Anxiety leaped in my veins. When you’d been on the run for as long as I had, you learned there would never be an endpoint to the fear of discovery. It had followed us from the night my father fled and dragged my mother and me from Woodhaven as if the devil was on his back.
I shouldn’t be in New York.
It was my father’s voice, yet mine too. It was stupid, risky, and ridiculous, but the truth remained that I had little choice.How would I find Kirill if I wasn’t here? How could he find me?
“Who?” I asked numbly.Was it him?
“If you want to know, I might be persuaded to part with the information for a price,” Kap said, sitting forward. His piggy, greedy eyes glittered with malice. “An hour in a private room downstairs, on the house. You and me.”
A bitter laugh left me as I crossed my arms over my chest. I was pretty thin these days, so there wasn’t much to see, but the slide of Kap’s eyes on my skin made me feel dirty. The desire to know who the hell he was talking to almost made me cave. I’d been in New York for months and had no luck. Mallory – my given name—meant bad luck, and it had lived up to its ominous meaning.
“Let me get this straight. Not only do you want to touch me, but you want to do it for free?” I asked, my voice braver than it had been in a long time. The girl who asked that question wasn’t Lori Wilson, desperate to get as many tips as possible. That voice was Mallory Madison, who’d had the world at her feet.
Kap’s meaty fist clenched on the table, and he narrowed his eyes at me.“You’ll pay for that, Madison.”
I immediately grabbed the ice bucket from the floor, and the startling cold chilled my hands.“Put it on my tab, Holmes,” I muttered and turned away.
That was silly. Dangerous, even. I shouldn’t be goading Kap Holmes to retaliate. I had too much to lose. No, scratch that. I hadalmostnothing to lose, but wasn’t that more dangerous? There was nothing anyone could take from me at this point that wouldn’t hurt or leave a mark.
Sometimes, even that deterrent didn’t seem to matter.
* * *
Another night,another crappy shift down. I stuck my tips down my bra and bundled up in my threadbare coat to walk home. The gray sky was lightening into a purplish dawn, and there was no point wasting bus fare. I preferred working until dawn because the coffee shops and bakeries would be opening soon. There would be people out and about—built-in security. I wandered rain-slicked streets toward the bedsit I shared with my father.
I went into my room, not wanting to interact with Henry. Lately, he kept weird hours, up early and sleeping randomly during the day. He didn’t work—he claimed it was too dangerous in case he was recognized. Right. He’d be recognized by some gang members he stole money from seven years ago. That sounded likely. It was an excuse and a weak one at that.
I took off my coat, shivering when the cool air met my sweaty skin. One thing about the club was that it was always as hot as hell in there—a blessing in winter and a curse the rest of the year.
I stripped off and wiggled into an oversized T-shirt huge enough to reach my knees. I added sweats, thick socks, and a hoodie and crawled onto my mattress. Sure, it was on the floor, and a box spring was an impossible dream, but the sheets were soft, and my feet were aching.
I put my crappy old phone on charge and pulled my journal from a drawer. Sucking on the end of my pen, I stared at the blank page for a long moment before starting to write. The whole day went in there, uninspiring as it was. It helped count the days like tally marks on a prison wall. Finally, I finished my entry with the same thing I always did.
Love always, your Molly.
Everything I’d written in every journal I’d had for seven years was a letter to Kirill. I’d give them to him one day, even if I had to live a hundred years to do it.
I settled back in bed and cracked the top off the bottle of water Rafe had handed out at the end of my shift. Rafe never did anything for free, so I planned to enjoy every drop. I drank my fill and let my mind drift where it liked. Kirill Lewis.My long-loved lost boy.
I’d tried to find my best friend countless times over the years. He had become a ghost, and I never got a hint of where he was. It hadn’t helped that my father had dragged my mother and me upstate to hide like the coward he was. We had only recently come to New York, and I was itching to find Kirill. I had no idea where to start except where he’d been heading the last time I saw him. My mind returned to New York because that’s where Kirill’s father had been. It was all I had to go on. I’d found out his mother had left Woodhaven only a month after Henry dragged us away from town. No one in his old neighborhood would tell me more than that.
It was an impossible dream, but I clung to it anyway. I had nothing else.
3
KIRILL
Sitting in my black Bugatti down the street from the gentleman’s club, The Blue Rabbit, I was impatient to see Mallory. Viktor favored armored SUVs, but in our world, they were the same as a neon arrow in the air above the hood. When I was going somewhere alone, I preferred to blend in. Well, as much as someone with my height, build, and many tattoos could. Thank fuck, this was New York City, where citizens knew to mind their own goddamn business.
I’d already dispatched my bodyguards, much to Ivan’s consternation. The man was a stickler for safety, but I was undeterred. I didn’t need them. I’d waited too long to see Mallory again. I didn’t want anyone there but us. Me and the girl who’d started it all.
I sat and waited in the dark for my first look at the object of my obsession.
The backdoor to the club squealed open as metal scraped stone. The soft chatter of voices filled the air as the club’s staff spilled out, each carrying a club-branded water bottle in the early morning drizzle.
There. There she was.
Gooseflesh crept along my limbs and sent a shiver down my spine, despite my thick coat keeping out the dampness. It was like seeing a ghost.