Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Only then did I rip the gun out of her hand and tuck it into my own back waistband.
Without her weapon, she stumbled backward, eyes round, looking more than a little ashen.
“Alright, baby, you gonna tell me why you wanna kill me?”
I should have anticipated it. Really, I should have. And made moves to make it impossible.
But I didn’t.
One second, she was standing in front of me looking ready to pass out.
The next, she was turning and hauling ass out of the clubhouse.
I followed her to the door, but she was already sprinting toward the gates. She probably parked her car somewhere down the street.
Sure, Navesink Bank was a hotbed of criminal activity. But someone would take issue with me chasing a woman down the street, call the police, create a whole problem for me.
So I stayed right there in the doorway, watching as a set of lights flashed on somewhere down the road, then listened to the screech of tires as she peeled off.
Things had just started to get a little boring around here.
Leave it to a woman to shake shit up and make it interesting again…
CHAPTER TWO
Carmen
“Okay. Alright. You’re okay. Everything’s gonna be alright.”
There was no rationalizing with my panic, though, as my gaze frantically moved from the rearview to the side mirrors, sure I was going to see a motorcycle come flying out of nowhere to chase me down. Or gun me down.
But I pulled away from the curb, white-knuckling the steering wheel, made it down one side street, then the next, with no headlights following me.
I reached for the button to crank up the air conditioning. My whole body was drenched in sweat.
I’d like to claim it was just from the run for my life, but it started before that. Before the guy grabbed me like it was nothing, then pulled me against him. Before I even raised that gun and took aim.
It started all the way back to the second I slipped into my ‘about to commit a crime’ outfit back at home and had been soaking through my clothes ever since.
Because, well, I wasn’t a criminal.
I certainly wasn’t a killer.
But, God, some people just didn’t deserve to keep walking around this world after what they’d done.
Still, I clearly hadn’t been ready.
I knew it when I walked up to the open clubhouse gates. Every inch of my body had been shaking like a leaf, so bad that my back molars were sore from knocking together.
I should have turned around, regrouped, come back when I wasn’t so terrified.
As if that day could ever happen.
That was what pushed me through. I was never going to be ready. Not to put a bullet in a stranger. That just wasn’t who I was.
And yet… that was exactly what I’d been meticulously plotting to do for months. Almost a year at this point. Ever since I learned that…
“Stop,” I told myself, shaking the thoughts loose.
Those weren’t going to help.
Besides, I had more pressing things to think about now.
Like how the guy had now seen my face.
I’d opted out of wearing a mask in case anyone was around. Surely, a bunch of bikers would have had a red flag go up if they saw someone all decked out in black with a mask on approaching their home.
I figured if all went to plan, he wouldn’t be, you know, alive to point me out in a lineup. Or, more likely, hunt me down and murder me himself.
A dying animal sound escaped me as I pulled up to a red light and pressed my forehead to the steering wheel.
How, how had things gone so sideways so quickly?
I’d been plotting it out in my head for months. I had a whole detailed plan. I was going to walk in there, find him, tell him who it was for, then shoot him. That’s it. Simple.
Except there was nothing simple about taking a life.
I guess that was kind of the whole point, wasn’t it?
It shouldn’t be easy.
It shouldn’t be something you could just shrug and walk away from. Then move on with your life like it never happened.
I thought that maybe my motivation would be enough to, I don’t know, make it all feel righteous and justified.
But I’d been sick to my stomach before I even walked in those doors.
When I’d practically just run into the right guy, I’d been thrown even more.
Not just because he looked different than I’d anticipated.
I guess I’d expected him to look like the monster he was: shifty-eyed, ugly, a perpetual sneer.
But this Rune guy was unexpectedly, well, hot. There was no other word for it. He was model-level gorgeous. The man could have been gracing billboards and high fashion ads instead of being a terrible human being.
He was tall and fit—not overly bulky, but had a nice, broad chest, corded arms, and those strong forearms that a woman could drool over. He had golden-kissed skin, a chiseled jaw, gooey dark eyes, and from what I could tell from the smile that had been forming at first, amazing dimples.