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Chapter One
Katriona
The familiar jingle of the evening news drowns out the sizzle of fries being lowered into days’-old oil and a group of rowdy teens out for a late Friday night meal. They’re shoved back in the back far corner where they think no one see them lighting up. It’s about the biggest excitement this place will see until three in the morning when the less-than-upstanding citizens of Chicago stop in for a heavy dose of coffee and our famous cherry pie. It’s the only claim to fame this crappy small-time diner at the corner of forgotten and nowhere downtown Chicago has going for it.
Honestly, I don’t pay too much attention to who I serve. I keep my eyes on the tips that help me cover rent, and I don’t mind working graveyard and serving men with massive leather coats big enough to cover a small arsenal and enough bad hoodoo vibes to send anyone with a lesser constitution scurrying out the door.
And if Sally needs me, I’m there. I’ve been working at her diner for a year and some change now, and she’s the only one who took a chance on a too-skinny girl with no home before I even graduated high school. In fact, I wouldn’t even have that slip of paper packed away in my only suitcase if it were not for her. So I clock in when she needs me and serve pie and the house special to anyone willing to walk through those doors. It’s that simple and the least I can do.
Deep down I know I remind her of the daughter she lost to drug addiction a few years back. My heart aches for her and in time we’ve bonded over our life losses. It’s sad if you think about it too long, so I keep my eye on my own problems. Rent and surviving long enough to work up a better life plan.
No one is born wanting to be a below minimum wage waitress in a diner with dingy windows that offer a bleaker future, but I’m working with the cards karma and life flung my way. On the good days, which are far and few, much to my disappointment, I dream about working part-time and paying my way through college, but most days reality sets me straight, so I take one step at a time.
I’ve worked a double shift for the past five days and my throbbing, aching feet are letting me know I’ve reached my limit, but I shove down the pain and push on. I can’t afford not to. I grit my teeth past the stabbing pain in my heels and screaming calves and shove aside the fact I’m three days late on rent again. This time I might not have a home to return to even if I do manage to make the last four dollars in tips I need.
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. Believe it or not, before I took my first breath twenty years ago, the man who knocked my mother up disowned me, and I’ve been fighting for my place on this earth ever since.
Ask anyone and they’ll agree he got the better end of the stick. A great one-night stand with a beautiful escort while my mother paid the ultimate price of death trying to raise a child on her own. It’s painful to think that my mother was no more than a plaything so easily tossed aside by the high and mighty Supreme Court Judge of Illinois, Judge William Kane. I doubt she even earned an afterthought from him. 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 eighth birthday, I bounced around from one home to another until I finally took my fate in my own hands, skipped out on my last foster home at the age of seventeen and now live it up as a waitress by night and most likely by day if I’m lucky to grab a second shift. Bless Sally’s seventy-year-old heart, to top it off, the outfit I wear more than my own small collection of clothing is made of scratchy polyester the color of mustard.
I rub at the spot between my brows, trying to ward off a coming headache with not much luck. God, what I’d do for a solid straight eight hours of sleep, but I would have better luck spotting a freaking unicorn running down main street right now.
“Kat, you’re up.”
The cook bellows my name through the small portal window where they place the trays for me to deliver, and I push off the wall I’ve been leaning against for the past few minutes watching the news. I take the plates and deliver them, welcoming another diner pushing through the door and grabbing the closest booth. “What can I get you tonight?”
He says something, but I don’t hear his reply. My mind is too busy trying to catch up with what I hear coming from the TV.
With my mouth wide open, I stare across the half-empty tables and booths as the news anchor’s familiar face cuts to a picture of a man in a black robe with a familiar set of whiskey-colored eyes.
My father. I might not have a connection with him but I have the internet and can google with the best of them, so I immediately recognize the set of brown eyes with a unique shade of amber I happen to share with the man.
But that isn’t what has tears stinging my eyes or my heart lurching on the floor by my feet among the crumbs and crumpled napkins.
Someone cranks the volume up a few notches.
“In a shocking twist, this evening sitting Supreme Court Judge William Kane has been found shot to death in his home. Officials have ruled out suicide and are currently investigating what they believe is a murder. Once thought untouchable, Judge Kane has reportedly fallen from grace in recent months with allegations of taking bribes from local organized crime. Maybe in death the truth will finally come to light. He's survived by one daughter…in other news—”
Dead.
Chills run through me.
My father is dead.
I stare at the TV anchor who delivers the news with practiced matter-of-fact coldness her job requires, but the words sting all the same. Just as the TV screen switches to a reel of my father presiding over some big wig murder trial from back in the day when he had more hair and less weight going for him, I see an even more shocking image. A picture of me snapped at some point by someone. I’m standing outside our local community college on a rare day off at the beginning of last fall. I’d splurged a little, crossed town and checked out the school I wanted to attend once I could afford the time off it would require. Back then I had shorter hair compared to now. That day I opted for an artful twist up-do and looked every bit the college student ready to tackle the world.
I am not entirely convinced of what I’m looking at so I reach up and rub my eyes. “What the hell?” The headache I hoped would wait until I clocked out thunders through my brain and bounces off the side of my head, causing tears to sting my eyes. Why? I don’t know but I can’t help the sudden rush of utter despair.
I can feel the diner’s eyes fall on me, but I don’t make eye contact. I can’t. Hiding among the masses of people and blending in is my specialty. Now I feel like a spotlight is shining down on me, and all I want to do is run and hide. Now everyone knows just how unwanted I truly am.
Ice runs through my veins about as fast as molasses uphill, and my thoughts jumble in a tangle of knots as each one freezes. I tighten my fingers around my pen and notepad trying to refocus my eyes, but a full body numbness takes over until I can’t feel the paper in my hands or the pain of losing my last parent, bastard or not.
“Miss, did you hear me? The house special.” His words are clipped, rugged like he gargled sand on a nightly basis.
A rough hand clamps down on mine when I don’t answer and I jump, pulling my gaze off the TV to look at a man with a jagged line slashing through his left eyebrow and cheek. My attention falls to meet a set of eyes so dark they appear black. It could have been a trick of the eye from the dim lighting or smudged windows blocking out the shine of the parking lot lamps, but the newcomer has a look about him that creeps me out. I jerk my hand back and do my best to hide the tremble in my fingers as I scribble the order down trying my best for normal of what passes for it.
