 by Sheridan Anne.jpg)
Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 106292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Death was my fate.
But I’ve never been one to follow the rules.
Zade, Cross, Dalton, and Sawyer stormed into my life with their cocky grins and bad attitudes. And for a while, I believed they were going to protect me. But nothing could prepare me for what’s to come.
I need to run, need to get away from Empire, but there’s nowhere I can go where they won’t find me.
Everywhere I look, every step I take, there’s someone ready to use me for their own sick agendas.
I’m not safe in this world I was destined to rule.
The secrets. The lies. The backstabbing betrayals.
I’m not cut out for this.
They have me right where they want me, my back against the wall.
But I haven’t made it this far to give up so easily.
Especially now I’ve got my finger on the trigger.
I’ve found my ace and am not afraid to play it.
And what’s best . . . they’ll never see me coming.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
OAKLEY
Zade DeVil is a raging cunt.
If he ever felt the overwhelming need to eat my ass, I wouldn’t hesitate to let out a little fart right into that motherfucker’s face. And I hope the asshole gets pink eye. Actually, he deserves a shitload more than a bad case of pink eye. He deserves a life of misery for what his bullshit Empire has put me through. He deserves to share in my fate—his heart torn right out of his fucking chest.
I’m. His. Sacrifice. A pawn used in Empire’s sick fucking games.
If I had known this was the shit waiting for me in Faders Bay, I never would have returned. But something tells me that no matter where I was in the world, he would have found me. Zade won’t rest until it’s my heart served up on a fucking platter.
Since the moment I got here, Zade and his crew of loyal assholes have done everything in their power to haunt me. They stalked me through the streets, watched me as I worked, and didn’t allow me out of their sight for one fucking second. I’d understand it if they were the overbearing jealous boyfriend types, always needing to keep tabs on their girl, but that’s not it at all.
I’m their target. Their fucking game. Zade’s one-way ticket to claiming the power of Empire—a society which should rightfully be mine.
They made me into a fool. I was their puppet with strings welded to my body like cast iron cuffs. They led me right into their trap, and I followed them blindly.
Never again.
I clench my jaw as I grip the small piece of paper, rolling the weathered note between my fingers. It’s a stark reminder of Empire’s brutal betrayal.
I’ve memorized every fucking word.
One cannot flourish in the power of Empire without first giving his soul.
A sacrifice to be made, an innocent life to be lost.
In sixty suns and sixty moons, he shall sacrifice an innocent in the hour before dawn.
Her still-beating heart carved from her body, he shall offer it to the sacred fortress.
For this is his offering to his Empire. This is his sacred ritual to bind him in blood.
Like I said, Zade DeVil is a raging cunt.
What kind of fucked-up bullshit is this anyway? Who just decides they’re gonna find a girl and tear her heart out of her chest so they can offer it up to their people for power? I mean, fuck. I’ve heard of some messed-up culty shit over the years, but it’s always in movies or on true crime documentaries, not in real life. And it especially does not happen to me. I’m supposed to graduate college and make a life for myself.
Instead, I’m sitting here in Empire’s darkened prison cell, across from a man who I thought was dead.
My father.
Matthias Quinn.
The man was killed when I was eight years old in the line of duty. He was a fireman, and up until an hour ago, I thought this was all true.
Empire took him away from me. I was told my father was dead, and I was sent to live with my aunt in Missouri as the ghost of my father haunted me. I grieved for him. Cried for the father I’d lost, and I fought my way out of the darkness in the hope of trying to have some kind of semblance of a real life. He was my best friend, and I was the apple of his eye. All of it was taken in an instant.
If I’d known he was down here in the putrid cells of Empire this whole time . . . fuck. Twelve years stolen from him, and all for what? Being the bastard child of the DeVil legacy, the real heir of Empire?
This world is callous and cruel. A place where broken souls come to die.
Fuck, if this is what this place does to its sole living blood heir, then I don’t want anything to do with it. Though, I suppose what I want doesn’t matter. The second Zade gets his hands on me, I’m all but dead. My only hope is that whoever locked me up in this cell has enough of a brain not to utter a single word to Zade. Only one question remains now; would I rather die quickly by Zade’s hand or rot in this cell until my dying day?
Fuck those options.
I’m not ready to lay down and die here, and I’m definitely not going to let Zade get his hands on me without a fight. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to save myself, even if it means killing the bastard who wants me dead.
My ass quickly grows numb on the cold concrete, and I drop my head into my hands, trying to figure out how the hell this became my life. One minute, I thought I was getting railed within an inch of my life by the intriguing stranger I met outside of my apartment complex, and the next thing I know, I’m wrapped up in this bullshit.