Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 45045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
I ignored his use of the word girlfriend and the hope that it gave me. “Sometimes I think your world is bullshit.”
“Yeah, sometimes I think my world is bullshit, too,” he said. “But it’s the only one I got, so I’m gonna make the most of it.”
Chapter Nine
Present Day
~Peaches~
“I went to prison for a crime you committed,” Eli said, his voice ringing through the Starkwood. “I love you, Gus, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But I already gave you five years. This time, you need to clean up your own mess.”
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
For an instant, I thought I’d heard Eli wrong. What he’d just said couldn’t be true. No way. Except Gus had been late to his own birthday party. I’d seen him come through the back door with Pipes, right about the time Eli was getting arrested for murder.
Eli couldn’t have gotten to the house until after the killing, I reminded myself. And the murder had definitely taken place. Somebody had offed the guy. So why hadn’t I suspected Gus before now?
Probably because you didn’t want to.
Eli’s announcement was essentially a live grenade, tossed into the middle of the meeting. Now, everyone was arguing. I couldn’t hear much in the way of details, but at least a few of them sounded pissed because they’d been left out of the loop.
Good to know. Probably meant that the Reapers MC hadn’t been behind this particular shitshow.
I didn’t hear Gus say anything in his defense, and I had no way of seeing his reaction. Couldn’t see much of anything because the only place to hide was behind the long wooden bar itself. If I’d planned to spy on them ahead of time, I might’ve been able to come up with something more comfortable. Maybe built myself the roadhouse equivalent of a duck blind. But it’d never occurred to me to spy on a meeting before.
Ever.
I’d learned from a young age that when the Reapers were talking, it was time to disappear. Let the men do their thing and stay out of the way. That hadn’t been a winning strategy for me.
Hadn’t worked out so great for Eli, either.
If I’d gotten in the way a little more, maybe Eli wouldn’t have gone to prison. I couldn’t blame Gus for all of—
Wait.
Where the fuck did that crazy thought come from?
Of course, it wasn’t my fault. The real villain here was clearly Gus, with a possible assist from the Reapers. My heart hurt to think about it. I wanted to find an excuse for him, but Eli had been sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary.
How could Gus even look him in the eye?
Eli was innocent. I knew that for a fact, and apparently, so had Gus. And, yeah… It was great that the Reapers had hired a fancy lawyer to appeal the conviction, but Gus still owed Eli five years of his life.
Damned right, he should have to clean up his own mess.
At least now I understood why Gus was selling low to Eli. Hell, he should be giving him the Starkwood.
The tone of the meeting had changed from argument to shouting match, but I didn’t care anymore. I’d heard everything I needed to know. Now, it was time to get my ass out of there, before someone noticed me. I didn’t think I needed to be afraid of the Reapers, but I’d never dreamt that Gus would let Eli go to prison for him either.
Mom had been right—Gus wasn’t the man that either of us needed him to be. The thought twisted my heart in terrible ways, but I couldn’t deny the reality.
No. You can’t think about this right now. You need to focus on getting out and getting safe. Figure out your emotions later.
Right. Grief couldn’t hurt me if I refused to feel it.
Thankful for the noise, I slipped out from behind the bar and headed down the hallway, moving quickly. Past the office, past the storage room. Through the back door and out into the parking lot. I made it the whole way in complete silence. Then my car beeped when I unlocked it, shattering the stillness outside.
Stupid noise almost gave me a heart attack. There was usually at least one prospect stationed out front during meetings like this, to keep watch over the motorcycles. I kept expecting him to come running around the building, possibly with guns blazing.
Nobody seemed to notice, though. Lucky for me, in addition to the regular parking lot, Gus had worked some sort of deal with the national forest, and we’d gotten permission to use one of their gravel lots for employee parking.
It made for a long walk in, but tonight, I was thankful for the distance. They’d have to be watching exactly the right spot to see me pulling out. I kept my headlights off until I made it around the big bend in the highway, though. Just in case.