Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I draw in a breath, and then I smile. “You’re right.”
“Damned right I’m right.” He draws me closer and puts an arm around my waist. “But I’ll never stop protecting you.”
“Then I’ll never stop protecting you. If we love each other, Falcon, we have equal responsibility to each other.”
“But I’m the—” He stops abruptly.
“You’re the what? You’re the man? Well, here’s news for you. I’m the woman.”
He smiles again. “Yes, you certainly are.”
He comes closer to me, brings his lips to mine, but I push him back.
“I’m serious. I understand the differences between men and women. Men, in general, are physically stronger. Women, in general, have to watch their backs. But I grew up in a family where women were devalued. Used as pawns in a dangerous and vicious game. I made a choice a long time ago—when my brother died—that I wouldn’t play that game anymore. Of course, they forced me into it anyway.”
“No one will force you into anything anymore, not while I’m alive and breathing.”
I bite on my lower lip.
He doesn’t understand my family, and he never will.
“I wish I could explain this to you,” I say. “But they won’t think twice about eliminating you if you stand in the way of getting what they want.”
Then he chuckles again. “Savannah, I may not know the ways of families like yours. I may not know the ways of organized crime. But I know the ways of life in prison. And I’m pretty sure it’s not all that different.”
I widen my eyes at him.
“You think I didn’t see people being used as pawns? I nearly took a guy out just to save the poor guy he was keeping as his bitch.” His face darkens. “I had to fight my way to the top, Savannah. And trust me, it was far from pretty.”
“Yeah? I get it, and I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that, Falcon.” I place my head against his chest, feeling his heartbeat. “But there were no guns in prison.”
“There were shivs. I got several more years tacked onto my sentence because I used a shiv when I needed to.”
“I know, but—”
He puts his fingers over my lips to quiet me. “Let’s just agree to disagree. I don’t know everything about how your family works, and you don’t know everything about how prison works.” He looks upward. “God knows, I hope you never do. But my guess is that they’re more similar than you think.”
I don’t try to fight back, because frankly, he’s right.
“The women in your family are prisoners,” he says.
“You’re right,” I say. “We are. The difference is that we can’t fight our way to the top like you did.”
“Maybe you can.”
I widen my eyes, staring at him. “Falcon, with all due respect, we can’t.”
“What if you could, though? What if you could buy your own freedom?”
“What are you getting at?”
“You say there’s a reason they need you so badly. And it’s for more than a simple alliance.”
“Yes. It must be.”
“Do you think Miles McAllister is in love with you?”
“Absolutely not. He doesn’t want me any more than I want him.”
Falcon draws in a breath. “Something sinister is at work here.”
“You think?” I say sarcastically.
“No. I don’t mean it in the way you mean.” He strokes his chin. “When I was in prison, Vannah, I learned to sniff out the true evil. Then I learned to watch my back and stay the fuck away from it as much as I could. When I was in that house, rescuing you with Leif, I had this feeling the entire time. That pecking at the back of your neck that you can’t quite describe, but you know is there. That sixth sense that tries to warn you of something. Some kind of impending danger.”
“Well,” I say. “You broke into a mobster’s home. Of course there was danger. For the life of me, I don’t know how the hell you got all three of us out of there safely.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Savannah. In prison, there was always impending danger. Everyone was a threat, and not just the other inmates. The guards. More than one of them looked at me with lust in their eyes.”
“Oh my God, Falcon…”
“No, it never happened. Because at that point, I had figured out how to determine someone’s intentions at just a glance. The tenseness in their bodies, the coldness in their eyes. They didn’t have to say a word to make it clear what their intentions were. I figured out what they were after, and then I made it clear that any such advances would not be tolerated. You see, Vannah, when you’re in prison, you feel like you have nothing left to lose. So I would’ve let them kill me before I let them fuck me.”
“And the guards knew that?”