Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“You’re such a fucking asshole,” I said to him. “Why’d you get caught up in this anyway? Did you forget your brother was a cop? Did you forget what they did?”
My brother was the mother of all fuck ups.
He was the loser stoner in high school, while I was the straight A, varsity football player who made honor roll and volunteered in his free time.
When my brother started to get into trouble, everyone started to point fingers at me.
Why?
Because my brother is an asshole, as I’d already said.
He thought it would be funny to use my name when he got in trouble, and before I knew what was going on, there were warrants out for my arrest. Parking fines. Debts.
So, good Ridley had to be replaced, and in its place was fucked up Ridley.
I’d had to work my ass off to get everything straightened out, and by the end of it I’d made good friends with a few of the cops who had arrested my brother.
They knew instantly that I wasn’t my brother, being able to see it once I’d introduced myself.
And with those friendships came trust, and they led to me becoming a sheriff’s deputy within a year of my college graduation.
“If I do this…I’m not staying in prison for years on end. Pending approval from my boss, I’m giving you a three-month limit, then I’m out of there whether the case is resolved or not. I’ve made too many enemies, and if I give them any longer, they’re going to find a way to get me killed in there. They’re going to figure out I’m not my brother, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to die in there.”
Kelly started moving, pacing back and forth until I was dizzy with his movement, before he nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I understand, and approval has already been given.”
“I have a few conditions,” I continued. “I’m keeping my phone. I won’t share a cell. I have access to a gun. I get food that I like, and if I say I want out, you get me the fuck out. No exceptions.”
Because, if the Coller Gang was involved, I was already involved.
We had history that went back a good, long while.
Six years, to be specific.
I’d shot the son of the Coller Gang’s president three days after he’d shot and killed my wife in a home invasion, and he hadn’t forgiven me for it.
Hell, I hadn’t forgiven his son yet, either, so maybe we were even.
“Anything else?” Agent Kelly drawled.
“If you can’t promise me all the things that I’ve asked for, then I’m out,” I said. “I told you last year when you started this venture with him that I wouldn’t get involved. And if it involved someone other than the Coller Gang, I wouldn’t be; do you understand?”
He sighed. “Anything more?”
I shook my head. “You need to assign someone to keep an eye on my sister and her daughter. And you don’t let that fuck up anywhere near them,” I pointed to my brother.
He really did look bad.
His right hand was mangled so badly that it would be a miracle if it ever worked correctly again.
His hair was cut close to his scalp, parts of it bloody and scraped. His face was raw, and I didn’t even want to begin to survey his bottom half. All injuries he’d sustained, according to Kelly, after he’d entered prison.
He was absolutely filthy, too, and that was only the body parts that I could see.
There was likely a lot more than I could take in, but I couldn’t find it in me to care.
At his nod, I curled my hands into fists then said, “Good. Now get the fuck out.”
***
“It’s gotta be done, man,” the president of the MC, Peek, said in his Irish brogue. “And you’re the only one who can pull it off.”
I rolled my eyes.
It wasn’t that the others wouldn’t survive, because they could. Easily.
The real problem was that they were all married or had kids. I was the only one that didn’t have anything to come home to.
“I know it’s gotta be done,” I growled. “That’s why I’m doing it. I don’t have to fuckin’ like it, though.”
Peek snorted and shook his head, then went back to the tattoo he was doing on my hand.
“I can’t believe I’m finally getting to mar this beautiful skin,” Peek said cheekily.
I flipped him off and then moved my eyes back to the wall where they’d been holding steady vigil since the tattoo had been started.
“Wish it wasn’t something my stupid brother had, though,” I muttered darkly.
“From what I understand, your brother doesn’t have it anymore, right?” Alison, Peek’s old lady, asked.
My eyes moved from the wall where I’d been studying years and years of pictures, to the older woman with flowing blonde hair.
Alison, although in her mid-fifties, was a looker.