Savage Savior (Savage People Book 3)

by Charleigh Rose

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Savage Savior

  Copyright

  Synopsis

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Stepdaddy Savage

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Synopsis

  Soundtrack

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Savage Beast

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Synopsis

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Contact Information

  Copyright © 2016 Charleigh Rose

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, organizations, or locales, is completely coincidental.

  Thank you for reading and please sign up to our newsletter for more.

  Love.

  It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?

  It can make you. Break you.

  Take you to places you’ve never been before.

  I know what they say about him. What he does for the Irish mafia in New York.

  But the thing is, love is blind.

  It binds.

  And now, we’re bound for life.

  Savage Savior is a standalone novella. It is a steamy, dirty, violent hot read with a HEA

  SIX MONTHS AGO

  They think they know me.

  By the way I sway my hips. The way I blow them kisses, wink at them, laugh at their jokes.

  They think I’m happy.

  Why wouldn’t they? I giggle with the other bartenders all the time. I hang out with the girls after work. I have a dog, a Yorkshire Terrier, Gia, whom I take with me everywhere in a Louis Vuitton bag I got from one of my ex-boyfriends. An original, thank you very much.

  I wear my smile like a shield. And behind that smile…there’s nothing but devastation and ruin. No one can know. No one should know. It’s my baggage to carry. My secret to bury.

  I wear the right clothes and the right perfume. I date men. Handsome men. Rich men. I have sex with them. I use them, and they use me. That’s okay.

  I think.

  But then there’s Carter. Always watching me. Unsmiling. I want to ask him what he’s thinking. I want to ask him why his eyes keep wandering back to me in Hot N’ Bothered where I’m bartending and he works as a bouncer. Sometimes.

  I’m not stupid. I know it’s not his real job.

  He’s a mobster, like all of them. He may not be as cocky and aggressive as Cole Savage—though he is cocky and aggressive—or as formidable and scary as Graham Savage—though I know that Carter is a very dangerous man, but he’s a Savage nonetheless.

  Like right now, he is staring at me wordlessly, his eyes roaming all over my face, never leaving me, never gliding down to check out my body. I appear to be laughing wholeheartedly, but it’s a fake laugh for the man who just tipped me twenty bucks. The man will never believe it’s a lie. I lightly bat at another man’s shoulder, who sits at the bar. Then I turn around to get him another bottle of Heineken and jolt when I feel him smack my ass. Hard.

  I turn around and bat my eyelashes. “Was that really necessary, honey?” I purr seductively. Though really, I feel nothing. So what if he smacked my butt? It didn’t even hurt all that much. The pain, humiliation, and shock other women must feel in this situation is vacant from my body. From my soul. All I feel is the emptiness I felt before when I laughed.

  Because that’s what I feel all the time.

  Whether I’m being used or abused or when a nice guy flirts with me at the mall or buys me flowers, it makes no difference. I feel nothing. I tear my eyes from the idiot who touched me and look back to Carter who is standing at the other end of the packed club. I see through the crowd, through the lights and the darkness, through the music and the dancing figures. I see how his jaw tenses and his eyes narrow, how his fists curl beside his body, but he does absolutely nothing but glare at the back of the man’s head.

  Nothing.

  Just like all of them.

  “Babe, I’ll be honest with you. Your ass is a little big for my taste, but I’d still fuck you. When’s your next break? Meet me at the bathroom?”

  Ugh. My ass is perfect, if not a little big, and my waist is small. Guys like him feel like they need to knock women down a few notches in order to actually have a chance with them. My soul is too tired to hate this guy, though. That’s how much I’ve been broken before. I just want this night to be over with so I can crawl into bed, put some music on, and chill with Gia, my dog.

  “Thanks, but I don’t date customers.” I smile politely.

  “Who said anything about dating? Does it look like I’m asking your ass to go to dinner with me?” The man laughs crudely, pounding his fist over the counter to make sure his friends, who surround him, got the joke. It’s the first time I look at him—really look at him—and I guess he is around thirty. Maybe not even. He’s chubby, but not in an unattractive way, a little too hairy, a little too short, and way too big of an asshole to be considered a catch.

  I turn around and smack Selene’s ass, because I’m allowed to, unlike him. She’s another girl who bartends with me here.

  “Can you take care of Mr. Green Dress Shirt?” I elbow her on a wink. She smiles at me, and effortlessly I return one of my own. That’s me. Quinn, the happy-go-lucky girl.

  “Sure thing. He giving you trouble, girl?” she asks in her Southern twang. I’m not asking where she’s from because a lot of the girls Graham picks up to work at his joints don’t want to talk about their pasts. It’s one thing if you decide to bring your past up yourself in a conversation and tell others your story, but here, we never ask.

  I never told a soul.

