Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Fuck.
I need that bottle of Jack.
“What are you doing awake, anyway?” I ask. “Wait, don’t tell me that gorgeous bride of yours has been keeping you up for all the right reasons. Because I might just shoot myself in the face right here. You’re an ugly sonofabitch; doesn’t seem right you got the best girl in the world.”
I love Belle like a sister. And I love teasing Beast and getting him worked up. But if anyone else spoke about his queen that way, he’d cut out their tongue and make them swallow it. I only get away with it because he knows I would never disrespect him or his wife. Tonight’s attempt at teasing is weak though, because damn, I don’t feel right.
I need to shake myself out of this mood.
“You know I’m not a kiss and tell kind of guy,” he says by way of shutting me up.
That’s when I think about another reason he might still be awake. “Lucy’s okay?”
Lucy is Beast’s daughter. Or, more importantly, my goddaughter. The gorgeous little monster loves her Uncle Lars. At nine months old, she already has great taste.
“She’s sound asleep. Which is where we should be.” His dark eyes roam my face. He’s concerned because I’m acting weird and he can pick up on it. He’s like some psychic bloodhound. “What you did tonight, that piece of shit got what he deserved. But if it runs deeper than that, then you and me should talk.”
“I know he had to pay, and I was happy to be the one to do it.”
He doesn’t know just how much I made Eugene pay.
“Then what’s eating at you?”
They were two innocent sixteen-year-old girls.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m peachy.”
Beast gives me a pointed look. “The fact you just said peachy tells me something isn’t right.”
To ease his suspicion, I give him one of my shit-eating smiles. The one that has gotten me out of a lot of situations in my thirty-four years. “It’s two a.m. Your head is fucking with you, brother. I’m feeling good. Feeling satisfied. We gave those girls justice tonight, and I don’t regret any of it.”
He doesn’t look convinced. But that’s Beast. It takes a lot more than a couple of sentences to ease his suspicions.
But he nods and doesn’t press it. “Get some sleep.”
I give him a wink, and he walks off. I watch him bound up the grand staircase to the second level where the bedrooms are before I continue toward the clubhouse bar.
Inside, it’s empty and still, and lit only by moonlight. The silvery light cuts into the room through an ornate leadlight window on the back wall.
Once upon a time, it was the grand ballroom of the castle. But now it’s where the Knights like to party. Taking up one wall is a long timber bar with rows and rows of glass shelves behind it, every inch taken up with a bottle of liquor. Whiskey. Bourbon. Tequila. You name it, we have it in abundance.
After taking a bottle of Jack from the shelf, I grab a glass tumbler from the drying racks and take a seat at the bar. I pour myself a decent shot, throwing it back and relishing the burn as it carves its way through my chest.
But it does nothing to calm the uneasy feeling in my gut. So I pour another. And then another.
I have a feeling it’s going to take a few tonight.
I remove my wallet from the breast pocket of my cut and flip it open. Tucked neatly inside is a photo folded in half. My guts twist when I unfold it and see the sweet smiling faces of Carina and Beth looking back at me. I’ve looked at this photo a million times leading up to tonight. But this will be the last time.
There’s a half-full packet of cigarettes on the bar. They’ll be Sticky’s for sure. He’s always leaving his cigarettes somewhere and then wonders why he can never find them.
Stealing one, I reach for the Zippo lighter in my pocket and light it, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs as I look at the photo of the two girls, silently telling them goodbye. Then, holding the corner of the photo over the lit Zippo, I watch the flame devour the photo and the cinders drop to the floor.
I was twenty-five when I became the enforcer of this club, and in that time, I’ve taken thirteen lives. Lives of men who didn’t deserve to take one more breath. Sometimes I wait for the guilt to set in, but it never does. Maybe because the men were evil and deserved what they got. Or maybe I’m just a psychopath and I don’t have a conscience. I don’t know, I gave up trying to figure it out years ago.