Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78024 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78024 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
“Hellfire, meet Quinn. She and Priest go way back.”
Hellfire hops down from the altar and strides over. His dark eyes flick over me, assessing. “The actress.”
Sinner nods. “Yup.”
“Interesting. Do you know who I am?” He says it like it means more than just ‘have we met’.
I shake my head.
“I’m the president of The Outlaw Sons. These boys? They’re mine. This place? Mine.”
The hairs stand up on the back of my arms. My initial impression of this place as a kingdom seems to be true, and this is the man on the throne. I step closer to Sinner who angles himself so he’s slightly between me and Hellfire.
Hellfire huffs, like an amused dragon. “Relax, I’m not going to hurt your little kitten. I just want us to be clear. This club and the lives of the men inside are my responsibility. We aren’t toys for the media. If you’re looking for something to spice up your image, you’re in over your fucking head, girl.”
“That’s not what this is.” Sinner’s head is up, his back straight as an arrow.
“No? Good.” And with that, Hellfire flicks a lazy salute and walks away like he didn’t just imply that I’m the one that’s a danger to Priest and the others.
“Oh! Prez? I might’ve shot a guy about twenty minutes ago.”
Hellfire stops and I can see him take a breath before turning back around. “Might?”
“Well, I definitely shot him. I’m just not sure how he’s doing right this moment.”
“Is it going to be a problem?”
Sinner shrugs. “We didn’t exactly stop to talk about it. He was trying to kidnap Quinn at the time.”
“Hold up, who the fuck was trying to kidnap you?” Priest walks in from the back of the church, with Colt right behind him.
“All of you. My office. Now,” Hellfire snaps. “Grimm, I’ll deal with you later.” He turns and walks towards the back of the church, confident that we’ll follow.
It turns out that Hellfire’s office is in the room where the priests used to get ready. There are still floor to ceiling wooden cabinets where their robes used to hang. He sits at a solid wood desk at the back, littered with coffee cups and a couple of beer bottles.
There aren’t enough chairs for all of us. Colt pulls up a seat for me, and he leans against the wall with Priest, while me and Sinner sit across from Hellfire.
“Okay, start at the beginning.”
Right. “I had a thing today. Not official-official, but a photo date or whatever you want to call it with one of the other actresses from the show. We were just supposed to walk along the river together so the paparazzi could get some photos.” I glance up at Sinner. “Sinner and Colt dropped some stuff off at my place, so Sinner offered to drive me over on his bike since he was already there.”
Hellfire’s dark eyes narrow, taking in my words and hopefully making sense of them. I kind of started in the middle. “But you hadn’t arranged that ahead of time?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t have a car right now so I normally just order a ride or my mother drives me when I need to get somewhere.”
“Everything seemed fine? I guess? Until I started getting messages.”
“What the fuck? What messages?” Priest pushes off the wall like he’s getting ready to punch those messages until they stop bothering me. “You didn’t say anything about that.”
“Sorry, I was a little busy getting kidnapped.” I pull out my phone and bring up the call log. It’s all right there, the blocked number, the strange photo, and then the threat. Cooperate and nobody gets hurt. “I showed Erika the photo. We thought it was strange that the photographers only sent it to me, and that the quality wasn’t that great, but we were there to get our photos taken, you know? The van pulled up right after the last message. There wasn’t time to get out of the way before the men grabbed me.”
“And you were there doing what exactly? Jerking off?” Priest scowls at Sinner.
“Oh fuck off. I knew there were going to be eyes on the girls so I couldn’t exactly hold her hand, could I? They were in motherfucking Brentport for fuck’s sake. I was more worried about someone calling the cops because I was stinking up the place than Quinn being in danger.” Sinner glares at Priest until Priest sighs and nods. “I was just hanging out on the grass near the parking lot waiting for her to finish up. I had no clue anything was happening until people started rushing by, talking about a car driving onto the path. I got there in time to see a couple guys in ski-masks shoving Quinn into the back of a van. It was fucked up, man.”