All Hail - J. Bree Page 0,101

and a bucket sitting with him and a small area partitioned off with a glass wall.

Exactly like Illi had described the collector.

The guy has his back to me but he’s mumbling under his breath, a string of nonsense and garbled sounds, and although he’s emaciated you can tell he was once a big guy. The clothes he’s wearing hang from his rail-thin body and as he rocks gently, I can see his bones sticking out all over him.

None of that makes sense with the Atticus Crawford I grew up with. He wasn’t ever a violent man, he didn’t ever treat me disrespectfully like his brothers did, and he has protected me from anything that ever threatened me.

But my mother once thought the same about Senior.

She never knew the evil things that he did to women, he hid it from her perfectly until she started questioning the way he was raising and interacting with Joey and Ash. His lack of interest in me. The way he very clearly didn’t love us and only ever saw us as possessions.

Could Atticus be the same? Am I blinded by my own childhood crush on him that I’m doomed to do the same as my mother and shackle myself to a monster?

I’m panicking now.

The same panic I had when the doors of that elevator were closing and Lips told me she knew him. The moment the words tumbled out of her lips that he’d built his entire other life that I had no idea of and everything changed. Everything.

My mind is a whirling mess of panic and I need to either vomit or pass out. I turn and find the murder board I was hoping would be down here but it looks nothing like how I expect it to.

I freeze.

Dozens of photos are printed out, all of them connected with black string and thumbtacks just like my board but the photos themselves are not what I was expecting. I thought I’d be seeing my father’s associates and friends, I thought there would be the Crawford’s all up there with the deviant behaviors and buying habits. I was expecting big players on the political fronts and judges, FBI senior leaders and some foreign diplomats.

Instead, I’m looking at my family.

Ash, Harley, Blaise, Illi, and Odie are only the beginning. The entire O’Cronin clan is there and every last one of the Graves siblings.

He even has a photo of Nate.

In the center is a photo of Lips from school, a grin on her face and her eyes crossed out with blood.

Also by J Bree

The Mounts Bay Saga

The Mounts Bay Saga

The Butcher of the Bay: Part I

The Butcher of the Bay: Part II

Hannaford Prep

Just Drop Out: Hannaford Prep Year One

Make Your Move: Hannaford Prep Year Two

Play the Game: Hannaford Prep Year Three

To the End: Hannaford Prep Year Four

The Queen Crow Trilogy

All Hail

The Ruthless

Queen Crow

Standalone Novels

Angel Unseen: An Unseen MC Novel

About the Author

J Bree is a dreamer, writer, mother, farmer, and cat-wrangler. The order of priorities changes daily.

She lives on a small farm in a tiny rural town in Australia that no one has ever heard of. She spends her days dreaming about all of her book boyfriends, listening to her partner moan about how the wine grapes are growing, and being a snack bitch to her two kids.

For updates about upcoming releases, please visit her website at http://www.jbreeauthor.com, and sign up for the newsletter or join her group on Facebook at #mountygirlforlife: A J Bree Reading Group

CONTINUE READING FOR AN EXCEPT FROM

Just Drop Out:

Hannaford Prep Year One

Available now on Kindle Unlimited

Prologue

The forest at the edge of the Mounts Bay, California, city limits are well known for being haunted.

The kids at the local high school have spent generations whispering about the bodies buried in shallow graves, waiting for the wolves to scent them and dig them up for food. There’s even more legends about the souls that walk amongst the towering redwoods. It’s quiet, not silent, but compared to the ever-present sounds of traffic and human experience, it’s eerie and adds to the haunted feel.

While I don’t believe in ghosts, I can feel the souls that linger here.

It’s probably just my guilty conscious giving me the heebie-jeebies as I look over the corpse of my opponent. His blood is still fresh on my hands, cold and congealed, and I wipe them uselessly down my jeans. My clothes are just as stained as my hands, even my face is spattered with the red stains of his life ending. I look like something out of a horror movie, which is about right considering I’ve just bashed a man’s skull in with a rock while a whole crowd of people looked on in sick fascination. There isn’t a person watching that dares to make a noise. The vise-like grip of the Club holds their tongues.

I’m not afraid of being caught.

I’m small for my age. Years of food insecurity have taken their toll, and I was the youngest contender in the Game this season. None of that matters, though; I’ve won. I’ve beaten thirty men and teenage boys to take the victory and the spoils of this war.

I stumble toward the men at the perimeter of the fighting ring. They’re all cloaked in black, hard looks on their faces and black ink etched over their cheeks. My hands tremble at the thought of wearing those same marks. The marks of the Twelve. But I’ve earned them. I’ve earned the right to stand with them and be one of them.

To be free.

“Congratulations, you’ve won the Game,” the Jackal speaks, and I shiver at the cold tones of his voice, so unlike the warmth he usually extends to me.

I nod my head. I want this over with. I want a hot meal and an even hotter shower.

“Welcome to the Twelve. You’re replacing the Hawk. Who do you choose to be?”

Free. I guess a hawk is a good embodiment of freedom, but it feels strange to take a dead man's name, like climbing into his bed with the sheets still warm. I look around at the other men that make up the Twelve. Their names are what they’re known as on the streets, what their gangs cover themselves with as protection and a warning. I could have that too. I could make myself a queen of my own empire. I could rule the streets and never go hungry again.

I could escape the cycle of poverty my mother has left me in.

My eyes land back on the Jackal, and I lift my chin until I no longer feel like I’m looking up at him.

“I am the Wolf.”