Jinx was strictly a friend—the only real friend I’d ever had. She was a gorgeous, but despite what Grady refused to believe, I harbored no secret desire for her.
I stood watching them discuss my pros and cons as if I wasn’t in the room, shutting them both down when I couldn’t take it anymore.
“It doesn’t matter what either of you thinkssheshould or shouldn’t do, becausesheis going to do whatever the fuckshewants.”
They stopped going back and forth and stared at me with slightly open mouths.
“The Savages isn’t a gang of gentlemen trying to do the world a favor. They live by their own code. This isn’t the goddamn boy scouts we’re talking about!” Tito preached, throwing his hands up in frustration. “They’re outcasts. They’re undesirables. They’re sick in the fucking head.”
He wasn’t saying anything I’d never heard before. Quite honestly, it sounded like he was describingme.
“No one wants to do this world favors, T, and I don’t blame them. It’s a real fucked up place to live.”
He opened his mouth to respond, promptly snapping it shut, unable to refute what I had just said. We lived in a world where the human race had no humanity, were merely animals who hadn’t been taught how to behave.
There was a place referred to as The Kingdom. Supposedly, the grass was a vibrant green, it was always sunny, and love conquered all—a real fucking utopia that had no use for bad batches like us.
Outside those towering walls was the Badlands, and in the Badlands, the weak struggled against the strong.
Anarchy reigned.
The world had been like this long before I was born. If The Order and the Savages really did have some diabolical plan for the rest of us, there wasn’t shit me or Tito could do to stop it.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” he asked me outright.
“Highly unlikely.”
“You should probably grab a seat, then. We have a lot of shit to talk about.”
He turned around and shut the door, letting out a deep breath before facing me again.
“Let’s start with his name.”
CHAPTER FOUR
His name was Romero.
That was the first time I had ever heard someone say it. People were too superstitious to speak it, as if he were some demonic entity that would appear and slit their tender throats before dragging their fragile souls straight to hell.
We’d spent hours discussing risks and potential outcomes. With time being sensitive, we had to do the best we could, converting their months’worth of information into a last-minute plan.
Sighing, I looked out the Touareg’s window and watched all the empty fields, vast open wasteland passing us by.
We were getting farther and farther away from anything remotely civilized.
Into the wild.That’s how I thought of it—away from petty moral barriers and society’s fragile sensitivities.
“This could all be nothing,” Tito told me for what had to be the tenth time in less than two hours.
“Or it could be everything.” I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes. I wished we could play the quiet game until I was no longer stuck in a car with him. Our eyes stayed locked in the rearview mirror until he was forced to look away or risk veering off the road.
“I just don’t want you to end up like his last girl.”
His last girl?That instantly piqued my interest and further irritated me. I didn’t know about any girl.
“Why? What happened to her?”
“That isn’t relevant to your situation. He’s just trying to change your mind,” Grady interjected.
