Hellraiser (The Devil's Own #2) Read Free Page B

would never let my feelings get the better of me. They were switched off.
     



Hella
    “Hold up!” I raise my hand as Beast, my best friend and president of The Devil’s Own motorcycle club, was about to drop the gavel. “I get it, I really do. But fuck, man, this isn’t our war.” I met Beast when I was fifteen. The men who took me were a part of a government undercover operation named “The Army”. Its cult-like tendencies were extreme. Beast had been there all his life, unlike me. I still remember the first time I met him.
    Armed men were leading me down worn stairs, the creaking from the old floorboards heavy under my steps. I don’t know how long I had been out or how many days had passed, and questions were getting the better of me. The sack was back over my head as they continued to drag me down the steep stairs. “Where the fuck am I? What the fuck is going on?” I spat, the arms that were on each side of me tightening.
    “You’ll know soon,” a low voice mumbled beside me.
    “Fuck that! That’s not good enough!”
    The sound of clinking keys sounded before a heavy metal door slid open. My head turned from side to side as the cuffs that were locked around my wrist suddenly became free. A hand pushed me in before the door slid closed behind me again. I brought my hands up to the bottom of the sack, ripping it off and attempting to bring my eyes into focus. I was in a gloomy metal room that was about the size of a midsized living room. My head moved from side to side, trying to focus on what the fuck was going on when I saw someone sitting in the corner, the light coming from the stairs showing his shoes where the rest of him was hidden in the shadows. “Ah, are you supposed to be trying to hide? Because I can see you,” I said, feeling uneasy and well aware of how I was caged in here with a complete stranger. The foot moved, the man rising to his feet. When his body came toward me, I swallowed roughly. He must have only been a couple years older than me, if that. “Jesus, what do you bench?” I asked, sizing him up. I could probably still take him.
    He nudged his head, bringing his hand out to me. “Beast.”
    “Your name’s Beast? Kinda name is that?” I asked, taking his hand in mine before retreating it. “My street name is Hella, real name is Brax.”
    “Hella?” he threw back with a chuckle. “The fuck kinda name is that? What do you mean ‘street name’?” he threw back.
     
    “My name so people didn’t know who I was…” I add, watching his blank stare. Jesus, this fucker had no idea. “I was homeless, living under a bridge, in and out of foster care all my life. When I started dealing, I needed a name to give people that wasn’t my real name.” Nothing. His bleak eyes were just staring into me as if I was speaking a different language. “How fucking long have you been in here for anyway?”
    “Turn around,” he said, brushing me off and twisting his finger in the air.
    My eyes narrowed. “Why?”
    His arms grasped around my shoulders before he spun my body around, pulling the back of my collar down. “That’s not your name now. In here, you’re Agent 112.”
    “What? Agent? What the hell is this place?” I spun back around, running my fingers over the back of my neck where three numbers had swelled into my skin.
    “Putting it short? They’ll train you to become you, only more detached, more lethal.”
    “Why? And why me?”
    “To kill. And you were blacklisted, a lost boy, they’ll have their reasons.”
    “What do the numbers mean?” I ask, bringing my hand up to the back of my neck.
    Beast shoves his hands into his pockets. “They’re in threes. If your number begins with one, that means you were a recruit, blacklisted. If your number begins with a two, you were bought in by your family affiliations. If your number is three, you were born into it. There have been whispers that there is an agent 000. Don’t know if it’s true, but they call him the