Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 35974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 180(@200wpm)___ 144(@250wpm)___ 120(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 180(@200wpm)___ 144(@250wpm)___ 120(@300wpm)
“Yep.” If he wasn’t answering my questions, I wasn’t answering his. We stared at each other for a long time. I didn’t have to explain myself to him, and had no intention of doing so.
“All right.” Knuckles placed his hands on the table, spreading his fingers wide. He had tattoos over most of his skin. His forearms were thickly muscled and roped with veins, his biceps stretching the T-shirt he wore. The leather vest with his name on the chest hung open. I knew on the back was the Kiss of Death emblem proclaiming them a one percenter. I’d heard the saying that ninety-nine percent of MCs were law-abiding. His patch proclaimed his club to be in the one percent of outlaw motorcycle clubs. I thought Torpedo and Bohannon would have tried to distance Kiss of Death from what the term outlaw implied, but fact was, even Bones dipped their toes on the wrong side of the law from time to time. His beard was full and long, and he looked exactly like what he was. One hundred percent outlaw biker. And, fuck me, it was a fucking great look on him. “How about you tell me how you met fucktard.”
“How is any of this your business, Knuckles?” I kept my tone even, but I felt a little like a child called into her father’s office to be punished.
He shrugged. “It’s not, really. And it doesn’t really matter, except that Gunnar is gonna kill someone when he finds out about this.”
“I killed Dillon so Gunnar wouldn’t,” I bit out, unable to contain my anger at the image he painted. It was a simple saying, really. People dropped the phrase “I’m gonna kill” someone or something all the time. But in this case, I cringed. Gunnar taking the rap for killing someone he hadn’t was what got him taken away from me in the first place. The man was my twin, for Christ’s sake! Which was even worse when you factored in how I was the guilty party. I was the one who’d killed that swine, Robert. Gunnar had confessed to the murder in order to keep me safe.
Knuckles raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m fully aware. What I don’t get is why you let things escalate as far as they did.”
“It happens all the time, Knuckles. Who knows why women stay with their abusers? There are so many different reasons and all of them seem valid at the time.”
“Ain’t interested in other women, Hannah. And I know you weren’t really with him. What I want to know is how many times you let that bastard beat on you before you took matters into your own hands tonight.”
“A few. I needed him secure in what he was doing, so he’d lose his cool in public.”
Knuckles jerked back like I’d struck him. “You were baiting him?”
“I guess you could say that. I already knew what he’d done to Carol. And one of the other women I mentioned? He killed her. Said it was a boating accident and she got washed overboard.”
“Pretty sure we’d all agree the fucker needed to die. That’s not in question. I want to know why you got involved. And I got a feeling this isn’t your first time out.” His hard, knowing expression let me know I was busted. I didn’t care about getting caught, but I didn’t want it to be Knuckles who put the pieces together. Or Gunnar. I kind of expected it would be my dad who’d figure it out.
“Again, not your business.”
“Yeah?” He stood so abruptly his chair tumbled backward and skidded across the room. “I’m makin’ it my fuckin’ business.” The hard, angry words almost made me flinch. Not out of fear, though. Knuckles was many things, a killer among them. But he’d never hurt a woman unless she needed it. Then it would be as quick and painless as he could make it. No. I wasn’t afraid he’d hurt me. I was afraid of the disappointment I’d see in his gaze.
It was always hard enough to take it from Dad. But, even if I never acknowledged my feelings to myself, I’d basically had a crush on Knuckles from the first day I met him. If I looked like a fool in front of him, I wasn’t sure I could bounce back. There was something about Knuckles that drew me to him. Probably his loyalty to the people he cared about.
“Sorry, Knuckles. You don’t get to make that choice.”
“I do when I have to watch you stand there and take a punch.” His reply was clipped. Angry. He had to close his eyes and take a breath which I kind of found amusing. “You probably don’t know much about me, Hannah, but I killed three men to get to go to prison. They raped and murdered my sister. So seeing someone hit my cell mate’s sister is a huge fuckin’ trigger for me.”