READING ORDER—RUTHLESS WORLD BY K.L. SAVAGE
Reaper’s Rise (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #0.5)
Reaper (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #1)
Boomer (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #2)
Tool (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #3)
Poodle (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #4)
Skirt (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #5)
Pirate (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #6)
A Ruthless Halloween (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #6.5)
Doc (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #7)
Tongue (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #8)
A Ruthless Christmas (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #9)
Knives (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #10)
Lunatic (Ruthless Kings: Asylum Series, Bk #1)
Boomer’s Rise (Ruthless Kings: Atlantic City Series, Bk #1)
Tongue’s Target (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #11)
Thrasher (Royal Bastards Series, Bk #1)
Mateo (Moretti Syndicate Series, Bk #1)
Kansas (Ruthless Kings: Atlantic City Series, Bk #2)
Chaotic (Ruthless Kings: Asylum Series, Bk #2)
Mercy (Ruthless Hellhounds Series, Bk #1)
Bullseye (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #12)
Orbiting Mars (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #13)
Slingshot (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #14)
Rainbow (Ruthless Kings: Baton Rouge Series, Bk #1)
Whistler (Ruthless Hellhounds Series, Bk #2)
Tongue’s Taste (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #15)
Badge (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #16)
Whistler (Ruthless Kings: Atlantic City Series, Bk #3)
Triplets Rise (Ruthless Kings: La Grange Texas, Bk #1)
Savage (Ruthless Kings: La Grange Texas, Bk #2)
Country (Ruthless Kings: La Grange Texas, Bk #3)
Raven (Royal Bastards Series, Bk #2)
Tank (Ruthless Kings: Las Vegas Series, Bk #17)
In memory of Carolyn Rumsey.
Thank you for your endless support and love for the Kings.
This one is for you.
My emotions are roiling. My heart and my mind are at war, and all the rest of my emotions torment me, attacking both sides. The guilt, the regret, the confusion, the lies, the secrets, and the fear. All of it is building up into a tsunami ready to drown me. I’m standing in front of the catastrophic wave with no place to run or hide, just waiting for it to crash down. I don’t know how to sift through everything before I can save myself.
I don’t know how to make sense of the fact that One-Eye and his biker friends killed my abusive ex.
He rushed out into a terrifying storm to save my daughter from him. And then they took him to their… “playroom”. He may have stayed with me the day he died but he knew exactly what they were doing.
I knew what I was getting into when I got involved with him. These are ruthless men. This is what they do. I asked him not to be in the room when they did it, but I’m not stupid. I know men like One-Eye want revenge.
Even that thought sends a thousand more emotions through me. It’s the fear and guilt sticking the most right now. I’m not invincible. I’m a human being with thoughts and feelings and they are all over the place right now. I don’t know how to decipher everything with One-Eye. It’s confusing. I’m grateful, yet I’m afraid.
I’m afraid of him right now.
Do I want to be?
No. Absolutely not.
I love him. I’m in love with him. He’s amazing and he is a protector, but knowing what he can do, what he has done, I need time to think about it. I need time to process and to heal and to understand him. Maybe I’m a cold-hearted bitch, but I don’t see it that way.
I have lived in fear for so long. My ex abused me mentally, physically, and emotionally. I’m exhausted from him. I hurt from him. All of my issues stem from him and what he has broken inside of me. My soul is crumbled, barely a shadow of what it once was.
The thought of being with a man capable of doing unspeakable things scares me.
Because I’ve had unspeakable things done to me.
It’s so hard to trust heart over mind. I don’t know how to know which one I need to follow and listen to. The lines are blurred. Sometimes they cross and I can’t tell where one line ends and the other begins.
One-Eye hasn’t come out said and that they killed my ex. He actually hasn’t said much of anything about himself. I don’t know much about him besides the fact that he treats me and Kimmy amazingly. Down in my heart I know that should be enough, but it isn’t.
There is this wall surrounding him, a wall he won’t let me climb to get to know him. I can’t afford to be close to him, not while he stays a step back emotionally. It isn’t fair to me or Kimmy. I’ve been in the position where a man refused to give me all his love, yet demanded all of mine. It nearly killed me and my daughter.
I don’t deserve less than honesty and trust and neither does Kimmy. We deserve someone that will let us in and not leave us wondering and guessing.
Who is One-Eye? What happened to him in the past? Does he have a family? What secrets does he keep? Why can’t he trust me with them?
It’s tearing me apart on the inside. Not just the fear, the guilt.
The guilt of him having to kill a man for me. Even if he wasn’t directly involved when it happened.
What kind of woman am I? Someone took a life for me and that’s a burden I don’t know how to carry.
Kimmy is eating her pancakes as if there isn’t a problem in the world and I’m sitting across from One-Eye, a tear running down my cheek. I wipe it away before anyone in the diner can see. One-Eye swallows and he reaches a hand out to me, gripping mine tightly.
And every time I feel his touch, that guilt creeps in because I see those large, calloused hands over mine and those damn palms have killed a man.
A man I don’t even miss, but regardless, a life was taken.
And One-Eye didn’t do a thing to stop it from happening.
“I know,” he says simply without me speaking a word. “I don’t want you to feel sad or guilty or feel like this is your fault. There is no weight on your shoulders, Mama.”
Mama.
I love it when he calls me that. His voice always softens and deepens at the same time. I always get shivers.
“But I want us… I want us to be together, One-Eye. Maybe… maybe we can conquer this. What’s your story? Why was it so easy for you to… you know,” I gulp, censoring myself so Kimmy doesn’t hear. “What’s your name? Your real name? Where did you come from? Who are you? Let me in. Let me see you.”
“You have. And what you saw, you aren’t ready to handle.”
My lips tighten into a hard line. “You know that isn’t all there is to it.”
“I know.” He slightly tilts his head to the left and the wrinkles around his eye soften. “I know my life isn’t easy, and I know the knowledge of what I’ve done isn’t easy to carry because of previous… life events.” He chooses his words carefully too as his eyes fall to Kimmy munching on her pancakes while she watches a show on her tablet. “And I know I’m not an easy man to get to know, and I can’t promise I know how to fix that.”
“I think both of us need to heal before being together,” I whisper. “Or I’m afraid someone will get hurt.”