Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 118332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be.
But he needed to be sure it wasn’t her. That it was someone else like he first thought. Someone who looked like her, had the same color eyes, the same color hair, who wore the same type of clothes.
Because it couldn’t be.
He moved closer, not caring that the blood on the floor soaked his socks all the way to his skin.
Not caring that the kitchen smelled really bad. A stink that twisted his stomach enough that he had to take shallow breaths through his mouth to keep from puking.
Not caring that the drunk douchebag still sat within arm’s reach at the kitchen table.
Tommy stopped near the hand extended out from her beaten body, took another shallow breath and looked down.
He was afraid to touch her.
To move her.
To shake her to see if she was still alive.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t.
Because this couldn’t be right.
This couldn’t be real.
If he touched her, it would become real.
Deep inside him something stirred, built. A pressure.
Like when his buddy had dropped a whole roll of Mentos into a two-liter bottle of Coke and shook it. When he twisted open the cap…
Tommy screamed, “I told you he would fucking do this to you! I told,” he hiccup-sobbed, “you!”
He couldn’t stop himself from falling hard to his knees, right in the thick puddle of blood. Like his now sodden socks, the blood soaked the cotton at his knees, but he didn’t care.
He didn’t care.
None of it mattered.
Nothing mattered.
He squeezed his eyes shut but that didn’t change what he saw. He saw the same, whether his eyes were opened or closed.
A sight he would never forget.
A sight now seared into his brain.
Like the blood on his mother’s clothes, he’d never be able to scrub that memory clean.
He’d never get that stench out of his nose.
Fingers ripped at his hair as a high-pitched wail filled the space around him.
He opened his eyes, thinking Fender had come to.
But he didn’t.
It was his own fingers pulling at his hair, his own screams filling his ears.
He couldn’t stop it.
He couldn’t.
The ache inside him was so awful, he thought he would die.
He folded in half until his forehead almost touched the floor, trying to ease the pain, but it didn’t help.
Nothing did.
The only thing that would was if his mother woke up, reached for him and smiled, telling him everything would be okay.
Brush his hair off his forehead and tell him he’d only had a bad nightmare.
Because it couldn’t be anything else.
“Mom,” came out on another broken sob. He grabbed her shoulder and shook it. His mother was cold. Stiff.
Gone.
She was gone.
Her body empty.
This wasn’t a nightmare. It was reality.
He sobbed so hard he could hardly catch his breath.
It made his head ache, his stomach clench painfully and snot slide from his nose.
But he didn’t care.
He wanted to die, too.
He had no one left.
No one.
Everybody was gone.
A noise had him sitting up and turning his head toward the bloody kitchen table.
He was still alive.
The fucker was still alive.
Tommy managed to get to his feet and move closer. He nudged the chair with his bloody foot and heard a weak groan coming from the “badass” who was now anything but. “Why’d you do this?” He tried to scream it but the words got caught in his throat.
When he didn’t get an answer, Tommy yanked Fender’s head up by his hair, trying to make out the word carved into his forehead. Narrow slashes from a knife. He could barely make it out because of the seeping blood but he thought it spelled out “THIEF.”
No surprise.
He glanced down. Fender’s right hand was in his lap, still bleeding profusely. It was missing all of the fingers.
Some of the blood on the floor might not only be his mother’s, it was probably his, too. It should be all his. All of it.
The fucker was alive, but barely.
“Why’d you do this?” he finally screamed, wanting answers. Needing answers.
“Not… me.”
Yes, it was him. This was all Fender’s fault. He caused this. Because of who he was, what he did.
“Who did this?” Tommy demanded. When he didn’t get an answer, Tommy yanked his head up higher. He screamed in his face, “Who did this? I’m not getting you help ’til you tell me!” He forced down the sob trying to escape.
“Blood Fury,” Fender barely got out.
What the hell was he talking about? Was he more stupid than normal from the blood loss?
Tommy shook his head, not understanding.
“Blood Fury.”
What the hell was Blood Fury? “Is that another MC full of losers like you?”
Once again, Tommy didn’t get an answer to his question, instead Fender managed to say, “Tell my prez… Blood Fury.”
Tommy wasn’t telling anyone shit.
“Tell him,” Fender insisted weakly.
Tommy’s lip curled again. “Fuck you.”
What if Fender survived this? The little bit of skin not covered in blood was ghost white, like death. But that didn’t mean he would die.