Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 27958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 140(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 93(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 140(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 93(@300wpm)
Even though she’d only known Stone for a few days before she left, Britta never forgot him. So when her mom disappeared, she ran straight to the biker who’d starred in her dreams for the past two years.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
BRITTA
“We’re gonna have to get you out of the city to keep you safe. Tommaso isn’t going to let you go unless it’s in a casket.” My best friend’s dad shifted his attention from my mom toward me. “And he’ll send your daughter with you because he’s a vengeful prick.”
I didn’t have big plans, but sitting by my mom’s bedside in the hospital was not how I wanted to spend my birthday. Most girls at my school dreamed about spending their sweet sixteen at a huge party where they were the center of everyone’s attention. Not me, though.
The thought of a bunch of people staring at me all night long gave me the heebie-jeebies. I had learned years ago that it was smarter to fade into the background. And I knew better than to hope for something that would never happen since my mom couldn’t afford to spoil me like that on what she earned as a bartender.
Considering the situation my mom had gotten us in, I would’ve gladly had every person from my school at a party where I stood naked on a stage while they stared at me all night long. Anything would’ve been better than my mom being beaten almost to death by her boyfriend.
“Whatever you think is best,” I replied before my mom could say anything. I didn’t trust her to make the right decision, especially when it had anything to do with one of her boyfriends.
My mom had the worst taste in men. My dad had bailed on her when she turned up pregnant with me, and each of the guys she got with since as far back as I could remember somehow managed to be worse than the one before. Her most recent boyfriend was awful enough that I’d been thinking about running away from home for the past few days.
I’d thought something was off about Tommaso the first time she’d introduced me to him, but Mom tended to see the best in the guys she dated. He was attractive, dressed well, drove a nice car, and took her out on nice dates…and that was good enough for her.
But his son made me really uncomfortable. He was four years older than me and watched me with too much interest. It gave me the creeps.
I wanted to kick myself for not noticing that he’d been hurting her. When she’d been admitted to the hospital a couple of months ago, she’d lied to me about her “accident.” There had been no car that had hit her, just Tommaso’s fists. And it wasn’t the last time.
After she was discharged, he kept the hits away from her face so that nobody would ask any questions, and she always had a handy excuse for why she was moving slower than usual. A twisted ankle because she was hurrying into work so she wouldn’t be late for her shift. A pulled muscle from lifting a keg when nobody else was around to help out during a busy Friday night. A strained back because she was getting up in years.
It wasn’t until I got the call that she was back in the hospital again that I learned she’d been hiding what he’d been doing to her. She hadn’t told me, even then. I’d overheard a couple of nurses whispering about how her injuries didn’t match up to the story she’d told and that they should probably call the police.
When I confronted my mom about it, she freaked out. I hadn’t understood why she didn’t want the cops involved. Why she wouldn’t dump Tommaso, no matter how much I begged her. All she’d said was that leaving him wasn’t possible and the police couldn’t help her.
I was only sixteen and had nowhere else to go, but the thought of spending the next two years watching my mom get beaten up by the guy who should’ve kissed the ground she walked on was almost more than I could bear.
With nobody else to go to, I called my best friend. Izzy’s dad was a biker and belonged to a motorcycle club. Rubble was sweet with me and Izzy, but he was also a big, intimidating man, and I had this wild idea that maybe he could warn Tommaso off so he’d leave my mom alone. An hour after my call, he showed up in my mom’s hospital room with three other guys who looked just as scary. He explained that he could get us safely away from Tommaso. Only then did my mom confess to everything that had been going on.
Tommaso wasn’t just an abusive boyfriend. He was the enforcer for a local crime boss. A group involved in smuggling drugs and…people.
Rubble moved quickly, sending one of the other bikers to grab our vital necessities before coming back to pick us up. The next thing I knew, he was sneaking my mom out of her room and down to a car idling at the curb in front of the emergency room entrance.