Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
And no story was more cautionary than the one about V.
The vicious skin trader.
The woman who snatched women off the streets, and sold them out to be raped until they were no longer useful.
The woman who kidnapped and tortured her own daughter to get ownership of the shipping containers her father controlled, so she could import even more women.
Reign's wife.
Summer.
If you had been around long enough, you would have even seen the scars across her back from the knives they used on her.
The Henchmen, Richard Lyon, and Hailstorm had teamed up to storm her place, got Summer out, taken out her men, and imprisoned V because Lyon had some twisted urge to control the woman.
She was a big part of the reason we needed to watch the Lyon - now Abruzzo - compound after Richard was gunned down.
She was a loose end.
She was a war starter.
And she had way too much time to sit and think about how she would like to make The Henchmen pay for what they did to her.
Starting with me.
I knew enough about the game now to know she didn't want me. I was a stepping stone, a way for her to get a leg up. She would work her way all the way to the top.
Except she was relying on one thing.
Our willingness to turn on one another.
She clearly had never known actual loyalty in her business.
How could you, when all you gave a fuck about was yourself?
"So, you're a new face," V said after a scuffle that had me in the back of a waiting SUV with blackout windows.
I pulled the edge of my lip into my mouth to stem the flow of blood from the bleeding split there. And said nothing.
Saying nothing was my plan.
It would piss her off.
It would put me in a world of pain as they tried to extract information. But it would also bide me time for the guys to find me. A couple hours, that was all I needed. True, more than half of the guys were out of town, but the ones left were nothing to snub your nose at. And I was sure they had Hailstorm called already. Janie and Alex would be all over finding me via the security cameras outside of Chaz's. The Mallicks were friendleys; they would hand over the footage in a second.
It was just a matter of time, I reminded myself as I was thrown out of the car and led into one of the many abandoned buildings in the area, flanked by her guards who already had some of my blood on their hands.
I might have resigned myself to being questioned and tortured for a while, but that didn't mean I went willingly when they finally moved in.
But there were two of them and one of me.
I knew how it was going to go as soon as I had lunged at the first one.
Still, it felt good to have some of their blood on my knuckles as well.
The inside of the building was testament to how poorly the cops patrolled these old, empty buildings. The floors were littered with the expected dirt, leaves, bits of crumbling wall, but also empty beer cans and bottles, old condom foils, food wrappers, and, if I wasn't mistaken, what seemed to be some used needles over in a corner. The walls were all tagged to varying degrees of talent. And there was a very distinct ammonia smell that likely meant some nest of animals was calling this home - bathroom and all.
It looked like the kind of place you would take someone to beat them.
I was led through the back to what appeared to be some sort of storage room with old, rusted metal shelves lining one wall, and no windows.
"Have a seat," V invited as one of her men dug up an old metal folding chair that made an ear-splitting shriek as he pulled it open.
A shove at my shoulder had me going forward a foot before I moved toward the chair, sitting down, head angled to the side, watching the woman who looked pretty damn good for just getting out of a cell just a couple days before.
It was clear that, while The Henchmen and Hailstorm had decimated her compound as well as her ranks, that this woman was a shrewd boss. She didn't have all her cash stashed in one location.
I didn't know much about fashion, but I would bet my left eye that her whole outfit set her back at least ten grand.
She had money.
Lots of it.
And, judging by the things I had heard about V over the years, she hadn't just gone shopping. I would bet the woman already had herself a new home base, and that these two men weren't her only lackeys. I bet that she hadn't slept. I bet that every moment of her day was her building her empire back again.