Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 133855 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133855 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
“No,” he shot out. “Plan to keep it that way.”
It sounded of his own threat.
“And you were…” I trailed off.
“Dealing with her,” he supplied.
I blinked, searching his face, trying to understand.
“Some people are driven by greed, Kitten. Throw a little money at it, and the problem disappears.”
I dropped my attention to the worn table to gather myself.
Right.
Okay.
“You paid her off…to stay away from Gage?” I clarified as I looked up.
He stared across at me, needing to see how I’d react. “Once a year. She gets the money, I get the kid. We both get what we want. It’s a win/win.”
Except his voice was disdain. Hostility and hate.
“She doesn’t care about him? Want to see him?”
Trent scoffed out a contemptuous laugh. “She doesn’t care about anything but herself. She plays it off, asking questions like she’s concerned about how he is, but the second she gets the money, she’s gone.”
Sadness blanketed my spirit. Unable to fathom it. The idea of turning my back on my child. To me, it was the greatest gift that could be given.
Trent must have mistaken it as my judging him because he draped his arms over the back of the booth, way too casual considering his voice was a low crush of animosity. “Don’t worry, Kitten, she was the first to draw the knife. Blade’s still in my back.”
“She hurt you.” It wasn’t a question.
He laughed, zero amusement in the sound, the words shards when he grated, “She fuckin’ destroyed me, Eden.”
I blanched. Jealousy thick. Something I had no right to but couldn’t keep from slithering like poison beneath the surface of my skin.
He felt it, those eyes on me, consuming me in their truth. “Not in the way you’re thinking. She betrayed me. Sold me out. At the last minute, she got scared and tried to backpedal, but not before it cost my brother’s life.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, unprepared for that. I blinked, trying to read through the lines and terrified to see.
But his grief and guilt were all that I could see. The way those dark eyes dimmed, and his jaw clenched tight, sorrow bound with the rage, the two together becoming something vicious and vile.
A metal rope that twisted and twisted, chains that bound him in misery.
An eternity of it.
So deep and vast I felt as if I was going under, sucked beneath the waves of despair that radiated from his being.
“Your brother?” I choked over the words, trying to make sense but fearful of pushing it. Of pushing him. But that was why we were here, wasn’t it?
“There were four of us, now there’s three.” His teeth ground as he forced out the explanation. “Nathan.”
He broke at that. The word a barb of love and loss.
Those fierce eyes dropped closed when he whispered, “He was my twin.”
My entire body pitched with the impact.
“Oh, Trent…I’m so sorry.”
The owl on his throat tremored when he swallowed. “The best of us. Always giving and giving. He got in the middle of what I thought was supposed to have just been another job, only turned out this one’s end purpose was to take me out.”
It left him like a confession. The man might as well have been on his knees praying for forgiveness with the guilt that oozed from his flesh. With the horror and the shame.
I wanted to reach out and touch him. Hold him. Tell him I understood. That I’d lost so many of the ones I cared most about, too.
All while the undercurrent of what he’d said swirled around my feet. Dragging me out into the depths of who he was. A place where I couldn’t stand or swim or call out for help.
A job.
A job. I knew what he’d meant because normal jobs didn’t leave people dead.
His chin lifted in challenge. “You can stop looking at me like you’re surprised, Eden. Already told you I’m no good. Left behind a life that you don’t wanna know about.”
Milly was suddenly there, allowing me the respite of a breath as she set our plates in front of us, a mountain of biscuits and gravy and eggs and sausage.
“Anything else?” she rushed, shifting on her feet, feeling the strain that blistered between us.
“No, we’re fine,” Trent said, not even glancing her way.
“Thank you, Milly,” I mumbled through a trembling voice, wary as I peeked back at Trent when she disappeared.
I could only take one bite of food before I set my fork aside, my brow curling when I hedged, “The tattoo…”
I let my gaze dip to the words forever imprinted on his chest.
“Was my way of life before I came here.”
“You were a biker.”
Like, a biker, biker. Like the 1% kind that lived outside the law? That’s what they labeled themselves, right? How they were distinguished from everyone else?
Set apart.
A prideful title claiming they did horrible things.