Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
They were right. We needed answers.
Then, I could kill him.
If she ever found out, she would hate me. He was a bastard, but she loved him. He didn’t deserve it. Not her love. I wanted him out of her life. I wanted to protect her from him. But at what cost was I willing to do that?
If she hated me, I wasn’t sure that I could survive it. What I’d felt earlier with her in my arms, clinging to me, had fed some fucking beast inside me that I didn’t think I had control over. This thing … it needed her. It needed what she’d given me.
“What has he said so far?” I ground out through my clenched teeth.
“Not much,” Thatcher replied just as the flick of his lighter went off.
“We need him conscious to talk,” Storm said, pointing out the obvious.
“That’s easy enough,” Thatcher said.
I heard him walking, his boots heavy on the concrete floor.
A cry came from Vinson, and I dropped my hands and turned around to look at him. Thatcher was holding his lighter in his hand, grinning like a psycho. He liked to burn those we tortured when they went unconscious.
“Ah, he’s awake. Now, talk, before I let my brother break all the bones in your body since that seems to be his thing as of late.”
Vinson’s eyes were almost closed from the swelling, but he managed to glare through the slits. “What is it you want to know?” he asked, struggling to breathe.
“I thought you said it was the grandmother losing her memory?” Thatcher said as he looked over at me. “Seems he’s going too.”
“Tell us all you know about the Dancastles and their dealings with drugs. Are they moving the laced crack that is causing all the hallucinations and cannibalism?” Storm asked him.
“Don’t know nothing ’bout hallucinating and cannibalism,” he grunted.
“What do you know? And keep in mind, if you lie, you won’t walk out of here alive,” Storm told him.
I was holding my breath. Not for the fucker’s sake, but for Royal’s.
“His son, Merce—he moves cocaine and ecstasy through the club scene. He has people working for him. He supplies it, and they get it out there. That’s all I know.”
“And how do you know that?” Storm urged.
“Because he dated my daughter,” he spit. “He wanted me to start selling it in the bar. I didn’t want to do that, so he had me make some drop-off runs for him. That was all I did. He paid me a nice chunk for it too.”
Thatcher cut his eyes at me, and without him saying a word, I knew what he was about to ask. My hands fisted at my sides, and I braced myself. It had to be done, although I refused to believe a word he said.
“And what about Royal?” he began. “Was she involved? Does she know anything?”
Vinson slowly turned his head to look at me. His broken arms hung at odd angles at his sides. The blood was still trickling from his nose. He would tell her I had done this to him. She’d hate me for it. I couldn’t have that. The only way to silence him was to kill him.
“They were fucking. What do you think? Of course she knew.”
Blind fury exploded inside me as I shot across the space between us. My hands wrapped around his neck, and I squeezed, wanting to shut up his lies. End whatever shit he was going to accuse her of. Make him go limp and lifeless. Hanging here, no longer a threat to Royal.
I heard voices in the distance and felt hands grabbing me. Pulling me. It all seemed far away. I was detached from it. Nothing mattered but the man in front of me as his face turned a bright red and then blue.
Suddenly, I was jerked back hard, and my hands were ripped from Vinson Shelton’s throat. I fought against the hold on me, but I couldn’t get free.
“FUCKING LIAR!” I roared.
“Is he dead?” I heard King’s voice behind me and realized he was one of the ones holding me.
Thatcher stepped forward and stuck his cigarette between his teeth, then grabbed the little hair on top of his head, lifting it to place a finger on his neck, in search of a pulse.
“It’s weak, but it’s there,” he replied, letting the head flop forward again, then glancing back at me. “You almost got him.”
“I left you down here to oversee things,” King told him.
Thatcher shrugged. “Probably shouldn’t have.”
“If we let you go, are you going to stay back? We aren’t done with him,” King said to me.
I wanted him dead.
“She had nothing to do with it,” I snarled.
“We can’t trust him, but he can give us the information we need to find out the truth. But he has to be alive to talk. The more he talks, the more we can weed out the truth.” King told me what I’d already known, but I didn’t give a fuck.