Brutal Collateral (Quinlan Empire #1)

PROLOGUE

The Sister – Albany, New York – Nine Years Ago – Age 18

“G et out of the car ,” my brother Alexander hisses, sitting next to me in the backseat of a rickety old SUV driven by the same man who works for my father.

It reeks of cigarettes and worn-out leather, but the assault on my senses for the duration of the four-hour drive is nothing compared to the way my heart is pounding seeing a Navy recruitment office.

“Please don’t make me do this,” I say, trying not to cry.

“It’s for your own protection,” my brother grumbles the same bullshit reason I’ve been hearing my whole life. BS that’s done nothing but kept me isolated.

That looks to be changing. I’m being forced to leave my family.

“But tell me why?” I plead, trying to break the wall he’s kept up for the entire drive in deadly silence.

“Okay, I’ll tell you why.” Alexander turns to face me, his thirty-year-old smile as harsh as our father’s. “Father owes Mr. Christou a lot of money and offered you in payment for the debt.”

That shuts me up and paralyzes me with fear hearing the name. The godfather , the head of the Greek Mafia is coming for me? Oh God.

“I won’t let that happen.” Alexander grips my chin. “But it will take time to undo Father’s damage to this family. I vow to restore our name to the glory and respect it once held so I can officially take over.”

Yesterday, my aunt—Father’s sister—gathered everyone together in her Park Avenue apartment with my younger cousins to sing me happy birthday. I turned eighteen, imagining all the freedom I’d have.

Then my oldest brother woke me up at five a.m. and told me I was enlisting in the Navy! The US Navy, not even the Hellenic Greek Navy where he served.

Next, I was pushed into the bathroom where a woman bleached my dark hair to a sickly white color! I barely had time to look in the mirror when I was then ordered into this car.

“You have to walk in there on your own, sister. Don’t make me drag you out of this car and carry you,” my brother growls. “Now tell me your name.”

I stare down at the envelope with my new identity. I’ve studied it as I’d been ordered to, but when I open my mouth, Alexander shoots me a warning glare like he knows I’ll answer my real name just to be a brat.

He snaps his fingers in front of my face to change my mind.

“I got it,” I bite out.

Growing up with four brothers, who narcissistically think they’re Greek Gods, I had to be tough to find my place and earn their respect.

“I know it seems like I’m punishing you, but I’m saving you from a life of hell. Father doesn’t give a shit about you.” His words sting, but he doesn’t voice the reason why my father has no love for me.

I found out one night when he was drunk.

I look exactly like my mother, the woman who gave him five children and loved him, but he ran her off. Paid her not to come near us. Given Father’s power at the time, she had no choice.

I’ve never heard from her since that dreadful day.

“Does... Does anyone know what you’re doing, or where I’ll be?”

“No,” Alexander says sharply. “I’m taking charge of this family. Our brothers will know soon enough not to question me.”

I shoot a look at him, thinking about the brother I’m closest with because of our ages. “Ambrose will want to know where I am.”

“Just as I have plans for you, I have plans for Ambrose. I have plans for this whole fucking family. But I can’t do that with savages at my gate looking for you, demanding I hand you over to pay the debts Father incurred with his gambling, whores, and bad business deals. As soon as you get your ass on that naval base, I will announce your disappearance.”

“And then?”

His cold eyes make me shiver. “Then I’m killing Father for daring to sell your virginity.”

“Why not just kill the man I’ve been sold to?”

He grinds his molars. “ That will take time. Christou’s men are coming for you today .”

A chill races up my spine. Christ, this threat is real.

“Because I’m eighteen,” I whisper, understanding now.

“I need you out of the equation, sister. I can’t be worried someone will abduct you. We are of pure Greek blood and very high in the organization. You’re valuable to me .” My brother’s gaze cuts to the recruitment office.

I look that way, too, and find a man in a dark suit gleaming with gold embroidery standing in the doorway behind a glass door.

