Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
She turns and starts to walk out, and I should let her. Hell, I should be pushing her ass out the door or giving her my back as I hurry out of it.
I’m not sure why, instead of either of those options, I open my big-ass mouth. “I was eight.”
Katana freezes in the doorway, looking at me over her shoulder.
I don’t have to give more; she knows what I’m talking about.
I was eight when I found my mother dead in her bed.
She smiles softly and I glare, this time my feet do move when I wish for them to, but apparently my mouth doesn’t understand we’re looking for an exit.
“Enzo finally agreed on a driver for me, so long as we take his choice of guards.” I meet her eyes over my shoulder, raising a brow. “Lunch?”
Her eyes widen at the invitation, but she goes back to the girl I met when I first got here, a shadow of confidence slipping over her as a full-blown smirk covers her lips. “On one condition…”
I scoff at her audacity, but for some reason, I smile back, rolling my eyes as I lead us out. “As if I could endure your company any other way.”
The girl squeals. Literally, and strangely, a small flash of excitement washes over me too.
I’m sure she’ll find a way to ruin it by—
“Maybe we should ask Enzo to join us? Have a nice little threesome - ah!” she screams, ducking as my knife flies toward her, dropping to a full squat in a split second.
The blade jabs through the wall, burying all the way to the hilt.
Katana snaps her head from it to me, jumping to her feet with a grin. “Holy shit, did you see that?!” She grins wildly. “I dodged it!”
My lips press together. “That’s too bad.”
“Bitch, please!” Her smile is impossibly wide, and I turn to stone when she throws herself at me, arms locking around my body. “Deny you’re proud, I dare you!”
Katana laughs in my ear, and as hard as I try to swallow my own, a small chuckle slips free.
Maybe she’ll stand half a chance after all.
For her, for me, and especially for Enzo. He didn’t have to save her the way he did, but knowing he didn’t hesitate, that he risked himself and the loss of his men to save a young girl he didn’t even know, gives me insight to the man I married that I didn’t have before.
I don’t know a single man who would do what he did, and I’m not just talking about saving and marrying her or killing her father to offer her further safety. But for ending the marriage and protecting her identity. He could have kept her as his bride and rightly claimed the head seat of the east.
It would be he who sat across from the other Greyson girls’ families and he who the rest of the underground world would have to go to for any and all things that required permission. He could be the one vote against the others, changing the entire dynamic until it all rolled in his favor.
He did none of those things.
He saved a young girl who had no idea what she was to our world and he did it for no other reason than she deserved to be saved.
I’m proud to call Enzo Fikile my husband.
And it has nothing to do with his name.
“You must be the infamous Katana Fikile?” Nicholas smiles, sweeping his blond hair back in a way that makes me roll my eyes.
She opens her mouth, but I cut her off, stepping up to the door he holds open and turning to face him, my new guard promptly placing his massive shoulder between us, his bandana-covered face pointed in Nicholas’s direction. “Don’t even think about it, Galley. You’re already breaking Enzo’s number one rule.”
“How am I supposed to drive you but not talk to you?”
“You can talk to me.” I smirk, popping a brow. “When he’s around.”
He scoffs, shaking his head as he moves toward the driver’s door, leaving our guards to close us inside. Nicholas climbs in, mumbling his complaint when the guard, who was randomly assigned from an approved list that will forever rotate so that there is never a pattern that anyone can pick up on, as Mino broke it down to me, rolls up the privacy screen.
Katana stares at Nicholas, a goofy smile on her face, until he disappears behind the glass.
“Girl. No.” I settle in the seat. “That’s the fastest way to get you, and me, back on house arrest.”
“Why would Enzo give you such an attractive driver?”
“One,” I scrunch my nose, “look at the man I chose. Dark hair, tan skin, stormy, marble eyes. You really think I’d go for a blond? And two,” I shrug, “Nicholas and Enzo already have an understanding when it comes to me—one where Nicholas gets his balls chopped off if he makes one wrong move—so he doesn’t have to do the whole if you so much as look at my fiancée bit. It made the most sense and after a three-day conversation, he agreed.”