Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
The words tumbled from her in a deluge of worry.
I curled my arm around her waist and inhaled, struggling to keep my shit together.
To keep from losing it.
She yanked away, ocean eyes searching me in the night.
A frenzied current that battered at the shores of my heart.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” I grunted.
“What happened?” she begged.
“Someone was out in the forest.” Could barely force it out around the razors that lined my throat.
Terror ripped through her features. “Are you sure?”
I managed a harsh nod.
“Oh my God…” Her brow pinched in alarm, and she let go of the words like a secret, “Was it him?”
I unwound her from my hold and turned away, unable to face her when my body still vibrated with hostility.
Wrath still firing from my cells.
I looked to the ground. “Likely someone he sent.”
Horror wrapped me from behind, her energy throbbing and thrashing and battering against my back.
“I don’t understand. What do they want?” she whispered like she was praying for a different outcome.
I whipped back around, the confession tearing out of me on the hatred I would forever hold. “They killed her, Tessa.”
Tessa stumbled back like she’d run smack into a wall.
Pale skin blanching a ghostly white. Thought I could see the blood drain from her head and pool in a vat of dread in her belly. “What do you mean?”
My jaw screwed in indignation as my fists curled in malice. “They killed her.”
I could feel her heart seize.
My teeth ground as I forced myself to continue. “Because of me.”
“No,” she whimpered.
My nod was savage.
“Her death was labeled an accident. Paula has always believed it a suicide. I let her believe it.”
A barbed cry got loose of her mouth that she covered with shaking hands. “Oh my God, Milo.”
“I hunted him…for a full fucking year…I hunted him. Abandoned my kids, gave them over to Paula and Gene without so much as a fight because the only thing I could do was hunt the monster so I could make him pay for what he’d done.”
Torment crumpled her face.
Mine and hers.
Did she see it now?
Who I really was?
“I’d taken out a bunch of his men. One after another, trying to get to him.”
Tessa choked over my blunt confession.
“Plus, word on the street was he owed a bunch of money to some people more powerful than he was. Guess that was enough to run him out of town and into hiding. He was a fucking ghost. I’d finally given up. Figured someone else had beaten me to the honor of sending that piece of shit to the ground. But I should have known he would come back for me. Should have known he was biding his time until he found the right time to strike.”
I stared down at this gorgeous girl who’d stood beside me all this time while I admitted it.
The one I’d warned wouldn’t like what she saw if she got too close.
Now that she could see, tremors rocked her.
Violently.
Savagely.
“Milo.” It was a whimper.
“And I don’t know exactly what his game is, Tessa. But make no mistake, now that he’s returned, he won’t touch my family again.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
MILO
FIVE YEARS AGO
Chants lifted through the grungy basement, their bloodlust clogging the air with the greed that claimed their tongues.
The cement floor vibrated with the force of it, and from the fringes of his sight, Milo could almost make out the demons that crawled the walls, their talons sunk into the blocks where they stood guard over the depravity.
Dark specters that fed into the wickedness.
Or maybe it was just the remnants of the souls that had been left there.
Where goodness was ground to dust, and the only thing that remained was the corrupt.
Blood spilled from a gash on Milo’s right eye, obscuring his vision, but that was just fine because he didn’t want to see.
Didn’t want to witness the evil that he perpetuated, brought on by his own greed.
He was no fool.
It didn’t matter his reasons.
There was no excuse for this.
It was only vileness and impurity.
His opponent clocked him on the opposite side of the head, knocking him from his feet. The man attacked, diving on top of Milo in a bid to finish the job.
Shouts soared. Battered his ears.
“Finish him!”
The man might have thought the position gave him an up, but Milo only grinned. He tossed him to his back before he was the one in control.
Milo’s fists pounded into his face.
Gore.
They hauled him back when the man went slack.
Bile filled Milo’s mouth as he was dragged away from the limp form laying in a puddle of blood.
His opponent barely clinging to life.
His arm was lifted in the air as he stumbled on his feet, hardly coherent himself.
Beaten to shit.
Dripping blood and broken bones.
“You just earned me five-hundred grand,” Stefan murmured in his ear like it was a rumbling of seduction, right as he was pushing twenty-five thousand of it against Milo’s chest. “I knew you’d come back to me. This is where you belong. To me, you are my son, and we are going to rule this world.”