Total pages in book: 266
Estimated words: 250787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1254(@200wpm)___ 1003(@250wpm)___ 836(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 250787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1254(@200wpm)___ 1003(@250wpm)___ 836(@300wpm)
I wish I could stop time like that. Make the world halt while we look for him, but it doesn’t work that way. Instead, the seconds slip through our fingers like sand. Every minute he’s gone is another we can’t get back.
Saint, Kashton, and Adam have been fighting for I don’t know how long now. Ashtyn hasn’t moved from the wall that she clings to. Gavin hasn’t spoken since he revealed the truth of what happened.
“What about her?” Kashton says over the ringing in my ears.
“What about Charlotte?” Adam barks.
“How do we know that she’s not part of this?”
“N-o.” My voice cracks. I would never. “I chose him over the Lords,” I add as everyone glares at me. Mine find Adam’s. “Ask him. He’ll tell you.” Adam was at the house; I didn’t tell him the specifics, but I’m sure Haidyn did. They’re close.
“What the fuck is she talking about?” Saint demands, turning to face him.
Adam runs a hand through his hair and sighs. His silence makes me nervous, and I get to my feet. “The Lords wanted me to hand Haidyn over to them. And I didn’t,” I rush out.
“You’re working for the Lords?” Kashton growls.
Shit! “No. Adam, tell them…please.” I beg him. He has to know that I’d never hurt my husband.
“It’s a long story,” Adam says, and I take a step back when Saint turns to face me.
“Last time an outsider was in Carnage, they had a bomb inside of them. I don’t put anything past her bitch of a mother. I say we cut her open.”
“What?” I shriek. “No. I’d never—”
“Why waste such a pretty thing?” Kashton interrupts me. “Let’s search her.” His eyes drop to my shoes and then run up over my body, making my panic rise even more. “Strip her naked and hold her down. I’ll look.”
I’d beg them not to if I could speak. I can’t even catch my breath right now.
“What the fuck, Kash?” Ashtyn pushes off the wall to step forward. “Absolutely not. Saint…” She looks at him, and his hard eyes meet hers. “No—”
“She’s not a threat!” Adam shouts, placing his hands out and moving to stand in front of me. I reach up and grip the back of his T-shirt, holding on for dear life. “You’re not fucking touching her.”
“Until she proves she’s innocent, I’m with Kash,” Saint states.
“I love him,” I say defensively.
Saint snorts, and Adam turns around. Prying my hands from his shirt, he helps me to sit down on the couch.
“Her phone,” Kashton announces.
My shoulders shake, knowing there’s nothing on it that will prove my love for Haidyn because I have no proof that I didn’t do this. All the emails I’ve been sent from the Lords were immediately deleted. There’s nothing to prove my loyalty to him. The only things I have on my phone regarding Haidyn are the videos and pictures he would send me after he fucked me.
I’m about to say I don’t even have my phone with me when Kashton pulls it out of his pocket. I guess he grabbed it when he picked up Haidyn’s ring and phone.
I swallow the taste of vomit once again. Not only have I lost my husband but now I’m also going to be stripped naked, cavity searched, and thrown into a cage in their basement.
You can’t reason with Lords. Once they make up their mind, you’re just fucked. I stare at the floor silently while they go through my phone.
“Think I’ve found something,” Kashton says.
“What is it?” Saint demands.
“Haidyn.”
I jump up to my feet at Kashton’s answer. A second later, Haidyn’s voice fills the office. “Hey, doll face…”
“Haidyn?” I yank the phone from Kashton’s hands and look at the screen to see it’s a video. He’s sitting on my couch, dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans. The phone is propped up against something on the coffee table.
I place my hand over my mouth to hold in my sob at the sight of him. This was last night…when I saw my phone on the coffee table when he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my living room.
“This isn’t how I wanted to tell you goodbye. But in our life, we rarely get what we want.” A soft smile tugs at his lips. “You were my exception.”
He bows his head, his right hand twirling his wedding ring around his finger as he looks at it. “I knew that you were too good for me the moment I first saw you. That I’d never live up to the man you’d deserve. So I let you go…but when you were placed back in my life, I couldn’t stop myself.” He looks back at the phone and gives a soft smile.
Back in his life?
“I’ve done a lot of unforgivable shit in my life, but the best thing I ever did was make you my wife. I wish I could have done it differently. You deserved so much more than what I gave you. I should have gotten down on one knee and begged you to spend the rest of your life with me. I should have told you how much you changed me. That you showed me what being alive truly felt like. I always felt like I was missing something…my life was boring. Same thing over and over. And then you walked into my life with that amazing smile and when I looked into your eyes—I saw a future that I never thought existed…not for a man like me, anyway.”