“He was waiting at a park for your sister. My father’s men found him hanging from a tree.” Grey’s voice breaks, like the conversation is just too much for him. I don’t blame him. I feel that way too sometimes, like talking about the pain is akin to summoning it, casting a spell of melancholy that makes you wish you’d died right alongside your loved one. “He wasn’t just hanging though. There were … he’d been tortured.”
We both stop talking for a while.
Did Crown do that? Sin? Grainger? Beast must’ve been involved. If they believed what Cat told them about the rape, they’d feel justified. But how much of my father’s lies went through his officers first? How much did they really know?
That’s a question I’m not likely to get an answer to.
Stealing an officer’s bike is enough to garner a death sentence. Stealing a hostage along with it? I just better hope that Cat never finds me. The mafia would be kinder at this point.
“Your father’s men killed my pregnant sister while I hid in the pantry and fumbled with a gun I’ve shot dozens of times. The rest of them found time to rape my other sister before putting a bullet through her head.”
After a minute, Grey reaches down and takes my hand, curling his fingers through mine.
I squeeze his right back.
It occurs to me a few weeks later that it’s actually my eighteenth birthday.
I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom and just stare at myself, at the sheet of raven-black waves down my back, at my rust-red eyes and resting bitch face. My mouth is permanently downturned, and I’ve got a few new scars from the motorcycle accident. My legs … well, they’re not the pretty, smooth things they used to be. My skin is shiny and pink, rippled and carved up from skidding across the pavement.
I put my right palm against the mirror’s glass and close my eyes.
I might be eighteen today, but I’ve been an adult for a long, long time. Since my sisters died. Since before that. I wasn’t allowed a real childhood, not with Nellie and Cat for parents. I never had to have the sex talk because I’d seen people fucking for as long as I could remember. I never needed the anti-drug lectures at school because I’d seen people taking them and ruining their lives for as long as I could remember. Nobody ever taught me how to cook or do my own laundry or take my ass to school.
Queenie, Posey, and I just did those things because we had little other choice.
I’ve seen things that war veterans could scarcely imagine.
I open my eyes again and drop my hand to my side.
Should I mention to Grey that it’s my birthday? He’s sort of a ham. He might do something to make me feel better. Roll candles out of paper and stick them into whatever dessert we get with dinner. He might sing to me. At the very least, he’d smile softly and tell me happy birthday.
I decide it’s better not to say anything at all.
With a sigh, I head back into the room to find the mafia’s Underboss, Ivan Wolfe, waiting with a small cadre of servants beside him. Grey is smiling tightly, hands clasped together behind his back. He turns to look at me and motions me over with a nod of his chin.
I approach Ivan the way a grizzly bear might approach a wolf, two distinct predators that should never be in one another’s territory. And yeah, I am the bear. Ivan needs a pack to hunt with, but I have been and always will be on my own.
“Apparently it’s your birthday today?” Grey says, raising a scarred brow. He’s got some fun new scars on him, too. There’s one on his dick that’s particularly funny. And yeah, I have seen it. We’ve sort of given up on the idea of privacy during the last few months. “You didn’t tell me.” He sounds a bit hurt, but I pretend not to notice. Ivan is still watching me with his pinched, ugly face.
His eyes are olive green, his complexion swarthy, hair dark and thick. He should be handsome, but the aura of wrongness about his person makes me prickle with warning.
“How did you know it was my birthday?” I query back, and Ivan inclines his head, lifting a hand up toward the servants. They scramble to follow his unspoken order, unzipping a pair of garment bags and revealing a very fine-looking white tux and a gown of purple silk.
“Alvise and Giulia thought it might be nice if the family came together to celebrate such a momentous occasion.” Ivan does not bother to answer my question; instead, he gives a not-so-subtle order.
The edge of my lip curls up of its own accord, but I resist the urge to full on scowl here. We’re getting out of the room for the first time in … Jesus Christ, how long has it been? More than two months. I’ve been here for more than two goddamn months.
I wonder what Reba thinks? I wonder how Fem is doing without me. What about Nellie? Does she wish she’d stood up for her kids when she had the chance, taken us and run from the long arms of the club? And how about Cat? Has he given up looking for me, or is the chance at vengeance too sweet a cherry for him to pass up plucking from the tree?
“We’ll give you an hour to get ready,” Ivan continues when neither Grey nor I answers. He snaps his fingers and the servants lay out several black velvet boxes on the dressing table beside the bedroom door. When they open them, I’m greeted to a scene of glittering diamonds, sparkling from their blue silk interiors. “Make sure you both look presentable.”
That last part is a warning shot, fired off before Ivan sweeps from the room and the servants follow, leaving behind shoes and cosmetics along with the diamonds.
Grey curses under his breath, ruffling up his sandy hair as he stares at the garments, now hanging from the open door of the armoire.
“Is this a good thing or … are we going to die tonight?” I ask, wondering how I can say such a phrase so calmly on the birthday that’s supposed to mark my passage into adulthood, not into an early grave.
“I’m … not sure,” Grey hazards, rubbing his hand up and down his left arm. It’s been hurting him a lot since the accident. He broke it, but the cast came off last week. Phantom pain maybe. Or just bad memories. He lifts his gray eyes up to meet mine. “But you’re right: this is either the start of something new or the end to it all.”
I look back at the dress, stepping forward to finger the fine silk. Purple is the color of royalty; I feel like it wasn’t given to me on accident.
Nothing the Grey Wolfe mafia does is accidental.
Grey and I are blindfolded for the duration of our walk to the dining room, but as soon as the wispy silk is removed from my eyes, I’m greeted to a scene that looks straight out of a magazine. The dining hall has soaring stone walls with a stained-glass ceiling, impressive stone columns and buttresses along the roof that I can see through the upper windows. There’s a chandelier that’s bigger than I am, with golden crystals that cast a warm, cozy glow over the huge dining table and the mountain of food down its middle.
Fresh fruits spilling from their crystal bowls like citrines and amethysts, wineglasses shimmering like rubies as diamond-encrusted hands reach out to take their fine stems, and the smiles of wolves, their sharp teeth bared.
Giulia greets us first, gesturing to a pair of seats on her left while Alvise lords over everything from the throne-like chair at the head of the table.
Tonight, we’re dining with the Don.