Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
Entering the gate code on the screen we added to the car, it opens.
I’m free, under the summer night’s sky, in forty-five seconds flat.
The car wraps around the winding roads effortlessly, floating along the lanes with ease, and I crack the windows, the scent of pine mixed with a smoky floral note filling the air. And something savory. Someone’s cooking and it smells delicious, but just as soon as the aroma fills the cab, it’s gone, the speed I’m going carrying me long past it. I keep driving, curving along the coastline you can’t see this time of night.
Before I know where I’m going, an hour has passed and I’m slamming on my brakes, staring across the empty lot leading up to a small brick building in the middle of nowhere, my eyes slicing to the curb at the edge of the hillside.
My brows pull together as I put the car in park, but I don’t climb out.
I sit back and wonder why the hell I drove here.
That night, when I stumbled upon the half man, half boy in a leather jacket and faded black jeans, was the first time I had ever been here, and I don’t even know how I found it then.
Hell, I don’t even know how I found it now.
Last time I had to take a few wrong turns on my way back to figure out where I was.
Okay, so maybe Sai did tell my dad. Did I venture into a point of pizzo where the man behind the counter pays the Mafia for his protection, meaning there’s trouble to be found here?
Is he paying my dad?
The Fikiles?
That’s a sobering thought and my hand instinctively dips into the space at the edge of the seat, my fingertips brushing over the small dagger stored there. If I reach beneath the seat, there’s a gun and, in the glove box, a knife. Beneath the custom floorboard in back is a shotgun, and in the event silence is necessary … a bow and arrow are tucked beside it. All are safeguards Sia and my father demanded when I argued my case for having my own vehicles. If it were up to them, I would be kept locked tightly behind the bulletproof black glass of a town car forever and always, or preferably, in Greyson Manor, unless I absolutely “had” to come out.
I pretended to argue against the stash of weapons, so they would feel they were winning something, but I’m no dunce. I’m the best leverage a man could have over my father: my sister as well, foolish or not.
My father would rage for less, so dare to touch his daughters without our—maybe even without his—permission? That’s a surefire ticket six feet under.
Though I doubt I’ll have any need for a weapon tonight. These coordinates are no one’s territory—I checked the minute I got home that night.
So how is it Bastian was able to … address his problem without the local authorities being called? A small business owner with no ties or knowledge of the organized crime families circling this town and the ones connected to it would panic, would he not? Lock his doors, call for help?
So why didn’t he?
Does he fear the wannabe bad boy in the rusty old Cutlass?
If so, what’s there to fear?
So, he’s stealthy and can make his way into places he doesn’t belong. All rats do. That’s why exterminators exist; ours just happen to have silencers at the end of a six-inch barrel. I bet he couldn’t even buy a gun if he wanted. One, they’re expensive. Two, he probably has a record, scrappers like him always do.
Then again, he wasn’t caught sneaking around The Enterprise, though he could have passed for … no. He wouldn’t pass for anyone I can think of. Perhaps a distant cousin of the Vails from Saint Charles. Their grandson, who started at Greyson Elite last fall, adds more ink by the month.
Tattoos aren’t frowned upon in our world, per se. In fact, many crime families bare their family crests on their body somewhere, the same those of us with guardians do ours, but if you’re not a man everyone should know and remember, you’re a man who should blend in if needed. The last thing you want is for someone to see you coming, and a body covered in art is sure to turn heads.
Bastian didn’t allow me to turn mine when he teased me with the toy along his tip.
On that thought, I recline my seat a few inches and pull out my phone, typing the basics of what I know was there.
Dick piercing.
I hit search, my brows jumping and caving in the next second when the first set of images pop up.
There are a few with bunches of sagging skin stretched between hoop-like rings, two and three in a straight line down the shaft and others with a hook straight through the hole.