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PROLOGUE
Royal
My father might have died when I was fifteen, but he taught me a few lasting lessons. The first was to mind my own business. When you grow up where I did, that’s the main rule to survive.
I didn’t see nothing.
I didn’t hear nothing.
If you think otherwise, you were mistaken.
And you never fucking ever talk to the cops.
I stuck to it. I was young, but they trusted me to run errands younger than anyone else in the family. Ma wouldn’t let me drop out of school even when she was working doubles at the hospital to cover the pile of bills Dad left behind when he died. I tried to get a job, but she wouldn’t hear anything about it. So I didn’t have much of a choice but to keep asking until they let me. I started working, and suddenly, Ma got a raise, and some of the family found money Dad had left behind or things they’d give to her for free. The normal favors they’d do if Dad was still alive.
I didn’t want the money they offered. I wanted them to keep finding ways to make Ma’s life easier. Anyone who grew up in the family expected their life to follow their father’s and grandfather’s before them. It was the way we took care of each other.
We all ended up working for the family business. It was in our blood. Even the smart kids who got out to go to college came back to work as accountants and lawyers. Even the doctors showed up when called.
Like being raised here was some sort of indentured servitude.
Or like they’d injected us with loyalty when we came screaming into this world. I didn’t care about the loyalty part, but I sure as fuck was tired of watching Ma cry at the kitchen table over bills after she thought I went to bed.
She couldn’t have predicted Dad would catch a stray bullet while collecting on a debt and she’d be left with his crumbling finances.
So I stepped up even if she’d never know. And that had me standing here, huddled in an alcove at one in the morning, freezing my fucking balls off.
The drop I waited for was twenty minutes late. I shoved my hands in my pockets, leaning into the brick, trying to absorb the heat from the building, but with as low as the temperatures had been for weeks, even the wall was icy. The wind off the bay worked its way into my bones, and it was going to be one of those nights that dragged souls to the underworld.
The streets in Boston were rarely empty, but tonight they were barren. The cold drove even the sex workers inside. So I noticed the lone figure walking down the street long before the sound of his footfalls reached my ears.
Even in the dark, I knew his face. He was a couple of grades younger than me, but we hung around the same groups, or we did until he’d disappeared a couple of years ago.
“Aspen?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
He froze and glanced around. “Who’s there?”
I pulled my hood down and stepped out of the shadows. “Long time.”
“Yea.” He nodded, shoving his hands further into his hoodie pockets. He didn’t have a jacket, and it was way too cold to be out without one.
What could I even say to him? He was too young to be out. I opened my mouth to say just that, but what excuse did I have?
We lingered there, silently trading looks, but neither of us said anything.
“I’ll see you around,” he said at length.
“You’re looking for trouble being out tonight,” I said when he turned his back. Not only with the cold but because it brought out the worst in those with nothing. They’d kill him for his clothes. But he didn’t need to walk into the middle of a deal or a hit. Both of which could happen on a night like this. No witnesses.
“I could say the same to you,” he replied, not slowing his stride.
I couldn’t follow him. I had to stand here or risk missing the drop. “Go home.”
He laughed. “I’ll see you around, Royal.”
“Fuck,” I said when he turned a corner, and I lost sight of him.
I returned to my shelter, not about to risk being spotted by the wrong person, rubbing my frozen forehead. I should have brought a hat, but I didn’t think I’d be out here this fucking long.