  I was never asked.

  And I like it that way.

  “Nah, he’s a real sweetheart, but he wants to chat, and I have a migraine.”

  “Aw, there’s some Tylenol in my bag.” She shifts her eyes downward to the shelves behind the counter, and I nod.

  “You’re the best.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  The rest of the night goes by without incident. My eyes keep drifting to Carter, and Carter’s eyes keep drifting
to me. Cole Savage is here tonight, so all the ladies are losing their minds, asking for him to sign their tits and whatnot. When my shift is finally over, it’s four a.m.

  I wipe the bar with a wet cloth, arrange the beer pints and wine glasses—all still warm from the industrial dishwasher—in a neat row behind the bar. I notice that Carter stares at me harder when I do those things. Arrange. Make sure all the glasses are in a straight line. I’m funny like that, but I’ve always been a neat person.

  Maybe a little OCD.

  Either way, he doesn’t mind.

  When he sees me fussing over the exact angle of the glass, how I want it to be placed so it won’t be half an inch too close or too far to the next one, he tenses. Then when I get it right—and I always get it right—the tension melts away.

  We’re both weird. I know that.

  But I don’t dislike that.

  If anything…it’s nice. To feel like someone sees you and understands. Not everything. He’ll never understand everything but the surface of things, and that’s more than I’m used to.

  “I’m outta here, people. Have a good one!” I fling my bag over my shoulder, smack my lips with a fresh coat of lip-gloss, and move toward the back door. I blow kisses to the other bartenders and bouncers—everyone other than Carter. For some reason, it feels weird to do that to him. Not because I don’t like him. More because it’s a charade I feel like he shouldn’t be a part of. Like he deserves more than my lies. Then I walk away.

  I leave through the back exit that leads to the alley behind the bar. It’s fall, and the air is fresh and crisp, but the stench of industrial food and empty bottles of alcohol is rising from the trash containers. I sigh and throw the garbage into the nearest trashcan. I turn around, beginning to walk out of the narrow, bricked alleyway and to the main street, when I feel a cold blade pressed against my neck. A cold hand snakes behind my back, the palm pressing against my lips. I shudder. I know this smell. Alcohol, salty peanuts, and despair.

  My father.

  “You know, Quinn, I always found it hard to believe when people told me you’d leave me. I thought to myself, ‘She’ll never do it. I’m her father, and I need her. I’m sick.’ But guess what? They were right, and I was wrong. Because here I am, chasing my fucked-up daughter in the middle of the night, or the beginning of the morning, depending on how you look at it, really, looking for favors.”

  The first thing I think about is that he must be relatively sober. I don’t remember Dad forming such a long sentence in a very long time. My second thought is that I want him to just kill me. To get it over with. I’m done. This life means nothing to me anymore. I work, I take care of Gia, and I repeat. This is not a life worth living, and all I want is for it to end. I press my neck deeper into the blade, leaning into it, and he cringes behind me, groaning, obviously exasperated with my antics.

  “You’re crazy. Just like your mother.”

  “My mother died,” I say to him. “Because of you. You made her that way, and then you killed her.”

  “I had a bad feeling about that one from day one,” he mutters. He didn’t know her, not really. Even after all those years. What an idiot. Whatever, I still don’t care.

  “Kill me.” My voice is steady, calm. “Just do it already, because I know what you’re about to ask me, and I’m not doing it. I won’t go back to him. The answer was, is, and will always be no. So you might as well just slit my throat, and if you ever loved me as a daughter, even for a second, then you’d have the mercy of cutting deep so that I die quick.”

  “Ugh!” He squeezes the blade to my skin, producing blood from just above my collarbone, before removing it from my neck and pushing me against the wall. I slam into the red bricks and feel the familiar sting in my nose.

  But I’m not going back.

  I’m not doing that anymore.

  God, why can’t he just kill me?

  “You were good entertainment, girl,” he argues, and I turn around to face him. Still scrawny from “his sickness,” which is actually a severe addiction to crack and alcohol, still with a messy, curly mountain of grey hair and a matching grey beard, filthy skin—maybe it’s tan, but maybe just dirty—in Levi’s jeans, and an ugly Christmas jumper he probably stole from someone’s clothesline.

  “You mean a whore,” I retort tiredly, rubbing my eyes with the base of my palms. I sigh and shake my head. “I’m not going back to that. You tortured and abused me. You pimped me out, Dad, and I was only sixteen. Do you even get how wrong that is?”

  “We needed the money,” he mutters, looking at me in complete shock, like he can’t understand why I’m making such a big deal out of it.

  “No, you needed the money. I needed a fucking father,” I correct, turning again to leave. “I’m trying to build something here. Please don’t ruin it. And don’t come here ever again. I mean it. The Savages are dangerous. They take care of their girls. You don’t want to become a statistic in their unfortunate record.”

