Prologue
Lena McCabe was tired. She had worked late and came back to the trailer to another one of Ariel’s gangbanging parties. The dump was secluded behind a small building and junkyard near a bit of wooded area off a main roadway. They could be shooting off guns and no one would come looking or worry.
As she maneuvered around garbage and junky pieces of scrap metal, she saw the cars parked outside. The two Lexuses belonged to Troy and his drug-dealing cousin, Bills, as they called him, who was there, too. But what made Lena’s stomach ache and her heart rate begin to increase was the sight of the black BMW. It belonged to Triumph. As the leader of a gang in downtown Detroit, he was a feared man at twenty-four years old. In his line of business, twenty-four and living meant he had a touch of amazing luck. Most young men his age were doing time or hadn’t made it to his ripe old age altogether.
Not Triumph.
He was untouchable because he had so many people covering his back. Well, Lena wasn’t impressed, and she wasn’t interested in the life he offered. He had been sniffing around for months, trying to catch her alone and seduce her to be his “woman” and possession. Her best friend, Ariel, was a moron for getting involved with these guys. If Ariel gave a shit about her own little sister, Sage, then she wouldn’t let any of them around the sixteen-year-old girl. Instantly Lena hoped that Sage wasn’t in the trailer. She had gotten her a small job bussing tables for a restaurant. The owner was very nice and paid off the books. A family owned it, and they wanted to help Sage stay out of trouble. As long as Sage didn’t try to steal or slack in her job, she was safe working there. Ariel was a different story. She had changed over the past year. She wanted the easy way out.
Troy and Bills used her for her body, and they used the trailer as a hideout when some kind of illegal activity was being conducted and when they were in the mood to snort some coke and get laid. Usually Ariel would give her the heads-up, but the last couple of times it seemed that Ariel was under the gang’s control and she had made her decision to obey them. If it weren’t for the fact that the shelter was overcrowded with perverts and unsafe day and night, then Lena would head there. Lena was beginning to think that staying in the trailer might be just as dangerous or worse than the shelter. The whole point of taking over the trailer was for their safety. That was before she understood Triumph’s intentions.
Lena swallowed hard as she placed her bike on the side of the trailer behind a set of bushes. She’d been lucky that no one stole the piece of crap. It was her only way to and from work. Nights like this when she came back to their shithole of a trailer, she wished she had never left home. Things weren’t any better there, though. Even here, she worried about someone breaking into her bedroom and raping her.
As she pressed the branches over the bike, trying
to hide it better, she smelled the scent of fried food all over her clothing. She needed a shower, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not with those guys around.
“You really think that’s going to work?”
She swung around, caught off guard. Then she stepped back, hitting the bush as she realized it was Triumph. Standing at about five feet eight inches tall, he towered over her five feet three inches. He had a tan complexion and big blue eyes that currently were absorbing the uniform she wore.
“I hope it does,” she responded, shyly turning away from him and glancing around, hoping someone else would walk outside. Triumph would think nothing of grabbing her and having his way with her. He had attempted it before, and tonight would be no different.
He stepped closer and reached over her shoulder, his muscular arm, filled with gang signs, colors, and guns, gently touched her skin. “I can still see the bike, Lena. Why you keep working at that bar anyway? There ain’t nothing but a bunch of low-life drunks.” He released the branch then clasped her ponytail with his hand. She flinched a moment, uncertain what exactly his next move might be. It depended on Triumph’s mood. She hoped he wasn’t on anything.
“Don’t look so scared, Lena. It’s not like we haven’t fooled around before.” He pulled slightly on her ponytail, and she held her breath. She hadn’t fooled around with him. He had caught her off guard a couple of times and kissed her until he wanted to stop. The last time he had even touched her breast, commented on their large size, and confessed his need to possess her. Luckily, Ariel had intervened. But by the sound of laughter combined with loud music, this party had been going on for a while, and Ariel would not be any help to Lena.
“Please stop. I’m tired,” she told him. She couldn’t tell him that she wasn’t interested, or that would be an insult. One that would cause her to get hit just like the time before last.
He smiled at her, his gold tooth looked comical, but he thought it made him look important. Truth of that matter was that Triumph was actually a nice-looking guy, and most young women found him irresistible. Lena was twenty-one years old today. Happy freaking birthday. She had been fighting off men like Triumph since fifteen. She was tired of it. She was tired of this life and feeling like she was headed toward death instead of a real life.
“You’re too beautiful to be working so hard. I’ve told you this before, Lena. Come with me. Be my woman and I’ll give you anything, everything. You know I can.” He leaned forward to kiss her temple. She could smell the alcohol. He had been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. He waited for her. She just knew it.
