Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
The music stuttered, warped, and died, leaving only panic and the ringing aftermath of the blast.
Gage stepped through first.
Alone.
An offensive chaos of sound and scents slammed into him. Alcohol, sweat, cologne, perfumes, and heat from dozens of bodies moving.
Roz’s voice was there fast, transforming the madness into a map.
“Room depth sixteen yards. Two-tier layout. Bar to your left, ten o’clock, twenty-four feet. Pillars at two and eight o’clock, six feet. Seven hostiles clustered, eleven o’clock, sixteen feet. One stairwell, close right, a corridor, immediate left. I got eyes on your target. Scar’s dead ahead, ninety feet.”
Gage tightened his grip on his cane.
Then he heard him. His voice, was rough and deep, cutting through the noise.
“It’s about damn time.”
White Ravens
Scar
The hardwood floor shuddered when the doors blew apart.
Scar felt the impact through the chair he was taped to, felt it in his teeth, in the bruised joints of his shoulders where his wrists were secured behind him.
The room erupted. People swore. Others screamed and scampered toward the back, hungry for violence but scared of being near it when it turned real.
Ravens.
He knew his brothers would come.
He braced for Meridian, for black coats, for slaughter, for the kind of brutality he knew they’d deliver, the kind that lacked mercy.
Then he saw him.
Gage stood in the decimated doorway—so fucking ethereal and still—like a figure cut out of moonlight.
All white fatigues, a knee-length coat with an oversized hood shadowing his face. Silver-rimmed glasses with tech lenses enhancing the dim lighting.
Scar’s heart dropped to his bound feet.
He bucked against the chair, and his shoulders screamed in protest, but he ignored it. Pain was background noise. The only thing that mattered was getting Gage out of there.
The crowd surged, pushing away from the doorway, making room for the show they’d accidentally bought tickets to.
Scar’s old crew—assholes he’d once ruled with an iron fist—stared as if they couldn’t decide if the intruder was a joke or a real threat.
The new king growled from somewhere behind him. “Yo, who the fuck is that?”
Gage didn’t move, but he spoke as if his patience had a limit.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said evenly. “I’m only here to take back what belongs to me. Release Scar, and I’ll leave peacefully.”
Scar blinked slowly. Peacefully!
For a thin, selfish second, he wished Jo had sent Meridian. Wished the place was already a morgue, and he didn’t have to sit there and listen to Gage offer compassion to men who didn’t deserve it.
He wanted to shout at Gage to get out…but he didn’t.
If the Kings knew what the man in white meant to him and wanted to really punish him, they’d open fire and make him watch.
Gage looked too beautiful to be taken seriously by these thugs. Worse, he didn’t look blind, helpless, or like a threat.
His cane was collapsed to baton-sized in his right hand and another similar-looking baton was clutched in his left.
“Belongs to you?” the new king scoffed, already sounding stunned and disgusted.
He flicked his hand at his enforcers as if he were swatting flies. “Get this motherfucker outta here. Take him around back.”
Scar ground his teeth so hard his jaw popped.
Five muscle-heavy bastards with all brawn instead of brains closed in.
Before Scar could react and do something stupid—like holler for Gage to run— Gage reached behind him, pulled something from his back pocket, crouched, and flung his hand outward in a wide sweeping motion.
Small crystal-looking beads scattered across the hardwood floor like spilled stars, forming a loose perimeter around him.
The first boot that touched one released a slight pop.
Another step. Pop.
Gage’s cane snapped out to its full length—six feet of reach locking into place.
One end had a razor-pointed tip, and the other was blunt and weighted, that was meant for destruction, not lethality.
In his other hand, the baton lit up with a blue-white electrical current.
Gage executed a three-sixty turn, building momentum as he met the first man with the long cane, striking him in the knee.
A sickening, bone-chilling crack sounded before he dropped with a primal scream of agony.
The second enforcer was already mid-rush as Gage pivoted toward the popping beads and stabbed the rod into the man’s ribs. The shock made him convulse violently before it shut him down. Collapsing him with his mouth open and eyes wide.
The third came in swinging, and Gage dodged him as if he were light work.
He dipped and drove the blunt end of the cane up under the jawline, clean and vicious, snapping thug’s head back, before he dropped to the ground, bloodied and unconscious, but still very much alive.
More beads popped like knuckles cracking, rapid little reports that drew a grid and turned the enforcers steps into mistake.
The next one tried to use his heft to rush and tackle.
Gage sidestepped him as if he were an annoying obstacle and struck him in his gut with the blunt end of his cane before he shot it upward and shattered his chin. In the same breath, he twisted his wrist and struck him again in the right jaw.