Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
That’s just the extra she pays me for working in nothing but my trunks. She also gives me a payslip every two weeks.
“Have fun in Tahoe,” I grunt, praying it won’t lead to more boring-ass small talk. Rich people just love small talk. For them, time’s not a luxury.
“Thanks,” she says, stretching her long limbs. She’s got the legs of an eighteen-year-old sorority girl attached to a body of a forty-six-year-old housewife who fights nature with plastic surgery and bullshit green shakes.
“Ever been to Tahoe, Nate? It’s quite spectacular. A lot to see and experience.”
Here comes brainless blather. I crack my neck and squint, not sure why she’s asking a question with such an obvious answer. Where does a Tahoe vacation fit into my reality? Next she’ll ask me if I have a place in Aspen.
“We can go together sometime if you’d like. Stan will be spending the summer in New York. His company is opening an East Coast branch.”
I raise my brow in amusement, leaving no room for negotiation.
“See you next week, Mrs. H. Again, enjoy Tahoe.”
I stop at a drive thru before I go back home. It’s a ritual I keep religiously, the only part of my day I don’t hate completely.
Stella, my beat-down Toyota Tacoma (it’s okay to give it a name when it’s your only reliable companion in this world) is red and blends, but I still pull my hoodie over my face just in case I’m being watched. The Aryan Brotherhood is breathing down my neck, always. Seeking retaliation for a crime I didn’t do, forever.
Two weeks after I got out, they almost managed to off me, blocking my way out from a side street armed with baseball bats. I beat them up and ran away.
Four months forward, and the car I’d bought when I left prison with the little money my mother left for me was set on fire in downtown Stockton. It wasn’t just a financial disaster, an inconvenience and a fucking warning—it also made the authorities and my parole officer suspicious of my doings.
The day after my car exploded, I stood in front of a freshly released Godfrey. I told him I was willing to work for him in exchange for his protection. God has been dealing with the AB since his Californian drug cartel expanded before he got thrown in the can. They respected him inside and out. We struck a deal.
Now, eight months later, I still feel like the bull’s eye.
Godfrey claims he’s got them by the balls, but I don’t trust anything the man says.
I order two double cheeseburgers, and it’s only when the cashier hands me the food, that I remember that God’s girl is with us.
And that she’s vegetarian. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I smack my steering wheel and swallow a curse. Another mouth to feed, and an irritating one too.
“Get me something for a vegetarian too. A salad or some crap,” I grumble to the teenager who serves me. She ain’t happy about me placing an additional order when I’m already at the window, but she complies.
God’s girl.
More accurately—Camden’s girl.
How stupid can you be to get your ass tangled with the Archer men by choice? I know that she’s some rich kid from the Bay Area, and as I said before, I have my theory regarding rich girls and bad boys, but this one didn’t just jump into bed with a baddie. She didn’t just fuck a baddie without a condom. She practically made babies with him, in the form of poisonous maggots that are now eating her life away.
At least she can take a fucking punch.
Seb’s a jackass for hitting a woman. But the mouth that’s attached to this woman. . .uncontainable. Uncontrollable. Of course he would fucking hit her. She’s so much stronger than he’ll ever be. Baby dick syndrome sufferers won’t tolerate women like Country Club. Probably why she’s neck deep in shit.
I climb down to the basement, two stairs at a time, and find her exactly as I’d left her—tied, blindfolded and sitting in the corner. She drags a bloody finger on the wall, right next to another line of blood.
She’s counting the days until Camden’s arrival.
Her head snaps up the minute the door locks behind me and her posture straightens. She scrambles to her feet, her chin lifting in defiance.
“Who is it?” she demands, her voice sharp and entitled like Mrs. Hathaway’s. Unlike Mrs. H, though, God’s girl doesn’t sound desperate. If nothing else, it makes her slightly less annoying.
“Dinner,” I grunt, throwing the plastic container to her feet. The basement is mostly empty. Irv and I have nothing to our names and when we rented this shithole, it barely offered the basics of two beds and an old, saggy couch.
But there’s a rotting wooden table in the corner that’s been here since before I moved in and a few carton boxes where we store our useless shit. Nothing that could serve as a weapon. Clothes, books, some old family albums Irvin keeps of himself and his crew. That kind of stuff.