Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 115933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Our entrance to the hallway caught her attention and her wary wolf eyes snapped to mine. “Styx!” she screamed. “STYX!”
Work. Speak. Come on. Just talk. Anything. One word. Only one word. A sound. Something… FUCK! I tensed my chest as I tried to push the words up my throat. I could feel them lurking, mocking me, but they just wouldn’t come.
The two shits holding me were towing me past Mae so quickly I couldn’t get the words out in time. I couldn’t speak to my woman. Reassure her. I couldn’t help her. I was choking.
Choking.
“Jacob. Do it!” I heard Rider order. Planting my feet to the ground, I managed to turn just in time to see Jacob plunge a huge needle into Mae’s arm.
“Never… never… forgive you,” Mae mumbled as she fell unconscious, the pain of her tone mirrored in Rider’s face. Within a few short seconds, Mae was gone and I was being pushed down the stairs and out the door into the yard, the summer night sticky and too humid to fuckin’ breathe.
“Gate!” Moses commanded. Noah nodded and we halted at the front gate. One of the bastards reached behind me to cut my hand ties. Taking advantage of this brief freedom, I swung my fists into their ugly faces, one by one, only to be tackled to the ground from behind.
“Stay the fuck down,” a deep voice threatened.
Rider.
“Tie him up,” Rider ordered. I was lifted off the ground and spread out against the metal bars of the gate. My wrists were bound to the sides and my muscles burned with the movement. Finally, my feet were tied together at the ankles with cable.
I laughed internally at the messed-up position they had me in. Nice touch… Jesus-lovin’ pricks.
My fingers stretched and curled, but I couldn’t get free. And then Jacob arrived, holding a towel to his neck, blood drenching the cloth. I smiled until Rider looked my way.
“She secure?” He checked.
Mae.
“She’s secure,” Jacob replied, glowering my way.
Rider stared just a touch too long at Jacob. His eyes tightened just a second too long. If Brother Cain loved Mae as much as he claimed he did, he’d scalp that sadistic fucker for raping her… for years and years of sadistic abuse. If Rider didn’t come through, I’d make sure I got my fuckin’ revenge someday. This time nothing on Earth would stop me from finding Mae. She was fuckin’ everything to me. Some messed-up cult weren’t taking her away.
“All of you go wait in the van,” Rider demanded. The men slipped on their balaclavas and left us the hell alone.
I stretched my neck back to the yard and caught sight of a blacked-out Ford van. No plates. No distinguishing features. Nothing for me to locate it with.
Mae was in the back, unconscious, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move to save my woman.
“Styx.”
Hearing my name, I turned my attention back to Rider, who had moved ’round and now stood before me. The fucker looked relieved… like he’d finally won.
“She caused this by choosing you, y’know.” My jaw clenched and I tasted my own blood as my gums began to bleed with the pressure. “I mean, what the hell does she see in you? The way she watches you. The way she’s obsessed with you. It’s completely alien to me.”
I almost couldn’t breathe as he talked about my woman. Shit. She did want me. Hell, she loved me, and this asshole couldn’t take it.
Rider punched me in the face, my head blowing to the side as a result. The brother had one hell of a right hook. “It’s time for you to listen, brother.” My eyes narrowed.
“For years I’ve had to put up with a shitload of sinful acts and the pure evil poison of this brotherhood: the brothers fucking anything that moved, killing for kicks, drinking, turning against the Lord. I earned your friendship, your trust. All the time, I despised you and the rest of the sinners in this chapter. What you didn’t see is that The Order acquired a lucrative contract several years ago. A contract for a whole lotta guns, guns to give us revenue to expand our… commune. It was gonna take a few years to set up. But that was good. We needed a few years to scope the market, get to know our competitors. We shipped weapons in from Gaza, top-grade shit. But someone was already on our turf: you.
“The plan was real simple: infiltrate the Hangmen, move through the ranks, and shoot the intel back to Prophet David and the elders. And I did. Did it to damn near perfection. It was us who undercut the Russian deal—I told them the details—began to phase the Hangmen outta the gun game. We got better guns. Russians had no complaints. Your old man going to the boatman was just the icing on the cake. I mean, his young kid, a mute bastard, taking the gavel? Putty in our fuckin’ hands.
“It was us who put the bid on your head with the Nazis. Pit eventually took the fall. It weren’t too hard to make you think the prospect was corrupt—like taking candy from a baby. But then Mae turned up, bleeding out. Everything changed for me. The whole fuckin’ game changed.”
Rider stroked his brown beard and a smirk appeared on his lips. I made a silent promise to myself to cut off Rider’s head and mount it on my wall, a trophy to smirk back at every day for the rest of my life. I’d never wanted to maim and kill a motherfucker so much. I wanted him to feel pain… lots of pain, so much pain that’d he’d beg me to end him.
“I didn’t know who Mae was at first.” He continued.
I tried my best to refocus. Anything he said could be useful. I needed to listen to every damn word out of this traitor’s brainwashed mouth.
“I’d never seen her before. I was kept away from the commune, kept away to study The Order’s leadership, study our teachings… study medicine, and learn how to heal. I was to be secluded until called upon to ascend. Things changed, though, and I was given a different mission: to infiltrate the Hangmen. I’d lived outside of commune, knew about life. I was the obvious choice to fit in with an outlaw MC.