“I don’t want that kind of life,” she answered him honestly. He yanked her against him and pulled her pony back so that her shoulder blades nearly collided and she lost her footing.
“You think you’re too good for me? You think you deserve better?”
“No, that’s not what I meant, Triumph. Please don’t hurt me,”
She pleaded as his hold became stronger. The stench of his breath made bile rise up to her throat. She swallowed hard, the burning fear collided with her gut.
In a flash, his face was against her neck. His hot, wet breath stung against her skin, and she panicked, only for him to shove her against the side of the trailer. Her spine hit the metal, and she cringed.
“I waited for you. I waited to take you to your bed and fuck you, Lena.”
Oh shit. This is it. Tonight he won’t take no for an answer.
She felt so sick to her stomach. How could these types of things keep happening to her?
She tried pushing him away, but he pulled her toward him then banged her back against the metal siding. She screamed, but he repeated that move three, maybe four times. She was losing her breath and her focus on fighting him. The pain was all consuming.
“You will be mine. Fuck that, you are mine. Monte, Bills, Morphis, none of them gonna ever get to have what’s mine,” he yelled at her then covered her mouth. He plunged his tongue between her teeth and groped her with his hands. He was ripping her shirt, scratching her hips and back. She thought about the night before she left home and how her mother’s boyfriend beat her with his belt because she wouldn’t let him touch her. She pulled her mind to the present. All men were pigs. All they wanted was to claim and control women and use them for sex.
Ariel may be fine with that life, but not Lena.
She fought back.
She scratched at his face and his neck then reached around by the house for something, anything, maybe even leverage to shove off of it and into him. He continued to attack. He was going to rape her right here against the damn trailer with a party going on inside.
“No!” she exclaimed as her fingers touched a piece of metal siding that was coming off of the home. She pulled it hard and struck him in the shoulder.
“Fuck! Lena, what the hell?” he yelled, releasing her and making her fall off-balance and into the bush. She swung the metal at his head, gashing him in the temple and making him fall to the ground. She ran around the side of the trailer and right to her window. She was done with this crap and this kind of life. She noticed her window was open because it was so damn hot in there at night that they had to keep the windows open. Quickly she climbed up into it and grabbed her things. She took her stash of money, five hundred dollars, and some clothes. Nothing else seemed to matter. She was going to leave Detroit forever. A glance down the hallway and she froze in shock. Her heart pounded inside her chest. She was practically gasping for air, shaking with fear and trying to remain quiet. She clutched the bag against her chest and stared in shock. Ariel, oh no.
Ariel was lying spread-eagle, naked as about five guys had their way with her. She was laughing and rolling her head back while they did what they wanted. Lena felt sick. The bile rose in her throat, but then she heard the door smash open.
“Where the fuck is she?” Triumph yelled, holding his head with his hand. She could see the blood, and she knew that was her cue to get the hell out of there pronto, so she hurried back out the window. The music continued to fill the air as she hurried away from the trailer on foot. She couldn’t take her bike. Riding on the streets, she would be found in no time. No. She needed out of this town, out of this city, this state, and this life. She wanted better. She wasn’t a slut or a loser. She was determined to succeed. She ran as fast as she could then hid within the woods as the sounds of engines filtered through the park. She saw the headlights of three cars. She remained low to the ground and behind the Dumpster as Triumph, Bills, and Troy searched for her.
I’m as good as dead if I stay here. I will not die. He will not have me. You can do this, Lena. You can escape.
Chapter 1
Dr. Jones was sitting in his office holding his head between his hands. He was frustrated, saddened, and mostly outraged by his son Bryant’s behavior. He had visited Bryant at the house, a secluded cottage on the homestead he shared with the rest of the family. Bryant, a Marine, injured in Iraq, should be further along with his physical recovery now than he was. Bryant had practically given up on life. He refused to see any of the family. His brother, Deputy Kenny Jones, stopped in day before yesterday, and Bryant had yelled from inside the house for him to leave. Then, of course, Dr. Jones’s wife, Abigail, and his brothers, Frank and Will, tried to see Bryant, too. He refused. He wanted to be left alone, but that alone time was killing him.
He heard the knock on the door and looked up to see his son, Quinn.
“Is everything all right?” Quinn asked, immediately sounding concerned. Quinn was a good man. The oldest son to Abigail, Frank, Will, and him, Quinn ran the horse-training business along with his brother, Blake, on their homestead outside of the main town. Over two thousand acres of property with multiple stables and tracks for the horses, the Joneses had established quite the lucrative business.
Dr. Pete Jones’s brothers, Frank and Will, had taken over the business from their great-grandparents.
“Wait, you went to see Bryant again, didn’t you? I told you not to b