Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 100791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
I didn’t try to hide it because hidden things are automatically suspicious, but my attempt at reverse psychology didn’t work. He politely asked me to hand it over, and then I had to watch as he popped the top and got an eyeful of the tracker.
He wasn’t even angry—as long as you didn’t consider calmly getting up, opening the door, and shooting Madison James in the face as angry.
Even my jaw dropped and eyes bulged when her scream abruptly ended with her body hitting the ground. Abraham didn’t yell. He didn’t shout. He didn’t give her a chance to explain. And he didn’t lose his bland, pleasant smile.
He just killed her.
So this is the man Vito was so terrified of, he stabbed himself in the neck rather than face his wrath.
Looking at that smiling psychopath right then... I understood Vito’s final actions completely.
“Quickly, get this to the theater,” he ordered his guard. “You know what to do.”
The man stepped over Madison’s body and took off without a word.
“You killed her,” I said, voice drained of emotion. “Why? It wasn’t her fault.”
“I must disagree with you on that point, Miss Genevieve.” Abraham flicked an imaginary speck of dust off his lapel. “She brought you here even though she wasn’t given instructions to do so, and she was silly enough not to realize here was exactly where you and your tracker wanted to be.
“A foolish mistake, and I don’t abide mistakes in my Brotherhood.”
I hummed, reclining in my seat. I wasn’t afraid of him and I wasn’t going to pretend I was just to stroke his sociopathic ego. “Since you don’t want me here, I guess that means the next bullet is for me.”
“For you?” His forehead crumpled, giving the perfect resemblance of a human emotion. “Of course not. You are my guest—uninvited or not—and I wouldn’t dream of treating you so brutishly.” Abraham leveled the gun between my eyes, his own glinting with undisguised malice. “That is, of course, as long as you quickly and quietly walk out that door and into the waiting van without any trouble. Any attempt to scream or signal someone, and I shoot you and them. Understood?”
I rolled my eyes. Again with the pointless comprehension tests? I understood just fine when a psycho’s pointing a gun at my head.
Fast-forward an hour, maybe even two hours later, I was rattling around in a darkened van with a cloth sack over my head. I was trying to chart our route, but if Abraham was smart, he’d be driving around in circles to disorient me.
And I had no trouble believing he was smart.
Eventually, the van slowed and then rumbled to a stop. The next thing I knew, the back doors flew open. Abraham and two men in suits stood on a red-dirt path with a backdrop of trees spreading out behind them.
We were outside the city, that wasn’t in question, but where exactly? There were hundreds of mansions and cabins nestled in the forest surrounding Cinco City. I knew because Bane dragged me around to check out half of them when he was scoping out the perfect hermit’s retreat.
“Step out, please, Miss Genevieve.” Amazing that Abraham was still playing the wholesome gentleman act while his two goons had guns trained on me. “Walk with me.”
I eyed him, and only him. The goons didn’t worry me. They were basically oversized action figures. They’d only move by his power.
Abraham lifted his chin and gazed right back at me, his vision never wavering—his dark, fathomless pools giving nothing away.
People who just met me assumed I was loud, brash, and impulsive. I struck first and considered the consequences later. But someone like that didn’t become the ruler of the second-most dangerous borough of Cinco, and then lived to tell about it.
I had to be hard, and I had to be violent, but I also had to be smart. I needed to assess every situation and have an exit strategy—or five—for when it inevitably went wrong.
I was assessing then. Calculating my odds of getting home with no weapons, no backup, no Cardinals, miles from home, and in the presence of a trigger-happy maniac bearing a psychotic grudge against my family, even though we didn’t fucking know this prick.
Exit Strategy: Still Pending
Meeting his dead eyes, I beamed wide. “I’d love to walk with you, and after we’re finished, do you think we could take a stroll over to my Cardinals? I’d love to see how they’re doing.”
“Of course,” he replied, beaming right back. “They’re eager to see you too, but, if I may, I must gently correct you. They’re not your Cardinals because your illegal and oppressive little biker gang is hereby disbanded.”
“It’s a biker gang, not a little biker gang,” I corrected right back, still smiling like a loon. “I don’t know what it is with men, always having to call what a woman does... little.”