“They’re waiting for you,” he says, his patience thinning more every second.

“Why the Navy?” I ask, stalling.

“Their basic training starts tomorrow. I paid a third party to get you a last-minute appointment. You just have to pass the physical.” He grips my thigh. “ Pass that physical.”

“Wait, where do I sleep tonight?” I panic, realizing I’ve never spent the night completely alone anywhere.

“It’s been arranged for you to be driven to the base tonight.”

“Do I even have—”

“ Everything you need is in that envelope.” My brother taps it. “You must walk in there alone. Get out of the car.”

I’m utterly terrified and can’t believe I have to do this. I’ve seen movies about basic training for the military. It’s hell on earth.

“But why the military and not a safehouse?” I choke out.

“The Navy will make you into a badass. I would train you myself, but if you stayed in Father’s apartment, you will be in chains by tomorrow.”

Badass?

Me?

“As soon as I’ve decimated the man Father owes money to, and our house is secure, I will come get you,” my brother promises.

“How long do you think that will take?”

He shrugs. “Four years, maybe less.”

I take my last breaths of freedom, it’s clear I have no choice. The word badass rings loudly in my ears. I’m the only daughter, but my brothers never treated me like a silly little girl. They toughened me up. I just never thought they’d force me into the military.

“Won’t someone try to find me?” I say, clinging to every second of my old life before I get out of this car and become someone else. “Pay someone to drag me out of here?”

Alexander’s jaw tightens. “Your new identity is secure.”

It hits me, the reason he won’t say my name. To him, I’m already the person in this envelope.

A stranger.

My gaze lingers on the window posters of the recruitment center.

Four years.

“Get. Out. Of. The. Car,” he says one more time.

Willing my spine into steel, I push the door open and get out refusing to say goodbye. I’m not his sister anymore. I’m the stranger whose name is on this paperwork. Someone without a family. Without a past.

Stepping toward the recruitment office, I glance in the envelope and see that birth certificate on top of the paperclipped documents.

Every aspect of my identity is different. Even my birthdate. Looking closer, my stomach drops. There’s no father listed.

Unknown.

Alexander made me a bastard! I’m gonna kill him. I turn around, but my brother and the car are gone.

He ACTUALLY left me...

Feeling sick to my stomach, I open the recruitment office’s door emblazoned with the daunting US Navy logo.

“Can I help you?” The man in a uniform who watched us earlier stands up from behind a cheap metal desk.

His deep blue double-breasted jacket with two rows of gold buttons, gold bands on the sleeve cuffs, and little gold embroidered anchors takes my breath away.

Not for the man, but the uniform.

“I... I have an appointment.” I feel like a slob in my jeans and sneakers. I was never one for dresses or high heels. Even though I’m technically a Greek Mafia princess.

“Name?”

I freeze, realizing I’m about to commit fraud.

The recruiter tilts his head. “Problem?”

“Your uniform. I thought you only wore white,” I say to stall.

“In the winter we wear blue and, in the summer, we wear our whites.”

Plural. Whites. That’s...cool.

I point to a photo of several officers in their whites . “Those men...”

“Those warriors are SEALs.”

“SEALs, as in...SEAL Team 6?”

He folds his arms. “Are you interested in being a SEAL?”

“Are there women SEALs?”

“Not yet.” He motions for me to sit in a chair facing his desk. “Every class, we invite the most qualified female recruits to do the SEAL challenge. Most don’t accept, though.”

Butterflies take flight in my stomach at the idea of being a Navy SEAL. And the first female? I love a challenge.

I’m a little off today because I was ripped from my bed before the break of dawn, tossed into a smelly car, and driven four hours away to be dumped here.

I sit up straight, ignoring my stinging scalp from the bleach. “That sounds amazing.”

“Great. Once again, recruit. What is your name?”

Shifting my weight, I look him in the eye and say the fake name I memorized, “Hadleigh Castille.”