Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 134057 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134057 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
I wasn’t noble enough to want to do that. People might’ve been tricked into thinking that because I risked my life to tell stories of suffering, but the truth was I did it to distract myself from my own. To live in outside horror, so I didn’t have to inhabit my interior one.
I’d done it for the past twelve years, I’d collected all sorts of different horrors. Unthinkable brutality. Gruesome death. I found myself hungry for more. For something that would shock the American public back into being horrified again.
Selfishly, I wanted the story.
And it was inside the clubhouse I was staring at.
Without hesitation, I opened my car door, put my heeled foot on the ground and started my journey toward the belly of the beast.
“You’re new,” someone slurred.
Someone being a monster of a man in leather with the trademark Sons of Templar cut. He was younger than me. But he towered over me. I guessed he took steroids because there was no way a human got that jacked from the gym.
Then again, most of the men in the room grew biceps from beating up gunrunners, collecting debt sheets from loan sharks, killing rival gangs and eradicating anyone dealing drugs within town limits.
It had taken less than five minutes for me to be approached, despite the fact the room was pulsating with women, in varying degrees of undress and inebriation.
It was exactly what I expected it to be.
So very cliché.
But underneath clichés were usually stories.
Because I noted things in five minutes.
Things that told me someone smart was hiding under a cliché.
The security, for a start. There were cameras covering every single angle of the entrance, and the gate was manned and guarded by a man wearing a cut with no patch and the bottom rocker reading ‘Prospect.’
The man in question had given me a long look as I approached. And there was the healthy male hunger that my outfit was designed to awaken. But there was something else. A wary glint that told me he wasn’t going to let me in because I was showing off a lot of skin, my makeup was heavy, and my tits were decent.
And he didn’t.
He checked my purse.
It was small. Tacky. Cheap. Worn in. It went perfectly with the persona I’d slipped into for the story.
“Pretty as you are, doesn’t mean you’re not a killer. Pretty will get you a lot of places, but not into the wrong ones,” he drawled, flashing his phone light into my purse.
I hadn’t thought they’d be doing this, but I didn’t have anything to hide in there.
He picked up my gun with a raised eyebrow.
I didn’t carry a gun regularly, but the woman I was pretending to be did.
“Pretty as I am doesn’t mean ugly things can’t happen to me,” I said calmly.
I swallowed the rock that was the truth of that statement.
Maybe he saw something in my eyes before I could hide it. Men like this lived in violence and ugliness, so I guessed it was easier to spot in someone trying to hide it. But then again, I needed to utilize all my ugliness if I was going to get the story.
He put the gun back in my purse. “Gonna let you keep this, because you’re not wrong. Ugly things happen to everyone.” His eyes went up and down my body that didn’t feel sexual, merely inquisitive. “Even the prettiest.” He handed me my purse, I took it, but he didn’t let go for a beat. “I’ll also tell you something different, to paraphrase Sonny Barger ‘you treat me good, I’ll treat you better. You treat me bad, I’ll treat you worse.’” He nodded his head to the clubhouse. “Somethin’ to remember in there. Pretty means some, but not everything. And it means nothin’ if you mean the club harm.”
A cold blade of dread trailed down my spine.
Did he know who I was? Did he know what I was doing? Was he giving me one last warning before I strode into the Gates of Hell?
But I was beyond warnings at this point. Hell wasn’t a place. No, it was a feeling.
I didn’t hesitate to walk into the building once he stepped aside.
For better or for worse, I was committed to the story.
“Yeah, I just moved here,” I said, replying to the slurring man.
‘Moved’ was a stretch. I was renting the shittiest, cheapest apartment in town. And though the town was small, it was big enough to have a ‘good’ side and a ‘bad’ side. I was living in a place with a dried-out pool and paper-thin walls to keep up my backstory and to keep myself afloat financially. I was still paying rent on my apartment in Castle Springs and though I had some good chunks of money coming in from some freelance work I did, I had to make it last. The life of a journalist was not glamorous, and the pay was shit. Even when you’re good—which I was—and getting paid more than what most of your colleagues are—which I also was—there was no way to get rich from the job.