Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I loved it and hated it, because some of the words not even I knew, and I was a thirty-one-year-old woman.
After we’d all calmed down, and were sitting on the couches, Vivi declared that she was going outside to sit in the hot tub.
Her bodyguard went with her to keep an eye on her, and the three of them stared at me, studying me.
I stared back until finally I said, “Shasha, did you or Dima find out where the Truth Tellers MC clubhouse is?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Will you take a guard with you?”
I shrugged. “I will until I get there.”
Meaning, I didn’t want one to stay.
Or come in with me.
Shasha sighed.
Dima said, “I’ll take her.”
Shasha turned to him and said, “What’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean?” he replied, looking away.
“You had another four months left on that deployment. You shouldn’t be here,” Shasha countered.
Dima opened his mouth and then closed it for a long time before saying, “I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
“Fair enough,” Shasha said, turning back to me. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I am…going to make it,” I said, not bothering to lie.
That was all I could give him.
I wasn’t great.
But I wasn’t bad, either.
I was what I was, and that wasn’t going to change until this looming presence of Lyle Pennington stopped hanging over my head.
The moment he was dead, then I’d be good.
But not until then.
Ain’t no cookie better than a subways Michael Damien cookie.
—Doc to Cutter (Macadamia)
CUTTER
I was on my second bottle of beer, and hot beer at that.
I didn’t even wait for the shit to cool down after the prospect brought it inside before I’d popped the lid on not one bottle, but two.
I’d finished the first bottle in about a minute and a half. The second one I was slowing down a bit on.
The men around me were all staring.
“What are the fuckin’ odds?” Detroit asked, not expecting an answer.
“Exactly.” I scrubbed my face with my hands. “I mean, I feel like a fuckin’ asshole for taking her there now.”
Out of all the places that she could have seen someone that caused her trauma, why did it have to be there?
I shouldn’t care so fuckin’ much.
Really, I should be indifferent that I could never take her to meet my brother properly ever again.
But I was pissed way the hell off, and I had one single person to blame.
“You weren’t doing the wrong thing.” Webber, our president, used his authoritative voice that would usually shake me out of my funk. “You were doing what you thought would get her into a better mood. And that’s taking her for a ride. You should’ve probably left her at the diner but…”
“But now that you know that she was hurt in the worst way, leaving her anywhere by herself is never going to happen again,” Apollo grumbled. “Someone’s here.”
My brows lifted. “Who?”
The clubhouse was wired with some of the best security one could have.
All of it put in by a military member that now owned a construction business and built secure locations that were better than Fort Knox.
The clubhouse wouldn’t withstand a siege or anything, since the man had only done the security, but it was good enough to deter the most unwanted of visitors for a time.
It was also incredibly hard to find unless you knew where to look.
For someone to be here, meant that they knew where to look.
Apollo, our resident genius—literally, he had a higher IQ than ninety-eight percent of the world—was also the one that kept all of our security up to date. He monitored our houses, places of business, the clubhouse, and various places around town that we owned or operated.
He was, by far, our best friend in the tech world.
He was also on the FBI watch list because he didn’t know how to keep his nose out of places he didn’t belong.
Not that we worried that he’d get caught.
He wouldn’t.
And if the feds got something they felt they could pin on him, Apollo would beat it.
“Woman.” He frowned. “That’s the girl. The one that…”
The one that I’d just told them was sexually assaulted.
“Y’all can’t act like y’all know,” I said as I stood up and downed my beer.
The only reason I’d told them was because I wanted to find a way to kill the motherfucker.
If he ever got out of jail, it would be a short-lived freedom.
Apollo tapped away on his computer before saying, “Her brother, the one that’s in the military, is with her.”
“Which one is that again?” Webber asked as he took a slow sip of his beer.
“Dima Semyonov,” Apollo answered. “He looks a little pissy, too. Like he doesn’t want to be here. Why do you think she made him bring her?”
I grinned and dropped my two beer bottles in the trash.
As I finished, I turned around and saw the two of them standing in the door.