Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 57240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
2
Nick
My life has been fucked in one way or another since I was seventeen. That’s when I lost the girl of my heart and my life derailed off the course I’d set for myself.
We had an argument over some dumb shit. She went away mad and I got stupid. I got drunk and slept with the wrong fucking girl, she got pregnant and I got stuck.
My kid needed a dad, he didn’t care that his old man fucked the wrong piece and got fucked and I’m not the one to leave my seed out there without me, so I did the right thing.
Broke my fucking heart, but a man must be a man even if it means losing the one thing that means more to him than anything else in this life. So for thirteen years I’ve existed, not lived, not truly.
Because I wasn’t the man I had always seen myself becoming. How could I be? She wasn’t there. I’d fucked up and someone else was in her spot. The only heart I had left was for my son, and the job.
I kept that part of myself locked off in darkness the whole time she’s been gone. I cheated the woman I was forced to marry out of the love that’s due a wife, because in my heart I had only one.
Dee and I weren’t in love or at least I wasn’t in love with her, but we learned to tolerate each other. And for two fucked up kids who didn’t know what we were doing, we did okay by our son.
The dreams of playing in the big leagues died along with everything else I’d had planned for my future. But my son was worth it. I’d loved that little boy with everything in me from the day he was born.
Everything had been for him; including the way I’d pulled myself together after my heart had been ripped out of me and all I wanted was to lay down and die.
I kept my head straight, went through the academy which had always been my back-up plan and made it to Lieutenant in less than seven years.
The fact that it was my need of her, the one I’d lost, that made me so good at my job was nobody’s business; I did the job.
Those days and nights when thoughts of what I had lost rode me hard, those were the times when I put my all into the job. I’m no cheat so there was no way I was gonna go there no matter how much I longed to back then.
I gained a rep on the force; I got shit done. People took notice, this time the wrong people. While I was cleaning up my city streets, some motherfucker was plotting how to take me down.
I was getting too close to the heavy hitters and because they knew they couldn’t buy me off, they decided to end me.
They got their wires crossed the night they decided to come after me. I wasn’t home; I was on a stake out ten miles away. My wife and kid weren’t so lucky.
I got the call while in the middle of one of the biggest busts of my career. That was the day Nick Sheridan died and Savage was born.
I still remember everything about that moment as if it were yesterday. It will never leave me. And where once, the people of this city, their safety and wellbeing were the force behind my need to serve and protect. It was the memory of that night, the sights and sounds, the raw emotion that now fueled my new purpose.
There was blood on my hands now, but I refuse to take the blame. Refuse to share responsibility for what I had become through no fault of my own.
How can you ask a man to live his life as a protector of the innocent and not expect him to avenge his own when one of his was taken in such a vicious way?
I put the shit I was working on away since the memories were riding me hard and took a moment to breathe, to remind myself that I was still alive, before leaving the room.
I went back over the day in my head and made sure that I’d done all I needed to before packing it in. I could make one more dry run but nah. I didn’t get this far by going off the new course I’d set myself in even the smallest way.
I knew all I needed to know and if there were any surprises I’d deal with them as they come. Failure was not an option.
Lights out. I had put myself on a strict regiment. There was no room for error, one slip up and it could all blow up in my face. I didn’t mind getting caught, but not before it was all over, not until I made them all bleed.