Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 31295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Then I’d give the key to Wizard, along with the password. One corner of my mouth lifted as I remembered that moment with my friend.
The safehouse in Hungary had been built on a former cemetery. We stumbled upon the history of the land by accident one night when we overheard a conversation while having a drink at a nearby bar. The whole thing was complete hearsay, but it amused us to believe it was true.
The graves had been robbed so often that the clergy finally dug everyone up and moved them to another, more secure resting place. Technically, they’d moved the bodies without the families’ permission, which made the land “desecrated” ground.
Hungarian is a hard as fuck language to learn, but Joseph and I had both become fluent, so I had come up with the ridiculous idea to name the safehouse with arguably the longest word in Hungarian—Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. Roughly translated, it meant “For your unholy deeds.”
I’d been young and new to my career, not yet jaded by the darkness I would become familiar with in my job. It had seemed hilarious at the time, and years later, it was a moment I often recalled when I needed to think about something other than the shit that happened in a world most people didn’t even know was all around them. Considering what was on that key, it was the perfect choice for a password.
3
STELLA
With what my dad had written about Connor, I assumed the man would also be in his fifties. The last thing I expected was to find a guy who was in his late thirties and sexy as all get-out. At six-foot-two, with tanned skin, black ink peeking out of the collar of the T-shirt stretched over his muscular chest, dark hair, a close-cropped beard, and piercing green eyes, he could easily grace the cover of any biker magazine. Their circulation would go up because women would clear the shelves every day.
His deep, raspy voice only added to the allure. Even when I thought he’d been throwing me out of his office the moment I arrived, the sound had sent a sensual shiver down my spine.
He oozed confidence and commanded a room, which made sense considering the president patch on his leather vest. I didn’t know much about motorcycle clubs, but it was easy to see why he was the man who led this one.
My dad had nailed how unwelcoming Connor would be when I got here. But what nobody could have ever guessed—even me—was my reaction to him. Dad was in enough trouble to send me across three states to find this man, and instead of asking him about the contents of the letter Dad had written him, I sat here wondering what Connor would look like naked. And how his lips would feel pressed against mine. Especially if both of us had stripped off our clothes. “Kibaszottul koncentrálj.”
Connor’s head jerked up. “You speak Hungarian?”
Nodding, I snorted. “And French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Farsi, and a touch of Mandarin.” I called myself ten types of idiot when I wanted to preen at the impressed expression on his face. “I learned Spanish first and picked it up so quickly that it became a game between my dad and me to see how many I could master. Which came in handy when I got to college because it made it easy to pick linguistics as my major.” My face heated a little when I admitted, “But I’ve found that Hungarian is the safest if I’m going to swear, especially the f-word because it’s rare to run across someone else who speaks it.”
He studied me for a moment, then tilted his head and asked, “Why do you need to focus?”
Although he’d recognized the language, I hadn’t expected him to understand exactly what I’d said. I most definitely wasn’t going to explain that I was distracted by his hotness and the fact that I'd never been so attracted to a man before…or any man. So I went with, “Because my dad is in danger. Or at least I assume he is. We need to figure out what to do to help him.”
“We aren’t going to do anything.” He tapped his finger against the letter my dad had written him. “I’m going to handle this.”
Narrowing my eyes, I opened my mouth to argue with him, but I already knew it wouldn’t do me any good. Gritting my teeth, I glared at him as I got to my feet. It figured that the first guy to bring my dormant libido to life was a giant jerk. “Fine, then I guess I’ll be going.”
“Going?” he echoed, cocking his head to the side, his expression unreadable.
“I drove for ten hours to drop that letter off to you. Now that I’ve completed the errand my dad sent me on, I need to find somewhere to crash for the night.” And to figure out how I’d find my dad without Connor’s help since I didn’t see him sharing his letter—or the contents of that digital key—with me.