Desiree
“Wait one damn minute. You want me to what?” I yelled at my father; my face pinched in a deep frown. His absurd request had sped up my heart rate and spiked my anxiety. Raymond Evans had lost his natural mind. My eyes bucked, and my ears perked like a bloodhound’s at the prospect of what he was preparing to say to justify his proposal.
“I need you to marry Arjen Vallin,” he repeated. His wry grin did nothing to ease my tense expression as my brows pinched tight enough to make my forehead ache. My father had asked me to do some crazy shit through the years, but this was where I was drawing the line. No way was I going to marry a Vallin. The name was often brought up in sentences referencing a bunch of ravenous animals, trained to kill without remorse.
I raked my anxious fingers through my shoulder-length locks, attempting to make sense of my father’s request. His illegal activities had sent me to the best private schools, paid for my graphic design degree, and paved the gateway for me to live comfortably. Whenever he called in a favor, if it wasn’t something that would land me in jail, I would oblige. Not this time. No way. Hell no!
“Dad, you know I don’t mind helping, but this is too much to put on someone.” Although I wasn’t dating anyone, it didn’t mean I was free to be cast off as a criminal’s future wife.
My father didn’t even bother with a reply. He just sat there staring expectantly. The daughter of the infamous Raymond Evans. It was something I was once proud of until I began to understand that I was no more than the child of a high-profile thug.
Evans. By the time I was sixteen, I had been snatched twice, shot at on multiple occasions, and knifed in the back because of that name. My brothers, Raymond Junior, and Rayland Evans were perfectly content living their non-working lives off the scraps my father gave them. Neither had the heart to do any of the dirty and gritty work involved in the drug game. My favorite cousin, Mecca, however, had embraced the life like it had been breathed into her blood as a baby. I had accepted the bigger picture and preferred to live without deathly shadows chasing me.
My father had worked his ass off, been shot, stabbed, dethroned, throned again, robbed, kidnapped, tortured, and back around the deathly circle again. He had gone through all the drama to climb to the top of a metaphorical throne that labeled him kingpin of the Black Saints, our criminal organization. To my father, the title may as well have been president.
His throne covered territory throughout the state of Colorado, as well as areas in Nevada and Utah. He had garnered enough power to have earned the respect of other crime families and organizations in the country. He also had the power to form alliances with other powerhouses in the crime world.
Now forty-four, Raymond had become a father to Raymond Junior at fifteen, two years later Rayland came along, and me a year after that when he was eighteen. Three kids before he was twenty, and we all had different mothers.
Two of those mothers were dead, taken by the life. My mother overdosed before I was three months old, and Rayland’s mother was killed in a drive-by walking home from work when he was two. Raymond Junior’s mother resided in an asylum for the criminally insane. Being involved in the life had driven her to drugs, and a bad batch of PCP-laced crack had driven her over to Crazytown, USA, and she had never returned.
Running my small online art and design company kept me busy. Able to set my own hours, I worked from home designing a variety of cover art, logos, and producing designs for magazine advertisements. I also sold my designs on my online store and nurtured my love for painting. I had been lucky enough to book a few showings for my gothic-inspired pieces, and a few of my original designs that I had converted into prints.
There were days when I would find the most unexpected places to explore and create: off the side of a dead-end road, the bus station, or train station. Abandoned buildings and structures were my favorite places to visit. They oftentimes offered tossed away treasure more valuable than a sea filled with sunken gold.
I enjoyed creating art from things left behind, things that had been discarded by the world. When shoppers purchased my art, I saw it as the world reclaiming something they were unaware that they had thrown away. My Unclaimed Death pieces were usually my most profitable and first to sell. People embraced the darkness and mystery inscribed in death.
My status as an entrepreneur allowed me to spend time with my friends, the few I had, which included my friend of eight years, Patrena Davis, and my cousin, Mecca, who I had grown up with.
“Desiree, baby, you know I have a plan.” My father’s words weren’t reassuring. “In this business, family can mean the difference in staying alive and staying in business. An alliance with a group like the Vallins will give us a strength of force that could make us untouchable. Unfortunately, the only way to become family with the Vallins is to create it. You’re my only way in, Des,” my father briefed, attempting to make his proposal sound appealing.
I laughed, my chuckle dripping with the high level of sarcasm flowing through me. Surely, my father wasn’t losing it this early in life.
“What about me staying away from the life? You said yourself that it was best that I stay clear of our family drama. I agreed, which is why I keep my distance and help you on the low if I need to.”
He bit into his lip, his gaze fixed on me but staring right through me. There was something major he wasn’t telling me. Something was off, and I sensed it wasn’t a problem that could be solved with conversation. It was likely an issue that could only be fixed with a high body count.
“So, I’m just supposed to walk up to Arjen Vallin and ask him to marry me? And, he is going to magically say, ‘Yes, of course. I’ve been waiting on you all my life.’”
“Actually, he was the one who made the suggestion when I proposed an alliance with them.” This revelation deepened my confusion, and had me massaging my forehead in the hope of rearranging and putting order to my jumbled-up thoughts.
“Turns out he’s in the market for a wife and is convinced that you would make a good one.” His words continued to twist my confusion into a knot.
“That makes no sense. I’ve only seen the man a few times. Why the heck would he think I would make a good wife?”
When I recognized the game Arjen was running, my eyes fell closed. Marry the black daughter of a well-known drug kingpin, and he would be opening his organization up to a new market. Same was true for my father. His daughter, the wife of one of the top arms dealers in the country. The men saw dollar signs, but I saw disaster.
“No. Absolutely not.” I waved my father off when he flashed a set of pleading eyes. “I’m not about to play pawn in the Evans-and-Vallin chess match against the rest of the illegal world.” The statement was made with firm conviction that I was sure my father would find a way to pick apart.
“Please, Des, I need this right now,” he continued as the desperation creasing his face was like none I had seen before. What had my father gotten himself into now?
“You would have me subject myself to a bunch of gun-running killers so that you can get a foot into more illegal activity? You love me that much?” The question finally made guilt rise on his face. He dropped his head, his chin touching his chest.
“I’m in trouble, Des. So deep, you may be the only one who can get me out. I haven’t even told your brothers or your cousin everything yet,” he stated. The deep creases of stress in his expression and the depleting tone of his words hyped up my apprehension.
“Our last two big shipments were seized, and you know how careful I am. I used the money I was saving to pay off the first shipment. When this last one was taken, I knew we had a real problem.”
He paced, shaking his head, as I sat on his living room couch in his moderate three-bedroom home. My father should have been far richer than he currently was, having been in the drug game for so long, but he had a major vice. Gambling. It was nothing for him to lose millions a year betting on horses, playing high-stakes poker games, casinos, you name it.