Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Savannah Ashby has been photographed 70,000 times—-every smile, every outfit, every moment of her perfect ranch heiress life has been documented on social media by her dead mother's cameras.
Legion Kane came out of Whitefall Prison with nothin’ but an expired driver‘s license, $27 in his wallet, and a name that means biblical demon possession.
She wears another man's three-carat diamond.
He wears a fresh MC brand burned into his chest.
They’ve been meeting in secret at an abandoned silo since they were kids.
Now her family wants him dead, his MC wants him loyal, and the only thing that matters is what happens when she meets him at midnight, whisperin’ his name like a prayer.
Montana badlands.
Outlaw bikers.
Ranch royalty.
War is coming.
DUST AND FLOWERS
Their secret just became everyone's problem.
Please This is the first book in an ongoing serial . Every novella ends on a cliff. Novellas will release weekly through book five
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
Hell isn’t a place you go, it’s a place you carry back.
That’s my poetic opinion after serving three years in prison for something I didn’t do.
Willingly, I might add. Not the shit I didn’t do, but the shit I went in for.
But if you want my professional opinion on hell—and at this point in my life, I feel like I’m qualified to have a professional opinion—Hell is just… well, everything around you.
This world. These people. All the rules, all the traps, the entire fuckin’ game is rigged.
That’s hell.
It’s everywhere.
But… occasionally.
Every once in a while.
There is a day like today that makes Hell not so hot.
The gates of Whitefall Prison open in front of me. Loud, and clanging as radio chatter from the guards fills the gap between this world and that one. The June morning spreads out before me in a way I’ve never noticed before. Bright, hot, and… oddly, empty.
One of the guards starts yappin’ at me to fucking get on with it and starts the mechanism to close the gates back up as he makes pointless, hollow threats. So when I do get on with it, I pass through just before the heavy steel gates slam closed.
It’s a lot of pointless drama.
Another guard heckles me from the tower when I pause, fumbling through the yellow envelope that contains pretty much everything I own at the moment—a twenty-seven-dollar cash-out from my prison account and my driver’s license, two years expired—and remove a pack of Reds.
Demon this, the hecklin’ guard says. Demon that. Demon… Demon… Demon.
Cause that’s me.
Legion Kane.
We are many.
I take out a smoke, light it up using the Bic that also did time with me, suck in my freedom, and slowly distance myself from the three years of time I did, but didn’t have to.
Trying to remember to appreciate it.
Inhale. A ritual to keep me standing.
Exhale. The smoke drifts up like a prayer.
I take a few steps away from the prison, no urge to look back, and just scan the world before me as I continue smoking.
It’s a whole bunch of nothin’. I’m talking big sky over vast badlands and that’s about it.
But it shouldn’t be this way.
This parking lot should not be empty.
But I guess it checks out, because I’m early.
One day early.
What could that possibly mean? What government facility actually makes mistakes in your favor? It doesn’t happen.
There should be bikes here. All lined up.
Should be brothers with cuts, and grins, and the promise of whiskey.
Badlands owes me that much.
Where the fuck is everyone?
As if on cue, as if this whole fucking thing is a movie, as if I was cast in the leading role of a story no one bothered to write an ending for—the wind shifts, and suddenly, in the distance, appears a white Ford F-350. Dust blowin’ up behind it, catching sunlight in ways that make it look like somethin’ holy.
I squint my eyes, take a drag on the smoke, and watch as it screams into the parking lot like judgment day arriving early.
One day early.
The Ashby Ranch logo gleams on the door panel—a stylized "A" with barbed wire wrapped around it. In some places, money whispers. In Eastern Montana, money announces itself with chrome trim and custom wheels.
Cash Ashby skids the truck to a stop twenty feet away. The engine idles like it’s alive. Baring its teeth, waitin’ to bite. He kills it with a press of a button and the silence that follows feels deliberate, like a statement.
When the driver's door swings open, his boots hit gravel with a crunch that carries weight. And it’s not just a sound—it’s a fuckin’ proclamation. The kind that comes with land deeds, water rights, and bank accounts that never run dry.
Cash steps out, all six-four of him the product of pure Montana breeding just like the cattle he runs. His Stetson catches the morning June sun, brim pulled low, but not so low I can't see his eyes sizing me up.
What’s ol’ Legion been up to, that look says. How much has he changed. How far can I push him.
"Well goddamn, Kane. Three years looks good on you." His mouth lifts up at one corner—that half-smile that's gotten him out of bar fights and into bedroom windows across three counties. "Prison food must be better than they say."
My face plays it cool. Not because it can’t smile, it just kinda forgot how.
"Caaaaaash." I drag the word out slow, lettin’ my drawl thicken. "Thought the welcoming committee would have patches, not polo shirts."
Cash leans against his truck door, crossing one ostrich-leather boot over the other. Casual as a shiv between the ribs.
"So how was it really?" he asks, like he cares. "Life inside treating Legion Kane to all the amenities?"
I give him what he wants to hear. What men like Cash always want—stories that make them feel better about never having to find out for themselves.