Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Fair enough. “Who’s Cherry with now?”
“Crash.”
Dispensing pills, it looks like. And making notes on a clipboard.
Handlebar continues, “Every morning, we get our multivitamins and general health check. Then a healthy balanced breakfast, then cardio. I hope you like to run, fucker. Five miles a day, minimum—and Cherry records our times, along with our pulse rate and blood pressure.”
“You shitting me?”
“Not even a bit. Then a healthy balanced lunch, followed by weight training. Healthy balanced dinner, lights out at ten. We’re also expected to spend our down time with the heavy bag in our stalls. Because if we go soft, we die in the Cage. Yeah?”
Fucking hell. Except for the ‘healthy balanced meal’ shit, none of what he’s saying is any different than what I do on the regular at home. But I don’t like the idea of doing it on command and on someone else’s schedule.
I watch Cherry head across the corridor. Christ, those legs. Did she wrap them around my waist while my cock was up inside her tight little cunt? Or maybe she never got further than a blow job. Not being able to remember if I had her on my dick bothers me more than her drugging me does.
But no doubt that as soon as the roofie kicked in, there was someone ready to swoop me up. Now that guard never lets Cherry get too far away from him. “Who’s the drill sergeant?”
“Victor.”
“He runs the security crew here?”
“Yep. Right now you’ve got Mike in the control room, and Charlie who just came out of it. The others who are usually at this stable are Delta, Hotel, Bravo…oh, hold up. Bravo’s toast. Rome’s toast, too, because he”—Handlebar makes a neck-snapping motion with his hands—“got a little too close to me.”
“Are you fucking around with those names?” All of them letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Handlebar snorts. “Hand to god, brother. That’s what they call themselves.”
Maybe to preserve their anonymity but mostly just proving they’re a bunch of assholes playing soldier. “So who’s in the cell?”
Because more than just Handlebar and Crash have disappeared from the clubs the Hellfire Riders are friendly with.
“Hatchet.” The other man’s lip curls. “From the Eighty-Eight.”
Not a friend of the Riders or the Butchers, but a piece of neo-Nazi trash—and someone who must have fucked up and was sent here for punishment, because the Eighty-Eight Henchmen’s noses are all up in the ass of whoever’s running the Cage.
“Who’s up top?”
“Some slick fucker they call Papa.”
“Who’s he with?”
“Fuck knows. Never got close to him, never talked to him personal. He uses the Iron Blood to bolster Victor’s crew but comes in with his own security. Private and real fucking professional. Other than that…?” A shrug lifts his broad shoulders. “No goddamn clue.”
Which means this Papa doesn’t give much away, because Handlebar wouldn’t miss a thing. And the asshole who tried to grab Zoomie had private security, too. Lots of money. The Hellfire Riders probably should have taken a closer look before blowing them up and burying their remains out in the boonies, but we didn’t know then how big this operation was.
Handlebar gives me a rundown of the other men filling the stalls between him and Hatchet. First there’s Flack, who he calls an asshole. Airbag, who’s all right. Abyss, also all right. On my side there’s Crash, then Log Cabin, who’s an asshole, and Bullethole, who’s all right. Both stalls to either side of me are empty, then the last one holds Tusk. Room for fourteen fighters, but they only have ten—though Handlebar says there’s another barn on the property with the same setup, and that there must be other stables owned by others like Papa nearby, because they don’t travel far to the Cage on the nights they fight. And they don’t fight anyone from the same stables.
Then he stops talking, because Victor and Cherry arrive at his stall—and it’s easy to see why he called her an angel. Her voice is so sweet and cheery and bright, she’s like a sexy beam of sunshine.
Then she turns my direction. For an instant, that brightness falters and I get a glimpse of the jumpy girl who first caught my eye in that tavern. Then her wide smile returns, those full lips so luscious and red and sultry, her gaze almost shy as she hangs back and looks up at me through her lashes.
I guess she’s not giving me vitamins or a health check right away, because instead Victor steps closer.
“As you’re new here, I’ll go over the rules with you one time. Lights come on, you wait in the center of your stall until we tell you to come forward—”
“Yeah, Handlebar already filled me in on your rules. I just don’t give a fuck.”
Cherry bites her lip, her smile dissolving into a fearful expression as she glances over at Victor. But that asshole isn’t going to do anything. Handlebar just told me he snapped a guard’s neck, and he’s right over there in that stall instead of in the ground somewhere, so that means the guards don’t do shit to the fighters.