Tour Stop, Excerpt & Giveaway: Cruel Savior by E.M. Gayle

“Thanks for joining us.” JD smirked, the cock of one eyebrow a clear warning that I needed to settle down. Something not likely to happen if this went the way I expected it to go.

“I didn’t know we had a meeting.”

“Turner has an urgent request for us. I thought you should be here for the whole story, so it didn’t have to be repeated secondhand.”

I turned to our guest, and at the sight of his scowl in my direction, I had to swallow down the desire to tell him to fuck off and walk out. He didn’t like me any more than I liked him, so why he kept coming to the club for help made no damned sense. Except that if you had a situation that needed to be handled outside the law there weren’t too many other people to go to.

Finally, he looked away and leaned forward, placing his hands on our sacred table that held our club emblem on it. Something about that only riled me further. He needed to get the fuck on with it.

“We had an incident out at the ranch today, and to put it frankly, it’s way more complicated than my personal security team or the Sultan police department can handle.”

“And?” I asked, when he paused for too long without elaborating.

“A package was delivered to the house, and my wife had the unpleasant experience of opening it. She nearly lost her mind. It was her screaming that my entire security team responded to, and then they called me. Finding my wife with blood on her hands and arms freaked out our entire staff, and now half of them are too scared to come inside the house.”

This time, JD beat me to the next question.

“What was in it?”

His face paled and his lips compressed into a grim line as he pulled his phone out of his front jacket pocket and swiped his finger across the screen. “I can show you.”

He handed the phone over to JD.

“Holy, fuck. Is that—” JD touched the screen with two fingers and zoomed in on the image. “Who is it?”

I couldn’t take it anymore and I stood to round the table.

“A former coworker of my daughter.”

I froze mid step, changed course, and retook my seat. Those were not the words I’d wanted to hear. Only my respect for my president kept me from walking straight out the door. JD gave me a warning look and handed over the phone.

Jesus hell. Good thing I had a strong stomach. Based on the conversation thus far, I don’t know what I’d expected. But a bloody severed head in a box was definitely not it.