Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 118333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
“There was always a sadness in Tanner.” Lilah, Ky’s wife said. She hadn’t said much to me until now. Her hands lay on her round stomach. “I met him when I was rescued from the cult we used to belong to.” She gestured to her sisters and Saffie. “It was Tanner who got Ky the information to help me. He betrayed his own people, risked his life, to save mine.” My heart expanded in my chest. I knew he was a good man, but hearing how he’d helped Lilah made me so full of love for him I could barely contain it. “He risked his life to help me . . . for you, Adelita. It was his entry fee into this club. To being in the Hangmen. A club that could help him finally get to you.”
“I see that now,” I whispered, barely able to talk.
“The guy’s different now, since you’ve been here,” Beauty said. “He was with us a lot. Tank’s best friend and all. Yet since you’ve been back in his life, he’s alive. I’m not sure I ever saw his eyes show life until I watched him looking at you.”
“Thank you.” I quickly wiped away a tear that fell. “He’s had a hard life. People don’t think or know that. They see where he came from, what he used to do—the bad and despicable things. But they don’t see why he did that or how he was groomed into it from a child and forced into that way of life. People just see anger and those awful Nazi tattoos. They hear his name and write him off as evil and unworthy of love. But he’s not. He’s worth all the stars in the sky.”
“He is worth you.” I lifted my lowered head to see Maddie looking at me. The same Maddie who had walked into the bar hand in hand with Flame. A man I could not read at all. Maddie lifted her chin, almost in defiance. “He is down, but not broken. And it is you—only you—who can lift him. Raise him to the level of worth he should understand he must reside in. It is you, Adelita. You are the one for Tanner, and he is the one for you. You are one another’s light in the dark.”
I didn’t know what to say to that . . . to those words. The words that directly spoke to my soul.
“Do you think your father will come for the club?” Letti, Beauty’s best friend, asked. Her body was tense and her voice was serious.
I felt the tension rise. “Yes,” I replied honestly. “If my father knows I am here. If it was confirmed the Hangmen had taken me, he would come.” I glanced at Saffie and felt a wave of gutting anger settle in my stomach. “But I will not let him hurt anyone.” I was determined and fueled by that promise. “With everything I am, I will not let him destroy any of you to get to me.” Saffie’s shoulders relaxed, and she gave me a proud kind of smile. It only made me more determined. I didn’t know how I would keep him away, but I would.
Somehow.
“Oh shit, ladies, I forgot to tell you,” Beauty said, laughing. “This prick came into the store the other day—”
A loud crash came from the direction of the bar and a deafening roar ripped from someone’s throat. The temperature in the room plummeted when voices started to rise and the muffled sounds of crashing tables and chairs traveled down the hall.
“No!” someone screamed. “FUCKING NO!”
“Flame!” Maddie whispered, her face going ashen. In seconds she was on her feet and running out of the room.
Beauty got up and turned to Letti. “Watch Mae and the ladies.” My heart started hammering when the cacophony of distressed shouts rose to a crescendo. Beauty was obviously worried that someone—an enemy—had gotten in. I knew I should have stayed with Letti. But all I could think of was Tanner. Tanner in the bar.
I jumped up too.
“Adelita!” Phebe’s voice called my name, but the coil that weighed so heavily on my chest, the one that had been pulling tighter and tighter with every hour, made my feet lurch into action and run down the hall toward the bar. I was so intent on getting to Tanner, I wouldn’t have noticed the trail of blood on the floor had my foot not slipped in the wetness. My pulse was a drum as it thundered in my neck.
I followed the trail of blood through the bar’s door, to a man who was lying on the floor. His arms and legs had been slashed with knives. He was bleeding everywhere. The man who had drugged me, the man with black-and-white hair was examining him. But when he looked up at Styx, he shook his head. My heart fell as I understood what he was saying—the man was dying.