Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
This ginger cat is the closest thing to an exception that I’ll ever make. I reach down and grace his regal ass with a pat and he bonks my leg with his head a few times before he starts purring.
I thought cats were supposed to have good instincts about people. But Whiskey apparently doesn’t. He doesn’t know that I’m dead inside. That I’m no good. Typical narcissist, he demands attention anyway.
So maybe cats are like me. They don’t really care about your issues. They just want what they want and that’s it.
I give him one last pat and then I dart down the darkened stairwell of the building I’ve called home since I came to this city. It’s nothing special to look at, and my mother would clutch her pearls if she saw it. But it’s home to me. Familiar ground.
A far cry from everything I once knew.
I hit the pavement and breathe in the exhaust with a happy sigh. This is Boston. Nama-fucking-ste. Stretches commence in my usual spot, against the building.
Then I run.
It’s hard. It’s fast. And it’s brutal. The punishment does not stop until I can physically go on no longer. It’ll be hell walking in heels tonight. But I’ll manage. I always do.
I’m limping when I get back to my apartment, and Whiskey is waiting for me at my door. I can’t be bothered to shoo him off today. So, I let him wander in while I make my usual safety checks.
In this life, you never know who might be following you home. I almost always expect it to be one of my clients. But I never saw the butcher coming.
History repeated itself that day.
And even though I had my knife- the one I never, ever take off- he managed to surprise me. And overpower me.
And drag me back to hell.
It was a wake-up call if I ever had one. All my years on the streets had really taught me very little. Because somehow, I would always end up falling prey to men like that.
Whatever notion I’d ever entertained about leaving this life behind withered in the aftermath of that day. The deadness returned. And so did the rage.
The universe had a funny way of reminding me why I do what I do.
For two long months, I was fucking up some random man every night. Making him pay for the sins of everyone else before him.
It didn’t matter to me.
The only thing that mattered was the game. The retribution.
And everything has come full circle again as I sit here in my darkened apartment, with only Whiskey to keep me company while I nuke a TV dinner. My fingers move over the faces in my scrapbook, and sometimes, that notion reappears. That I could let it go.
It sickens me, how weak those thoughts are.
Did the butcher not teach me anything? Did Alexander and his friends not teach me anything?
This can’t go on forever. This perpetual state of purgatory. There’s only so long I can toy with them before they figure it out.
More than anything, I just want them gone. But something is holding me back. I know once I cross that line, there’s no return.
And I also know that I can’t do it alone.
That’s where my plan gets a little sketchy. There’s a key player I need on my team, and it means I will need to drag him to hell with me.
Rory Brodrick. AKA the Saint.
He’s a fighter. A hustler. And a mobster.
He kidnapped me. And then tried to comfort me in a moment of weakness. He saw my panic when he held me against the wall. And somehow, he got it into his head that he was going to save me.
I hated him for his sweet lies.
But I hated him even more for fucking up Teddy’s confession.
He doesn’t know that I’ve been keeping score of his transgressions. That he lights the fuse to my rage every time I see his face.
Acting like he wants to date me. Acting like he gives a fuck about me. He’s worse than all the rest of them lumped together, because he’s almost convincing.
He has no idea who he’s messing with.
He thinks he still has a say in how we play this game.
But Rory’s going to find out, I’m the one who invented the rules.
Four
Rory
“What a cunt of a day.”
I wipe the blood from my piece and stuff it back into the holster.
“Aye,” Ronan agrees from beside me. “It is.”
There’s a whole load of dead bodies in front of us. Another low-level gang tried to hit one of our warehouses.
They never learn.
And it never gets any easier, wiping the blood from my hands.
I don’t think it does for any of us.
Except for Ronan, probably. The lad is fucked in the head, but he’s as decent a bloke as they come.
Conor walks up and chucks a stray shoe onto the heap before turning to wait for his instructions.