Chapter Two
Katriona
Is the gun for me?
Sunlight gleams off silvery metal and I know this is where I die. A bullet between the eyes in broad daylight. A mob hit on his own daughter because I don’t fit into whatever compartment he wants to fit me inside of.
A gruff, “Marcus.” stays my execution but I can see the sheer disappointment in my would-be killer's eyes from his boss’s order.
Well damn. Cold-hearted much? I guess I have my answer.
I swallow past a dry throat.
“Sorry, maybe some other day?” I play off my nerves with sarcasm but inside I’m shaking worse than a needle from an eight-point-five on the Richter Scale.
Muscles takes his hand away and sprints to the driver’s side of the car. He’s barely behind the wheel when the motor purrs to life.
“Have it your way. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, you fool.” My father nods to Muscles I guess in what is sign language between assholes and they’re gone.
Like an idiot, my feet stay glued to the sidewalk as the mysterious car with dark, tinted windows rolls by moments after my father’s car leaves the curb.
Back inside my apartment, I fix the door the best I can on two of the three hinges and bolt it closed. I make a mental note to pick up a door cam on my next day off.
My last name might be Kane, but that is as close to wealthy and privileged as I’ll ever get. My father made sure of that. Before I could properly find my way in a world full of bad guys, the man who knocked my mother up disowned me—us— and I’ve been fighting for my place on this earth ever since.
Not stuff happy reunions are made of.
Ask anyone and they’ll agree he got the better end of the stick. A great handful of years with a beautiful woman at his beck and call while my mother paid the ultimate price of death trying to raise a child on her own when he tired of family life.
It’s painful to think that my mother was no more than a plaything so easily tossed aside by the high and mighty William Kane.
What a joke.
I doubt my mother even earned an afterthought from him. I know I didn’t. For reasons beyond my understanding, she didn’t see it worth forcing him to support a child he didn’t want.
Both were wrong and I am left living with the consequences of their actions.
After my mother passed from complications of the heart a little before my fourteenth birthday, I bounced around from one home to another until I finally took my fate into my own hands, skipped out on my last foster home at the age of sixteen. Back then I thought I knew everything.
I used to believe in fairytales and happily ever afters. After she passed and I became of age, I searched him out. Worst decision ever. My heart still feels the pain of his second rejection.
The reunion left me with a bad aftertaste and I don’t think he thought twice about me the second his door closed on my retreating back.
Fast forward three years and I admit; my hands are shaking at the fact he knows where to find me.
Freshly showered, I step out my busted door and make sure Muscles with the bruising hands didn’t change his mind about doubling back and shoving me into the trunk of the limo after all.
Finding no one, I lock my apartment and tuck my head into the biting spring wind. I step off the curb and hail a cab. All the chaos left me almost an hour late for work. My mind ping-pongs between the fear of getting fired and the fear of Kane’s words.
As much as I hate him I’d be a fool to ignore his words. Like I need another thing to worry about. I want to scream my frustrations into the fading afternoon. Tired didn’t begin to describe the utter bone-deep feeling of fatigue that burrows deep into my body from others trying to control my life.
I forgave my mother for her choices. But my father? No. He doesn’t get a free pass.
I refuse to be anyone's plaything; someone who can be used up and tossed aside.
I sling the strap of my bag over my shoulder, false pride leaving a bad taste at the back of my throat.
True, I didn’t make it much farther up the food chain than she did. I make my way in the world skimming by in the shadows. I might not sell my body as she did, but it’s not much better. I live it up as a glamorous waitress at one of the most private clubs known in Chicago. Where politicians and aristocratic monsters rub elbows on any given day of the week.