Chapter One
Hadley
My eyes strain against the darkness. Light streams in through a small crack in the windows that look as if they’re boarded up. I pull against the bindings around my wrists and ankles, fear races up and down my spine.
“Ugh,” I cry into the silence.
I’m alone.
I’ve been alone since they brought me here after swiping me from school. From what I can make out, it’s some kind of abandoned trailer.
Tears pool in my eyes again, but I blink them away. Crying isn’t going to get me out of this mess. Although, right now I’m not sure anything is.
I’m bound and alone, and everything hurts.
If only I hadn’t lingered after practice. If only I had followed the other girls back to the main school building, then maybe he wouldn’t have snatched me.
The man in the ski mask had come out of nowhere and grabbed me from behind, jabbing me with something sharp before pulling me down the hall and out of the emergency exit just as the world went black.
I woke up in the back of a van with nothing but a headache and my hands tied.
The door creaks open and I hold my breath, pressing myself into the chair as if it might somehow make me disappear.
Footsteps sound on the rickety floor, and eventually a man emerges from the dark shadows.
“Hadley, it’s nice to meet you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” I spit at Donny Lopez. I don’t need an introduction to know who this man is.
“I’m sorry for the theatrics, but it seems those Jagger boys have trouble following simple instructions.” He scrubs his jaw. “I needed... how do you say, some gentle persuasion.”
I press my lips together, swallowing the urge to scream.
This can’t be happening.
I can’t be here, at the mercy of Sterling Heights’ drug lord. Yet, that’s exactly where I am.
Oh, Cole, what have you gotten me into?
“You are quite the enigma.” He paces the small space before me. “Hadley Dove Rexford, only child of Harrison Theobald Rexford and Tamara Marilyn Rexford.”
My blood turns to ice, the color draining from my face.
He knows who I am, where I come from.
“What I can’t quite understand, though, is why Mommy and Daddy shipped you off to Sterling Prep.”
Relief slams into me, but it’s short-lived when I remember that I might be pregnant.
“Please,” I whimper, “let me go.”
“You think I want to do this?” Donny crouches down to look me in the eye. “You think I want to hurt young, naïve girls? I take no pleasure in it. But the Jaggers must be taught a lesson. You cannot make deals with the devil and expect to just walk away.
“He killed him, you know. Your boyfriend murdered his uncle in cold blood.”
My breath hitches at the bluntness of his words. “It was a test. A test Cole passed with flying colors.”
Bile rushes up my throat as I stare into his soulless eyes. I thought Cole had darkness inside him, but Donny makes him look like a teddy bear. There isn’t even a glint of remorse or shame in his hard stare for the life he chooses, the lives he destroys. It’s too late for a man like him, but it isn’t too late for Cole, no matter what he’s done. He deserves more, so much more than a world that, until now, has chewed him up and spit him out.
My heart clenches but I sit straighter, refusing to cower.
Donny steps back, rubbing his jaw. “The sooner your boyfriend sees sense, the sooner this will all be over.”
“What will you do to him?”
Donny clucks his tongue. “It’s not what I will do to him, but what he will do for me. I’ll have my men bring you some water.” He slinks back into the shadows, and I sag against the chair. My back aches, and my wrists are sore from the restraints. I don’t know how long I was out for after the man in the ski mask grabbed me, but it’s getting dark, so I’ve been gone a few hours.
Cole will know I’m missing by now. Everyone will. I can’t help but wonder if my parents will care... they sent me to Sterling Prep without so much as a second thought. I’d embarrassed them, brought shame to the family name. I was no good to my father now.
Used goods.
That’s what he’d called me.
A fresh wave of pain crashes over me, but this is different—this is betrayal of the worst kind. Betrayal by those who are supposed to love you, no matter what.
You get one family in life, and mine decided to cast me aside and exile me to Sterling Bay.
I know exactly what they’ll think when—if—they find out about this.
They won’t care.
Because I may as well be dead to them.
Bitter laughter crawls up my throat and spills from my lips. In some ways, my parents are as bad as Donny. Sure, they don’t deal in drugs or guns, but they bargain with secrets and money. People like my father, the elite families of Gravestone County, are only concerned with two things, reputation and the size of their bank accounts.
I should feel lucky I’m free of them, of the life they had all planned out for me. But I’ll never forget what they did to me. The pain, the gaping hole in my heart, will forever bind us.
They broke me.
Irrevocably changed me.
And now... well, now I’m pretty sure I’m in love with a murderer. But I read somewhere once that lost souls call to other lost souls. They seek each other out like glimpses of light on the horizon.
Maybe I was always supposed to come to Sterling Bay. The same way Cole was always supposed to escape his life in the Heights.
Maybe we were fated to meet, to save each other.
I cling to the thought as the fight slowly leaves my body and I finally succumb to the darkness.
I wake with start, the icy fingers of fear wrapping around my throat as I try to swallow. It’s dark still. Darker than before. My mouth is dry and my head pounds.
“Hello?” I croak, aware of someone in the trailer with me.
“Boss said to bring you this.” Ski mask man steps forward. His face is no longer obscured, but part of me wishes it was. An angry, jagged scar runs across his eye and down the side of his face. His eyes narrow when he notices me staring. I instantly avert my gaze.
“You should drink something.” He uncaps the bottle and advances toward me, but I slam my lips together.
He drugged me.
There’s no way I’m drinking anything he—
“Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.” He almost sighs the words, but I refuse to mistake the softness in his voice for regret.
Turning my head, I avoid his proximity until he roughly grabs my face and squeezes my cheeks together, forcing me to open my mouth. He pours the water in, not caring that I can barely swallow.
“Fucking stubborn bitch,” he murmurs.
The second he backs up, I heave a deep breath, aware that my school shirt is wet. His eyes go to my chest, making bile rush up my throat.
He licks his lips, openly gawking at me. “Shame the boss said we could look but couldn’t touch.”
Oh God.
I screw my eyes shut, trying to take myself to another place. Somewhere—anywhere—better than this. But it’s futile. The stale air permeates my thoughts, anchoring me to the cold, dank trailer.