Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“Would love to hear him spin that, but we’re short on time, and the lady should get a chance to go.” They turned to me. “Quinn, got something you want to say?”
I pushed out my lips, rolling my eyes skyward. “Mmm... no? That’s right, no. I’ve got nothing. Come back to me.”
“Rethink this,” Cairo warned. “This isn’t a bluff.”
“If you’ve got to say it’s not a bluff, then it is a bluff. Real men don’t waste time threatening to do something. They just do it.”
Cairo cocked his head. “Is that why you joined the Men of Honor? You wanted to be surrounded by real men who say they’re going to gang up and murder innocent women, then keep their word?”
My jaw clenched. “This is about Rainey de Souza again? Oh, please.” I curled my lips at Ivy. “None of that would’ve happened if she had the balls to follow through. Sacrifice one guy she didn’t even know, but no. She refused and was stupid enough to think she wouldn’t pay the consequences for it. That’s her own fault. Don’t blame me.”
“What do you get out of this, Quinn?” Roan asked. “You’re gorgeous. Upper middle class. About to graduate with a business degree and go anywhere you want. But instead you’re here, dangling on a ledge because... what? You couldn’t help it? You had to let your dark side come out to play?”
A grin teased my lips. “Don’t we all?”
“Come on, Quinn,” Legend said. “I know you’re dying to monologue. Get it off your chest.”
“Nice try, but I won’t tell you anything about them. You can find out who they are when we pay you a visit in the middle of the night.”
Blank faced, Cairo drifted off me to Legend.
“Two minutes.”
“Two minutes,” Cairo repeated. “Who talks first?”
I didn’t speak, but Davidson did. The Bedlam Boys were treated to all the ways they were exactly like the Men of Honor—if we were as gutless and pathetic. He explained in detail that Cairo’s father was a lousy, useless drunk, and his mother was a gold-digging whore. Josephine Banks was a man-eating, dry-cunt bitch who dropped Roan out of her womb like a sow in a field, then continue climbing the ambitions ladder without giving him another thought.
Marjorie Creed, the fake mayor of a town that wasn’t a town, was even more corrupt than Davidson said he could ever be. And she was a good lay.
“—no wonder your father crossed an ocean to get back to that pussy,” Davidson taunted. “And don’t get me started on Eileen Stone. She puts on a good show—the prim and proper judge. But the lady has a nasty kink for outdoor sex. I’ve caught her and Jack—”
The phone chimed. “Time’s up,” Jacques announced.
Roan dropped the rope. Without pause, breath, or hesitation, Cairo kicked Davidson square in the chest.
“Ooof!” Davidson flew back... and plummeted.
“Ahhhh!”
Davidson and my screams echoed through the canyon.
“What the fuck did you do?!”
“I said you had until his screams faded to talk,” Cairo snarled. He bore down on me. “Want to test if I’m bluffing again?”
“No, no, no.” I thrashed, flinging my body away from him. Bruised and broken, I flopped helplessly on the ground—getting nowhere. He wasn’t supposed to kill him. He wasn’t supposed to! Who were these guys? We thought we had to kidnap his father to force them to kill, but no. They weren’t just enforcers and thugs.
Looked like they too let their dark side out to play a long time ago.
“No! Stay away from me!”
“Names, Quinn.” His boot dropped on my hip. “Or down you go.”
White blotted out my mind. The words flew so quickly from my mouth, they tumbled over each other. “Ja-Jackson Hyde! Thea W-Wood! Lincoln Roberts! Everett Cooper! Including me, that’s everyone, I swear. I swear!”
Cairo crouched next to me. I curled in on myself, trembling. I joined the Men of Honor to be around people like me. Have a little fun. Make a lot of money. Take back what once belonged to my family. I did not join to die.
Every other sheep in this cow-dung town could be sacrificed, but not me.
He reached for me.
“No. No!”
“Shh,” Cairo crooned. “I believe you, Quinn. Hyde, Wood, Roberts, and Cooper. Which one of them goes by Dante?”
“It’s Lincoln. He took over after he killed Zoe. She was changing our purpose,” I rushed. “Said why not make a little money on the side by selling our services? But then she took a job from the Crows to kill the Bedlam Boys, even though we still needed you. She had to go.”
“Do you still need us? To kill Steven Ellis and his sons?”
I tossed my head against the dirt. “We could do that whenever. No, we need you because you are your mothers’ only vulnerability, and hers,” I said, glaring at Ivy. “It always comes back to her.”