nothing, but I don’t know. In the world of Vanguard and fucking folklore, anything could mean something.”
He snickers at his own words, clearing his throat and taking another shot.
“I asked him about their masks, and if it was true that they mark the targets they return for. He said it was true, but only those with their mark. I didn’t know what the fuck that mark was at that time, but I think I said something like seems like a good way to get caught, as if it was some kind of evidence. In hindsight, I see the ridiculousness of that now, but I was only maybe thirteen, fourteen at the time, and he would have been somewhere around the same age and already had built this fucking—” his hands fly around his face. “Whatever the fuck they are.”
I stretch my neck, the conversation making me itchy.
Beast continues. “I asked him how he chose the rest of the Five, and he mentioned something. About them receiving a different mark.” He pauses, and I shift closer. “His agent numbers. He said it was a form of not ownership, but like a compadre, and that if I ever saw it, that it wouldn’t mean he wanted me, or the person wearing it, but that we were on the same team.”
I try to unscramble his words in my head. “So he took Millie for you?”
Beast shakes his head, eyes flying around the room before resting back on me. “No, he gave Melissa back for me. Whatever he has planned for Millie is out of our control, but the fact that she was kept alive someplace and not killed, only means one thing.” I hold my breath because he’s about to say the thing I’d been thinking. “She’s being delivered to Vanguard.”
Thirty-Nine
Hella
“Ihate you right now.”
Her words should hurt more than they do, but I know she’s in pain. She’s angry and feels like we’re not moving fast enough, being stressed enough, and fuck, yeah, okay, so maybe if it was Melissa in Millie’s position I would fight harder, but after what Beast just laid out for us, I need to make Melissa see reason in a world that isn’t coloured in black and white. It’s painted in colours that don’t fucking exist. With uncertainty and violence that force you to make decisions that you otherwise probably wouldn’t. See reason in scenarios that come straight out of a fucking slasher film.
My chest tightens. “Yeah, fuck, I know.” I nudge my head over my shoulder, dismissing her army of terrifying women. They all move sluggishly past me, Phoebe giving me a pointed death glare. For someone raised in the arms of this MC, with her old man being a founding member along with Beast’s, she sure knows how to throw a fucking tantrum.
As soon as the door closes, I breathe out a sigh and move closer to where she sits, curled on the single bed that’s seen more ass than my bike.
“You can hate me, baby. That’s fine, but I need you to hear me out.”
Her eyes snap to mine as she crawls further up the bed and away from me. “You're all asking me to give up on her.”
My jaw locks. Annoyance grazes my thoughts because what if it was as simple as that? How is that too much to ask. “If this was about that, Melissa, I wouldn’t be asking you to give up on your sister. I’d be asking you to fucking live for your daughter.”