Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
My body was rigid with tension as I waited for King’s verdict. Without his approval, I'd have to handle this alone. King’s word was law here—he held tight control over every aspect of club operations. Some would call his approach obsessive, but I saw it differently. By requiring every decision to flow through him, our prez made sure any consequences fell directly on his shoulders, while we all shared every victory.
He'd never forced our loyalty. He'd proven himself worthy of it time and again. We trusted him completely, knowing without question that he’d always have our backs. Because of the trust between us, King allowed us the freedom and independence we needed in critical situations. He had an instinct for recognizing when one of us required space and autonomy to handle our own shit. It wasn’t just about giving us room—it was his way of silently communicating his belief in us. That quiet confidence strengthened the entire club, making us more capable, effective, and united.
After a minute filled with loaded silence, King leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I agree. Club’ll have her back. Get Wizard in the loop. Bring him everything you know. Names, details, discrepancies. If there’s smoke, he’ll find the fire.”
I nodded once. “On it.”
“Keep her close, Tomcat,” King ordered. “And watch your six. This kind of cover-up doesn’t stay buried unless someone really fucking powerful wants it hidden.”
“I know.” I straightened, determination burning through me. “I’ll keep her safe.”
King held my gaze steadily, his silence stretching for a moment as he considered everything I'd laid out. Behind those sharp eyes, I could practically see the wheels turning. Blaze noticed it, too. He glanced over at King, catching some unspoken cue, and gave a slight nod, clearly already aligned with whatever our prez was thinking.
“Tomcat.” King’s deep voice finally broke the heavy silence. “You thought about the other options we have available to keep her safe?”
I felt my jaw tighten, suspicion pricking the back of my neck. “Meaning?”
Blaze leaned against the bookshelf again, folding his arms casually as he chimed in, “Meaning, the Hounds could step in and handle it with what we do best.”
I knew exactly what Blaze was referring to.
The Hounds of Hellfire had several legitimate businesses, and our treasurer, Ace, was a fucking genius when it came to money. His mad skills in the stock market and investments helped to keep the club flush.
But our core income stream was making people disappear. We weren’t contract killers, but we absolutely “killed” identities. And we were fucking rock stars at it. WITSEC was child’s play compared to our identity erasure and relocation network, especially since we weren’t hampered by government shit.
We had a reputation—earned and whispered in shadowed corners. Our hands reached into every sphere. Some legal, others dipping into a deep, dark gray. Justice, for us, wasn't dictated by broken bureaucracies. The lines drawn by flawed legal systems never meant much to us, especially when they were the only thing keeping innocent people in danger.
We gave new lives to those who needed an escape. It began as a few favors, grew into lucrative operations, and became a significant portion of the club’s income. Not everyone was required to pay. Sometimes circumstances made it necessary to intervene for free, but we never advertised that fact. It stayed hidden, a guarded secret so we wouldn’t have unscrupulous assholes trying to screw us over.
Many of the patches in the club had unique skills that lent themselves perfectly to our operation. King had been a CIA operative before the MC and was a master forger. He gave us clean document trails. Ace took care of financial ghosting. Our club lawyer, Ash, handled legal insulation. Our resident tech genius, Wizard, could create or scrub anything digital. And the list went on.
Within the operation, my role was precision movement and risk architecture. I ensured physical relocations left no trace. Airspace, radar patterns, flight tracking systems, and security protocols—I navigated complexities that most people couldn’t fathom existed. My expertise wasn’t flashy midnight runs; it was designing routes invisible to audits, establishing plausible travel histories, and knowing precisely when air travel was the safest option or a dangerous risk. I specialized in extracting targets under surveillance, even internationally, without leaving a whisper of our involvement.
But my contributions went beyond mere transportation. Along with a few of the other guys, I was a risk modeler and a contingency architect. We predicted how investigations unfolded, anticipated how military and federal agencies cross-referenced their data, and identified pressure points months before they emerged. If any of our disappearances risked unraveling under scrutiny, we saw it first and built redundancy after redundancy to ensure that never happened.
Blaze wasn’t talking about simple protection. He was suggesting we make Linden disappear.
At that realization, a wave of instinctive fury surged through me. “No fucking way, I’m not putting her on the other side of the fucking planet and crossing my fingers. She’s not going anywhere out of my sight.”