Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 62569 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62569 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.
I promise. Just close your eyes.
Sleep.
It's a bad omen when the nickname for the girl you're supposed to protect is Black Widow. It's still unclear where she got it from, but I've heard the word machete and laughter thrown around way more than I'm comfortable with.
The pay is so high that my brother and I, being from the De Lange Family can't really say no.
We slide so easily into the protective unit of the Five Families that they forgot to check if we had extra knives to drive into their backs.
They have a debt to pay.
And I'm more than willing to collect it in blood—hers specifically.
I'll make her love me.
I'll make her trust me.
And when she finally gives in…
I'll make sure she knows that everything she's ever loved was destroyed by the one she gave her heart to.
She’s a living nightmare and I’m the monster she innocently invited in.
Care to play?
She thinks I’m a toy, I’ll show her I’m the master of the web and in the end, I’ll make sure she bites.
When one Family falls—another will rise.
The Rise of the De Langes
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
First Blood
“Do you have the target?”
The voice on the other end of the phone was too familiar. I’d come to hate it—almost as much as I hated myself. I didn’t believe in the cause anymore; there were too many people who would bear the brutal force of the effect.
Throat dry, I tried to keep my voice even, unfeeling, though my heart slammed uncomfortably hard against my ribs. I told myself it wasn’t regret. I lied to myself and even toyed with the idea that it was a pulled muscle or out of place rib—but I knew the reason, even my body was physically repelled by my actions.
They were wrong to do it this way. “Target secure.”
I hesitated. Let my thumb brush the blade—once. Twice. It was cold.
It wouldn’t stay that way for long. She had no idea what I was capable of, what I was supposed to do.
“Make it quick.” The voice already sounded irritated with me.
I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen the weight in my chest. “It’s my blood to spill. Mine to take.”
Not his.
“Then stop talking and do it already, you’ve been given enough chances, plus, it will earn her trust, something you need if you’re going to pull it off.”
The knife felt heavier now. Too real. I knew it would.
“The killing’s already been done,” I murmured staring at her again, allowing myself to take in her innocent smile, knowing that sharp words always followed past those lips. “Finished,” I whispered, to myself, to him. “In more ways than one.”
A laugh cracked from my throat—cold, bitter, joyless. What the hell had I become? What had I let them do to me?
Why…did it have to be her?
He joined in briefly, his laughter sinister, mine in disbelief, his voice rasped through the speaker with finality. “Make it as pretty and dramatic as her, asshole.”
I walked toward her at the same time the sacrificial lamb came up behind her. The price of his life was a million. Not much by my standards—but it would take care of his wife and two kids.
He’d been useless his entire life and now by giving it, he believed he’d be saving theirs.
He had no clue, that his son probably preferred a dad to a dollar bill, that his wife would probably blame herself and have trouble going to the grocery store or getting in the car without having a panic attack.
All because of his life.
All because he thought money meant more than love.
Money was a liar.
It said it could save.
It said it could change lives.
It said it would make everything better.
Money was a drug, one that always somehow required more of whoever possessed it.
A bead of sweat ran down his neck before he lunged for her. The precision of my knife landed directly in his carotid artery. He’d bleed out in seconds. He collapsed.
I wondered if in those seconds he wished he had said no.
I wondered if he saw his wife’s face.
His two sons.
I wondered a lot as I approached and held out my hand. “No better way to introduce myself, I guess.” I grinned at her stunned expression. “I’m your new bodyguard.”
1
RAVEN
The one where the house is filled with the ghosts and nothing but regret, the one where it burns, toils, and aches, the one where pain smiles and thrives.
Iwiped my mouth and braced the sink with my shaking hands. The taste of bile still lingered in the back of my throat. I had no choice in this. Then again, neither had he.
The haunting sound of the church organ crawled through the cracks of the small bathroom walls. If grief had a scent, I was surrounded by it. We’d had peace for so long and now it just felt like peace was the last thing I wanted. War sounded more pleasant, more distracting. I needed the darkness, the kind that made the pain feel earned. The kind that said there was a price and that I’d more than paid it over and over again. But no matter how many times I replayed the memory in my head…
It didn’t make sense. Two plus two did not equal four.
“Raven!” he’d yelled. "Get back now!”
I'd just turned when he shoved himself in front of me then collapsed against my body like a promise breaking. The back of my head hit the cement, and when I’d looked up, all I saw was the perfect blue sky.
It was a sunny day.
A day made for greatness.
He’d held my hand.
He’d promised ice cream.
Minutes later, I was covered in blood.
“Raven?” Tempest’s voice—my twin sister and other half—muffled through the bathroom door. “It’s time.”
Time.
Something I’d never have enough of.
Something I’d never get back.
Just like him. How could he be so stupid? What was my life worth without him in it? My palm hovered over my still flat stomach. “Be right there, Tempest. Give me a minute.” Or an hour. Days. Maybe just give me a grave deep enough to jump into, as long as it’s next to his.