Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 111435 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111435 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
A bonus. Otherwise known as a payoff. A bribe. I was insulted by the fact that he felt comfortable offering one to me, assuming I must’ve looked like a woman who was comfortable taking and spending blood money.
I tilted my head ever so slightly. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
Something moved in his eyes.
“About that night,” I clarified.
“I know you’re not going to tell anyone,” he replied.
My stomach dropped. There wasn’t any warning in his words. No threat there. Confidence. Surety. I wasn’t going to tell anyone because if I tried to, they’d know.
“This isn’t about that,” Hades grumbled. It was very clear he didn’t want to be having this conversation. “This is about the club showing our gratitude for what you did.”
This was their way of saying thank you. His way of saying thank you. Without actually saying it. I wondered if it was impossible for men like him to verbally thank women like me—or women in general—for saving their asses when they were meant to be badasses who did the saving.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t like me. Because I made him feel emasculated or some such nonsense.
“You don’t need to show me gratitude,” I gritted out.
Hades’s eyes glittered. “Yes, we do.”
I bit my lip. There was iron in his tone. That was all I was going to get. Not a thank you that he was obviously incapable of giving since he was making it clear he didn’t respect me. Though he had no right not to respect me, considering he didn’t know anything about me beyond what I did for money, how I dressed, and, oh, that I was willing to help a bleeding stranger in the middle of the night.
That was his problem. His issue. This hostility had nothing to do with me. At least that’s what I was desperately trying to tell myself. This guy was an asshole, and no matter how badly I wanted to knock him down for his lack of respect and genuine gratitude, it wasn’t worth it.
I nodded. “Okay. Thank you for the offer,” I said, forcing my voice to remain even, fighting back the tears that burned behind my eyelids.
“You’ll come?”
My fingernails bit into my palms as I kept his gaze. As much as I wanted to ask him why he gave a fuck whether I was going to come or not, I kept my expression stoic.
“Sure, I’ll come,” I lied.
His eyes searched my face, as if he was measuring my words, sensing the lie. But then he nodded once and turned on his heel and left. I watched his large form retreat. Watched the reaper on the back of his cut move. Vowed that I would not get myself tangled up in the trouble connected with that cut, with a man like that. Which should’ve been easy, since he’d made it clear he wanted nothing to do with me.
HADES
She didn’t come.
Fuck if I didn’t look for her. Every fucking night.
I was a man who knew people. Considered myself pretty fucking good at reading them. Better at killing and torturing them, of course. I thought I’d read Freya Barker pretty fucking well. Tits. Ass. Hair. Legs. Face. Not necessarily in that order. I’d noticed all of this while I was bleeding from a stab wound. Because I was a man, and as the majority of the population knew, I was a hot-blooded one. And a man, bleeding from a mortal wound or not, noticed the tits, ass, hair, legs and face on Freya Barker. Lucky for mankind, she liked to show a lot of skin, and her boobs were real. Beyond the fact she was a total fucking knockout, she was somewhat of a goof, talking when she was nervous.
I’d looked into her. The club had to assess the risk. Thirty-two, no record. Father serving time for murder. Mother living in a trailer park in Missouri, working at a supermarket and maintaining a healthy alcohol and drug addiction. Grandparents on her mother’s side dead, grandparents on her father’s side in that same trailer park. The only other family was an aunt in Arizona. Phone records and social media posts showed that they were close, the only member of her family she was close with.
Freya had finished high school but didn’t go to college, left home the moment she turned eighteen, bouncing around the country ever since. Waitressing first then stripping. Earned a good living. A fucking great one, actually. Had a good amount of money in the bank, not much debt. Looked to be pretty knowledgeable about the stock market; even Wire had been impressed. Then there was the fact that she had half a fucking million subscribers to her YouTube channel. One where she talked candidly about the industry, promoted body positivity, female empowerment and makeup shit. Though I wasn’t really interested in lipstick or the perfect bikini line shave, I watched four fucking hours of her videos.