Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40297 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40297 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
That pissed me off more than anything else. Not because I expected loyalty for loyalty’s sake. They weren’t even on one of Kane’s teams, they were solo drivers—self represented. And underground racing wasn’t built on sentiment.
What made me truly furious was that these dumb assholes were risking their lives for slightly bigger payouts on a track that looked like it wanted to kill somebody before midnight.
Racer adjusted the brim of his ball cap slightly, his eyes scanning the crowd while Midnight lingered beside him with the easy posture of someone who knew exactly how to disappear into a room. Which was definitely a superpower of his. Midnight ran a security company and had a background that most of us knew nothing about. Just that he was a lethal motherfucker who would have you in the ground before you even knew he was hunting you.
Both Iron Rogues wore hidden earpieces, feeding information to the rest of us who stayed back in the shadows, spread out around the edge of the yard.
“Fucking hell,” Midnight muttered quietly through comms. “These idiots don’t even have spotters on the blind corners.”
“They got ambulances?” Gauge asked dryly.
Racer snorted. “They have a guy with duct tape and a cooler full of beer. Think that’s their whole medical plan.”
Rev cursed softly under his breath, and I folded my arms tighter across my chest, my jaw locked hard enough to ache.
Racer drifted deeper into the crowd, talking to drivers, crew guys, and bettors like he belonged there. Which he did. Racer was one of the best underground drivers alive, and everybody in this world knew his reputation. He could walk into almost any legal or illegal race in the South without people questioning it.
A few minutes later Racer’s voice crackled quietly through comms again. “Son of a bitch. The amount of wrecks from these races is scary as fuck. These bastards already had three major wrecks in the past month. One guy broke both legs. Another rolled his car and caught fire. Last one is still in the hospital.”
“Any deaths?” Edge asked flatly.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Racer answered. “But it’s only a matter of time.”
My stomach tightened. This wasn’t just somebody skimming money off our territory anymore. This setup was eventually going to leave bodies behind.
Midnight shifted closer to one of the betting groups while Racer casually worked another cluster of drivers near the staging area. I watched him smoothly work his way into conversations, dropping names, laughing occasionally, and letting people relax around him.
Then something shifted. I saw it immediately.
“Shit,” I grunted.
One of the organizers—a thick-necked jackass in a black tank top—started watching Racer too closely. There was suspicion in his eyes instead of casual curiosity.
Racer’s voice came low through comms. “You see him?”
“Yeah,” Gauge confirmed quietly from remote surveillance.
The guy approached Racer slowly, arms crossed, his expression hard. Even from this distance, I could feel the tension tightening. Midnight drifted subtly closer but didn’t interfere. Racer stayed relaxed while the guy spoke to him, leaning lazily against his ride—a car he’d borrowed from Edge. Much to Kane’s frustration.
We called it Reaper's Edge.
He’d custom built it himself. A Frankenstein mix of outlawed parts: a McLaren carbon fiber frame, modified Hellcat twin-charged V8, and his custom gear-shift override. It had illegal mods too. No limiter, manual override of traction systems, stripped down to the bones. It even ran on a proprietary fuel mix he’d invented that added speed and risk in equal measure.
Nobody had ever raced it but our VP. Kane had even banned it from the official circuit—claiming it was to keep up Edge’s life expectancy. The car was too fast and too unpredictable.
It had taken some serious convincing to get Edge to let Racer use his ride. And even more for Kane to agree. But it was the smart play. Made Racer fit into this crowd even more by appearing to be a little reckless—hence his willingness to race in a pop-up like this.
The guy eventually walked away, and Racer’s voice came through again, quieter this time. “They’re wondering why I showed up but didn’t enter.”
“Walk,” I replied immediately. “We’ll find another angle.”
“No,” Racer disagreed. “You know I gotta race, or it’ll blow this operation.”
I swore under my breath and heard several other murmured curses from the group.
“You know they know who I am. My reputation,” he continued calmly. “And showing up with this ride…if I leave now, they’ll smell something’s off. We lose the race, the crowd, and the organizers. Whole thing disappears before we can pin it down again.”
“Racer—” I started.
“He’s right,” Edge cut in through comms from the clubhouse. “But you put one fucking scratch on my ride, and you’ll never satisfy your wife again.”
I hated it. Because I knew they were both right. But this track was a fucking death trap and I wouldn’t want anyone—except maybe the fuckers who built it—racing on it.