  Just as I’m about to leave, he yanks me back by my hair and throws me against the wall again. His fingers wrap around my throat, and his blade is digging to my stomach, and this time he means business. I see the manic twinkle in his eyes is back, which only serves to remind me that I hate my dad sober more than I do when he’s high or drunk.

  When he is high or drunk, he is annoying and when I’m lucky, unresponsive.

  But when he’s sober? He’s just a sick, violent bastard.

  “You’re right, Quinn. I should cut you just for being such a cold little bitch,” he sneers. I feel the blade in my stomach, how it slices through my flesh, hot and searing, burning me, but not as bad as his words, and I pray he hits an important organ and just kills me already, instead of prolonging the torture with shallow slices. That’s his game. And I have the scars to prove it. “You’re a bitch.” He stabs into my stomach, digging deeper. I feel it. I feel the blood pouring out like a river. I squeeze my eyes shut, a faint smile adorning my lips. I don’t answer him. I need him exactly like this. Manic.

  “Selfish.” Stab.

  “Little.” Stab.

  “Bitch.” Stab.

  He spits into my face each time, his rotten breath directly against my nose, over and over again.

  “Stop,” a steel voice interrupts.

  No.

  Reluctantly, my eyes flutter open. I feel dizzy, out of focus, probably from the blood loss, but I can still make out his figure. His eyes, so blue. His hair, brown and messy like a boy’s, and even in my confusion, this strikes me as odd. His mussed hair is a stark contrast from the severe expression on his face.

  God, his face. The way he looks at me.

  Carter.

  “Don’t touch the knife,” Carter instructs coldly, without an ounce of emotion in his voice. “Keep it there and get off her. Slowly. Don’t make any sudden moves. I’ll take it out myself.”

  I’m so ashamed I shut my eyes again. Who can blame me? My dad is stabbing me in an alleyway because he can’t pimp me to his drug-dealing friends. No one is supposed to know my story.

  “You her boyfriend?” Dad cocks his head in my direction. “Because you know she’s a whore, right?”

  I’m not a whore. I swallow down the shame, but I don’t cry.

  “Fine, I’ll take it out. You just stand there and don’t move,” Carter mutters, still blasé. I suck in a deep breath, praying my sorry excuse for a father won’t listen, and this time stab my heart, when I feel his rancid laugh dancing in my face again.

  “No. I think I’ll kill her. She’s no good to me anymore.”

  Before I know what’s happening, he is yanking out the blade from my stomach—it’s much more painful than when it was when he dug it in—and I feel the blade making its way again to another part of my stomach, but the knife never does more than scratch the surface. Suddenly, my father is yanked back, thrown on the door next to me, and Carter is beating him. His fists connect with my father’s jaw, nose, and neck over and over again until my dad collaps
es down to a fetal position, which doesn’t take much more than fifteen seconds. Carter is ripped, huge, and strong. He is a bouncer, and a good one. Now Carter is on top of him, straddling him, beating him up so methodically, and the whole time, his face is completely relaxed and composed.

  As if nothing’s happening inside of him.

  A psychopath.

  It’s clear to me now.

  Carter is a psychopath.

  I slap a hand over my mouth as I watch Carter beating the life out of my father. At first, my dad struggles. Not exactly fighting back, he is too weak and old, but definitely crying and yelling and begging. I clutch my waist where he stabbed me and double over. It’s painful, and I just want it to stop.

  When my dad stops screaming and begging, Carter lets him go. His whole face is just blood, really. He’s completely unrecognizable. And dead. So very dead.

  I should feel relieved, or maybe even happy or satisfied, but I still feel nothing. Nothing at all except for the fire in my stomach.

  I should have died.

  It should have ended.

  But he saved me.

  Carter wipes his bloody hands over his shirt silently before taking it off, forming it into a ball of fabric and tucking the shirt into his back pocket. I shouldn’t admire his six-pack, so I don’t. I just note that his body is very big and very strong, and it makes me feel very little, but not in a bad way.

  The feeling it stirs in me is awkward. I should feel uncomfortable about his formidable size, but I don’t. Am I stupid enough to think he won’t hurt me?

  “I’ll need to get rid of him,” he tells me, still detached. “But first, we need to make sure you’re stitched and wrapped. Where do you live?”

  I tell him where I live. He approaches me, and without a warning, sweeps me up into his arms so he is carrying me honeymoon-style. I wrap my hands around his neck, and it doesn’t feel wrong. Not at all. But I try not to think about it.

  “It’s a short walk,” he informs me after I give him my address. “I know you’re hurting, but it’d help if you don’t make too much noise. We don’t want to draw attention to you.”