Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Because that’s exactly what she was.
A temptress.
Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare think about it….
With some effort, the pawns on my mental chessboard scraped back into place, and I left the penthouse with Abel. We rode the elevator down in silence.
“We might need to refocus our efforts outside the city,” I said as we drove away from Glainne. “Have we looked far enough into Hunter’s past to figure out where she might be holed up?” Or who she might be hiding with. I let that dangerous thought pass as swiftly as it arrived. I wasn’t foolish or arrogant enough to believe that I could somehow accomplish what no man has been able to successfully pull off in the history of time.
One was enough.
One was more than enough.
“Everything before she turned eighteen is sealed,” Abel told me. “We can get the information, but it will take time and money. A lot of it.”
“Do what you need to,” I responded with a sigh. Kellan was the one who handled this shit for me, but he was currently busy tracking down Hunter. The same as me.
Abel never complained, though, because he knew there were so few people I could trust, especially now with a regime change on the horizon—even my allies within and outside of the Fola could turn for not much more than the promise of a minor promotion.
Before Abel could get to work on it, he got a call on his phone.
“Whoa, say that shit again?” Abel screamed moments later. It startled Paul, who swerved a little but quickly regained control of the Denali with a mumbled apology. “Well, handle it! Nobody moves until we get there. Whoever isn’t accounted for fucking dies.” Hanging up, he punched the ceiling before turning in his seat to meet my gaze.
“What is it?”
“Someone just raided one of our caches.”
I was already pulling out my phone to start ordering executions. “ATF?”
“No. They said whoever did it was alone. This person took out fifteen of our men, made off with some weapons, and left a message.”
“Let me guess,” I stated coldly. “For Michael Black.” That trail was also getting colder by the day, but mysteriously, the raids on our flesh dens had also stopped. Maybe they’d chosen to refocus their attention.
“No.” Abel winced. “The message was for you.”
Fury wrestled with obsession now that I was forced to choose between finding out who raided my warehouse and chasing down Hunter.
I knew what I wanted to do, but I was heir to the Fola. It was never about what I wanted.
Coby was the first slice of heaven I’d ever taken for myself, and I was determined to keep him no matter how many people I had to kill.
“Boss?” Paul questioned as he waited at the light that had already turned green. My driver’s hand hovered uncertainly above the turn signal that would take us to the apartment of a gifted hacker whom Hunter apparently met in juvie a long time ago. Horns behind us honked furiously as Paul waited for me to make a decision. Abel was noticeably quiet since he likely already knew my dilemma.
There was no reason to believe that Hunter still had contact with Destiny Arehart, but I wasn’t about to leave any stones unturned. I could say my dedication to finding her was solely for Coby’s sake, but why lie to myself? For now, my curiosity about Hunter Parrish was just that. A curiosity. She was a puzzle I couldn’t resist solving, and the hold she had on Coby would need to be severed sooner or later. Coby’s little speech about Hunter made that very clear to me.
I wasn’t about to share my wife’s heart with anyone.
“It’s probably just another dead end,” I whispered to myself.
“What’s that, boss?” Paul asked.
“The warehouse,” I answered tightly. “Take me to the warehouse.” It was where my gut was steering me, and it had never led me wrong before.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of a message written in blood with bodies strewn all around me. Abel was busy cross-checking the inventory to see exactly what was taken. There weren’t any cameras because the risk outweighed the reward. Whoever did this was quick and efficient. They’d use the Fola’s own hubris against us. In truth, the culprit did me a favor by taking out most of the crew because letting this happen in the first place had earned them a bullet.
One.
One person was all it took.
One reckless girl hellbent on reclaiming something that was never hers.
I studied the three words written on the wall and grinned.
The threat behind it was just as clear as the angry letters on the wall: Give my wife back, or the next person’s blood on the wall would be mine. Swiping my finger through the pool of blood under my feet, I wrote my response on the wall.