Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
I’m the last guy on the planet who should be a dad. My life is chaos. My sins written dark and deep.
So, imagine my surprise when my doorbell rings and I open it to find the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen standing on the other side.
And she’s holding the hand of a little girl who looks just like me.
Emery tells me her sister, the child’s mother, is dead.
I feel like dirt since she’s a woman I can hardly remember, and it’s no wonder Emery doesn’t trust that I’m worthy of caring for her niece.
But I can’t turn my back, and I insist on raising Maci.
So, we strike a deal—she’ll stay with me for one month to ensure the little girl is safe.
Emery tries to hate me for who I am, but neither of us can resist the attraction that blazes between us.
One brush of her hand, and she has me on my knees.
One kiss, and I’m falling fast.
Soon, we find ourselves tangled in my sheets.
But when it’s discovered her sister’s death wasn’t accidental, the secret life I’ve been living collides with the past Emery has tried to keep hidden.
And when the fiends come back to finish the job they started, I’m in a race against time to save the two people who I’ve come to love most
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
KANE
At close to midnight, Theo and I sat at one of the high-backed wooden booths at Twisted Moon Tavern.
A country song droned from the jukebox, and the dim lights hanging overhead cast lapping shadows over the hazy, dingy space.
Place was always fuckin’ quiet, which was why I preferred it whenever I wanted to have an actual conversation with my crew outside of our normal meeting place.
A conversation that had been coming for a long damned time.
Theo glanced around, making sure no one was in earshot as he leaned forward across the table. “You think we need to step in and intervene? Shake things up?”
Dude always looked like a coiled viper waiting to strike.
Black hair and even darker eyes. Arms and hands covered in tats. Tats that rolled up from the neckline of his black tee and fully wrapped around his throat.
In his case, appearances were not deceiving. The dude was fuckin’ deadly, just like the rest of us.
Taking a sip from my scotch, I warred with what to say, then I edged forward, my hand still wrapped around my tumbler as I rested it on the worn table.
“My gut tells me this extraction is going to be messy. I know River is still all in, but he’s got a family he needs to think about. We can’t sit here and pretend like the entire dynamic of our crew hasn’t shifted.”
River getting with Charleigh, and now Otto and Raven coming together.
The whole reason the rule had been made that we couldn’t get attached in the first place was because this shit was dangerous.
Fucking peril coming at us from every direction.
It wasn’t like I resented my brothers for going against one of our creeds.
It was just time we admitted it changed things. That the pact we’d made all those years ago no longer stood.
Rocking back in the booth, Theo canted his head to the side. “So what? You think it’s time to take a step back?”
My attention darted to the tattoo on the back of my left hand. It was the one that had two Ss sitting on top of each other. A dagger ran through them, top to bottom, and an eye was stamped in the middle.
It was identical to the one every member of Sovereign Sanctum had in the same spot, though mine had a wilting rose on top.
My chest clutched at the sight of it, at the mark I’d made of my greatest failure, and I squeezed that hand into a fist as I lifted my attention back to Theo. “Not a fuckin’ chance. Just think it’s time we switched things up. Stand in where we haven’t before.”
Each of us had our roles within our secret society. River’s was the one that normally put him in the line of fire. Dragged him down into the darkest pits of depravity.
But it wasn’t like every single one of us didn’t have blood on our hands.
Tainted in it from the beginning, even though the rest of my crew didn’t have a clue about my extracurricular activities. The lengths I went. The kind of shit I would never ask them to get involved in.
Something I had full intention of enacting next week considering some info I’d picked up about some scum working out of San Diego.
Awareness of what I was suggesting dawned on the blunt edges of Theo’s face. “You want to go instead.”
He didn’t even phrase it a question.
“Haven’t gotten dirty in a while.”
Okay, that was a blatant lie, but some things were better left in the dark.
“Seems only fair that I go up to bat.” I tacked a smirk onto it.
Theo chuckled a rough sound. “Oh, brother, think you’re plenty dirty.”
He jutted his chin out toward the murky film of Twisted Moon Tavern.
My latest acquisition.
Other than this one, I owned two other bars in this small town of Moonlit Ridge, plus the club dubbed in my namesake.
All of them were nothing but a cover.
Another avenue for running Sanctum’s money through.
It wasn’t like this dive was actually going to have any sort of profitability.
I let my gaze slide out to take in the place.
A handful of old guys were at the bar, drowning their miseries, basically permanent fixtures.
A younger group of four guys were standing around at the end of it. They were barely old enough to be in this bar and were nearing the point that they needed to be cut off.
Getting rowdy and obnoxious. Starting to fumble around as their voices grew in time.
Two booths on the opposite side of Theo and I were taken, one by two women who’d been there chatting for the last hour, and another with two middle-aged couples.
But it was the one woman sitting by herself at a high-topped round table near the front who snagged my attention.
She’d been there since I’d gotten here. Her back had remained turned toward me the entire time. An elbow on the table with her head downturned and concealed as she nursed the same drink she’d been sipping all night.