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Chapter One
Ten years later…
It’s finally happened.
Mitch-bitch has spent the last of the money we inherited after our parents’ brutal murders. I’m so pissed, I can hardly see straight—or maybe that’s just the hunger causing me to be dizzy.
Looking around the meager trailer we call home, I can’t find a single thing to eat. Not a cracker or a single pickle floating alone in its jar. In the fridge, I find ketchup and mustard, a moldy jar of mayonnaise, some barbeque packets from the last time we got fast food, and a yogurt that expired six months ago.
Grumbling, I close the fridge and thread my fingers in my hair, tugging at the roots in my frustration.
What the fuck are we going to do?
That money should have lasted us years longer than this, but no. Mitch-bitch had to spend it on his addiction. I know I should cut him some slack. He did save me from a life in the foster system, pulling me out the moment he turned eighteen, fighting for custodial rights in court and all that shit…and thank fuck he won. I don’t think I could have survived another year living out of a black garbage bag with nothing to my name but clothes that no longer fit and a few worn family photos.
Still, my brother’s choices have gone from bad to worse. Beer was his first vice, and that quickly grew into hard liquor. Empty bottles decorate our house as if they were actual décor and not forgotten garbage. Flies are everywhere, licking up his spilled drinks and converging on the trail of crumbs leading to the monstrosity that is his bedroom.
Even then, I could handle him drunk. He was so excited when I turned sixteen a few weeks ago, because now I can legally drive him around. I say legally because he’d been using me as a fucking taxi driver for the past two years, forcing my short body to drive his rusted Ford, my head barely seeing over the steering wheel. But now that I’m sixteen, his insistence on me picking him up is nonstop.
Every night before he leaves, he gives me an order as if I’m a damn soldier. “Meet me at the casino at midnight.” He always tells me to wait under the streetlamp in the parking lot. Sometimes I sit there for hours, watching the doors for him to emerge. He doesn’t give a damn about my time, feeling entitled to use me as he sees fit because he broke me out of foster care.
But I’m getting sick and tired of it. I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask for my parents to die, for my brother to go from my confidant and best friend to a person I barely recognize. Sometimes, when he’s in one of his spirals, he cries and apologizes, and for a moment, I see the glimmer of Mitchy, the boy who let me into his fort, who created worlds in our living room out of nothing. But then he’s gone again, like a whisper on the wind I can never quite hold onto. I didn’t sign up to have every hard-earned dollar we make to be spent on gambling habits, alcohol, and drugs.
Speaking of drugs…
A knock sounds on my door, rattling the tin trailer in the tune of “Shave and a Haircut.”
Fuck me.
There’s only one person who uses that knock—his coke dealer, Donny—the biggest piece of white trash on the planet.
“I know you’re in there, munchkin. Open the door or I’ll knock it the fuck down.” I cringe when he uses the moniker Mitch used for me as kids. Once, when my brother was high, he accidentally told Donny. Now the bastard uses it to mock me. Donny is bad news, a man you don’t want to cross. Not because he’s strong or dangerous in his own skin, but because he’s so unstable, you can’t predict what he’s going to do. I once saw him slice someone’s throat because he thought they were a snitch… They weren’t. It solidified my fear of the man and my resolve to never be alone with him.
“Coming,” I call, mustering the courage to answer. “What the fuck does he want?” I mutter to myself as I head toward the door. I take a moment to fix my clothes, closing the top buttons on my black and red plaid shirt, then tucking them into my skinny jeans in order to make sure the least amount of my skin is exposed as possible. Fingering my hair tie, I tug it out and pull my dark hair down over my face, not wanting him to see all of me. I know it’s stupid, but hiding behind my hair reminds me of hiding in Mitch’s fort back when he still cared about me. It makes me feel safe, even if it’s just an illusion. But I’m taking too long, and the bang sounds again, making me jump at the abrupt noise.
After taking a deep breath, I open it, startling when I find him pressed against the doorframe. His tailored shirt doesn’t hide his beer belly, and his gold teeth do nothing to mask the putrid stench of his breath. Donny dresses in clothes that make him look like he has more money than he actually does—he’s a poser. He likes to pretend he’s worth more than he is, and I hate people like that. If you’re rich, don’t be a dick about it. If you’re poor, moping about it won’t solve anything. I’m a girl of action. I get shit done when I need to and don’t hide who I am. What you see is what you get, and sometimes, that gets me into trouble. And those who look down their noses at me? Fuck them.
Donny runs his tongue over the gold grill covering his teeth, then lowers his knockoff designer sunglasses down to the tip of his nose. “Well, hello there, beautiful. Where’s your brother? He owes me something.”
“How much?” I ask, trying to deflect. I don’t want Donny to know I’m home alone, although I’m suspicious he already does.
Donny takes a step toward me, forcing me to retreat and allow this bastard into my home. “More than normal, since he also forgot to pay me last week.”
“How much?” My frustration builds as he glances around my home, a look of disgust on his face, before gazing back down at me.
“Five hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred!” I shout in exasperation, my heart dropping. Mitchel doesn’t make that in a month at work, and I barely get any hours bussing at the shitty tavern down the street on the weekends, since my weekdays are spent at the local public high school for my junior year. What Donny is demanding will force Mitch and me to go hungry and cold, and it’s autumn right now in Boston. The leaves are falling, and there’s a crisp chill in the air. We can’t lose our electricity with winter right around the corner.
“Yes. Five hundred. And I need it by tonight or…”
My chest tightens. “Or what?”
Donny takes another step closer, reaching for me, his golden rings covering his fingers. I try not to flinch when he grazes a fingertip down my jawline. “Or else I’ll have to take something of his that he holds dear as payment.” Desire burns in his dark eyes, making my insides twist. He doesn’t have to spell it out for me. I may be poor, but I’m not stupid. Donny means to take me as payment if my brother can’t come up with the money.
Fuck me twice.
I raise my chin, holding his offensive stare. “You’ll have your money.”
