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“Are your eyes really brown?” she whispers.
I know better. I know better than to tell her anything about my disguise.
I have to get to LA safely. If I don’t, I won’t be able to right the wrongs.
I hold back a scoff. It would take three lifetimes to right all of my wrongs. I knew this going in.
Is it even worth trying?
I have to now. I told Pollack who I was, and I called my father.
I already have my flight booked to LA tomorrow morning.
I don’t have a choice.
And I know I can’t be what Katelyn needs unless I fix as much as I can.
It’s a done deal.
“I’ll be right back, baby.” I push her hair off her forehead.
I rise slowly, so as not to nudge her. I want to keep her comfortable. Then I go to the bathroom, and I remove my colored contact lenses. My vision is perfect. I’ve never needed correction, so these contact lenses are for nothing more than cosmetic purposes.
To change my stark blue eyes to brown.
My naturally blond hair is covered by the hair dye. Nothing can be done about that. It will have to grow out. For now it stays short and brown.
As I stare at myself in the mirror, my actual reflection stares back at me, as if the mirror only shows what I truly am.
Long blond hair. Blue eyes. Scruffy blond stubble.
I’ve remained closely shaven since I started this charade. Sandy blond stubble wouldn’t really jibe with the dark brown hair.
The shirt I’m wearing seems to dissolve in front of my eyes, showing more accuracy in my reflection. My bare chest—no dark hair, since I’m not dark-haired. The scar from my stab wound to the stomach, and then my most recent scar—the bullet to my shoulder.
And, of course, the tattoo that begins on my left hand and winds all the way up my left arm to my shoulder.
The Raven with flaming wings.
Lucifer Raven.
My dark side.
Funny. I’m a blond and blue-eyed man, but the name Raven stuck.
I remember when I got it.
“Tell me something, rich boy,” King says.
King is actually his real name. Short for Kingsford Winston. His goons jumped me when I was walking around a seedy part of LA. A place where I had no business being, but I was a rebel in those days.
I was rebelling against my old man.
Even against my mother.
I was twenty-one and rebelling against anything.
But unlike James Dean, I was not a rebel without a cause. My old man threatened to cut me off if I didn’t get my shit together.
Since I didn’t give a rat’s ass about him, I told him to go for it.
But not before pocketing as much cash as I could and getting it into my own name.
Still…I needed to make a living. I needed to find some way to make money.
Which is how I got involved with King.
“You think you’re worthy?” he asks me.
“I can handle a gun like nobody’s business,” I say. “And I’m a third-degree black belt in judo.”
“How’d that happen, rich boy?”
“How do you think? My old man paid for all of it. I had the best lessons money could buy.”
“And how am I supposed to trust that you aren’t going to go running back to that world?”
“That world turned its back on me.”
“I hear you, rich boy. The world turned its back on me a long time ago.”
Interesting. Seems I have something in common with this drug lord.
“This is not an easy life, rich boy,” he says.
“I’m not looking for easy.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I want to make more money than my old man can ever dream of.”
“Your old man’s a multimillionaire. Close to a billion, I hear. Drugs aren’t a billion-dollar industry, at least not for any one person. But…you can make in the hundreds of millions if you play your cards right.”
“How do I play my cards right?” I ask.
“First, you become indispensable to me.”
“Okay. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“That’s the thing. Everybody in the business wants to become indispensable to me. Only a few have made it. I don’t give lessons, rich boy.”
“I guarantee I’ll become indispensable to you,” I say, “but first you have to stop calling me rich boy.”
“I’ll call you what I damned well please,” he says.
Quick as a flash, I’ve got him on his back. Knife hand to his throat. “Still going to call me rich boy?”
“No,” he says. “I like your first name, though. It’s…satanic. Literally.”
“Thank my old man for that.”
“You’re no longer an Ashton, and you’re no longer rich boy. From now on, you’re Raven. Lucifer Raven.”
For some reason, the name seems to fit. Though I don’t know why. “Why Raven?”
“The Raven is intelligent and cunning. Already I can see those qualities in you, but the biggest one is survival and adaptability.”
“Are you some kind of shaman or something?” I say sardonically.
