Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 91622 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91622 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
And yet, here Jag was.
Dane’s man.
Dane’s hero.
His love.
“Shut up, Rob. You made your bed, now lay in it,” Dane found himself saying, even though his legs felt like stacks of cotton balls.
The moonlight revealed blood dripping down Jag’s arm, and while it was only a trickle, the new injury still made Dane irrationally angry. He might have lost Jag to the piece of shit on the ground.
He was still in shock and didn’t notice the approaching sounds at first, but eventually, voices and the screech of metal made him realize they weren’t alone and that Jag had cried out to reveal their location.
Rob proceeded to make pleading sounds, and a chill crawled up Dane’s spine when dark silhouettes appeared all around them in the faint moonlight, like a pack of hyenas circling an injured animal.
Rob’s eyes widened, and he tried twisting away but fell back to the ground with the spear firmly embedded in his abdomen. He didn’t stand a chance, and while seeing him suffer gave Dane a sense of justice, he felt queasy about having participated in whatever was to come next.
“I heard shots. Are you okay?” Frank emerged from the path ahead and approached Jag with a flashlight in hand.
“It’s a shallow wound,” Jag said with an exhausted sigh, but Frank wouldn’t give it a rest and lifted his chin, illuminating the blood on his face. “Just a few cuts. It’s a long story.”
“Oh, fuck!” Dex exclaimed, standing over Rob while Shane picked up the fallen gun with a grim expression.
“Dex! Step away from him!” Frank focused on his unruly nephew, as if he expected him to trip and stab himself on the other end of the spear.
“He’s as good as dead. What’s the harm?” Dex asked, spreading his arms as the men in leather and denim descended from all directions, weirdly silent, as if they were already in the middle of a ritual. Only the metal chains some of them wore jangled in an unknown yet menacing language.
“He’s not a dog, Dex,” Frank growled and ushered Dex away as more flashlights went on and a tall bald man with a bushy blond beard stepped into their glow with the confidence of a cop who’d spent over thirty years on the force.
“Or is he?” The biker asked in a rumbly voice and kicked the sole of Rob’s boot.
“Prez… come on, you can’t seriously believe this bunch of faggots.”
Jag stroked Dane’s arm, as if to soothe him, but while tonight’s violence would be something to unpack in the future, for now it had been inevitable. When Dane thought of the way Rob had treated him, how he’d used him with the very intention of killing him to hide the evidence of his crimes, he felt unable to see the bastard as a human being.
He just wanted him gone.
The club president chuckled and scooted next to Rob’s helpless body. “I don’t need anyone to tell me shit. We checked what you had deleted, and that’s all I needed to know. You weren’t as smart as you thought, Robbie,” he added with a pat to Rob’s cheek.
Rob froze, and the light that still glowed in his eyes died, as if extinguished by a powerful blow of air. “It… it was a mistake. I’ll disappear.”
“Nah,” the biker president said, directing his flashlight straight at Rob’s face, which made him turn away to shield his eyes. “Hammer?” He casually gestured toward the other bikers.
The moment those words left his mouth, Rob writhed like a fish thrown out of the ocean and already dying. The blade cut his flesh as he moved, causing blood to flow, so whatever he was afraid of had to be way worse than the slicing pain he was experiencing now.
Panic flooded Rob’s eyes when the bikers parted, making way for a man holding a sledgehammer across his shoulders.
The stranger’s features remained shadowed by dark hair, but his size commanded respect so absolute everyone went quiet, and Dane’s heart stopped in sudden fear that the faceless bike might turn his wrath toward him and Jag.
Rob uttered more pleas, but the prez dismissed him with a quick “shut him up” thrown toward the massive biker. In that moment, Dane knew his horror story was over.
Mouth dry from terror, he watched the stranger swing the massive hammer as if he were a character in some battle royale game. As Rob uttered a fearful sob, Jag pulled on Dane’s nape and hid Dane’s face in the warm crook of his neck.
What Dane didn’t see, he heard. Rob’s final scream was silenced when bone cracked under the heavy tool, and the gut-twisting squelch that followed suggested images of blood and brains splattered over dirt. He tried to be tough but couldn’t control his body enough to avoid trembling in Jag’s embrace. He might have been the one to push the spear into Rob’s gut, but that had been to protect his lover, and incomparable to the brutal execution taking place just a few steps away.