Property of Chaos (Kings of Anarchy MC: Minnesota #1)

One

ONE

VANESSA

Maybe happiness isn’t for me? The thought circles around and around in my mind, gaining credibility the more it echoes through my blurry reality. How many times have I said this would be it? I’ve done the work, and I won’t be back here again. And yet, here I fucking am, on my hands and knees in my kitchen at 2:15 in the fucking morning while I focus on slowing my erratic breaths. Fucking epic.

Fingertips pressed white against the cool floorboards, I focus on the timber’s texture beneath my sweaty pads. The pressure of the wood against the heel of my hands. , two in. And three, four, five, six out. My back arches with each inhale, core relaxing on the exhale. Somehow, over the years of practicing mindfulness, I’ve managed to amalgamate the multiple theories into one strange mish-mash of self-driven therapy. Meditation and yoga blend as I engage the CBT, reiterating my mantras on whispered breath.

“You’re safe. You are present. You are healthy, and you are okay.”

I sigh. Fuck. Am I okay?

Okay is a fluid concept at this point.

Just get a goddamn glass of water, Ness. It was the whole fucking reason I got out of bed.

I draw a deep breath and snap my eyes open, absorbing the sorry state of my fucking life outlined in shaky clarity against the floor. Rocking back, I rest my ass on my heels and run my clammy palms over the cotton of my sleep shorts. Just got to get up. I eye the edge of the marble counter. It may as well be a slippery ledge on the other side of a goddamn icy canyon for how this jump feels. Do it! I holler the words in my mind and engage my leg muscles before my pitiful brain can reason me out of forward momentum.

thing after the other. Small steps. It’s how I’ve got this far in life and kept from entirely losing my mind when the temptation felt all too real.

Pushing to stand on shaky legs, I set both hands on the counter's edge and eye the empty teal glass waiting its turn on the surface. I’m not thirsty. Fuck—if I drink now, I’m likely to need the bathroom before my alarm goes off, but it was the theory behind the task that—as much as I don’t want to admit it—worked.

I’m up. I’m taking steps to move forward through the fear.

The nightmare didn’t touch me.

Not this time.

I haven’t woken in the early hours—heart racing and mind scrambling to understand where I am and what time it is—for over a year. Only one thing has changed in my carefully curated routine lately: taking a job.

Giving myself a reason to leave the cottage.

The next step in masquerading as a human with a soul in polite society.

“Fuck it.” I take the glass to the fridge and press it against the water dispenser.

Icy relief trickles into the patterned stemware. I gulp it back like a woman fresh out of the desert.

It does little to encourage me to go back to bed.

Reading does even less to remind me how tired I am when I finally make it beneath the covers.

And dawn does nothing to appease my dread at another night spent chasing elusive rest as I cede defeat and shuffle into the small bathroom across the hall from my bedroom.

It was pure luck that landed me the spot at the cafe. Pure charity on Theresa’s behalf when she figured she had time to train me on the complicated coffee machine. Pure desperation on my end that I even considered walking inside to enquire when I saw the brightly colored sign tacked to her shop window.

Nothing changes unless we do.

And I’ve got a fuckload of change to go before I’m ready to break out of this chrysalis.

A light thud sounds at the window, startling me. I pause brushing my teeth and lean across the claw-foot tub to push the old sash window open, drawing a deep, calming breath as I do. Murphy stretches as though his furry ass didn’t just purposefully smash against the glass to announce his arrival and saunters inside.

“You’re on your own today, asshole.”

I soften as he caresses his feline body against my bare calves and then proceeds through to the kitchen with a crackly yip.

I never wanted a pet. I can’t take proper care of myself, let alone trust my emotionally unstable ass to remember to tend to the needs of a small animal. But it became obvious when I accepted the keys to the property a year ago that the super-chill cat came with the package.

Naturally, I called him Murphy after Murphy’s Law when it became apparent that the things I wanted least in life were the things I’d get the easiest.

Probably why I haven’t got proper sleep in months—because I need it.

Unlike the tumble down the porch steps that saw me in a knee brace for two and a half months. Didn’t need that. Got it anyway.

Call it my vibe.

I rinse and spit out the froth, stash my toothbrush in the floral ceramic cup on the edge of the sink, and then figure I may as well feed Murphy even if I don’t intend to bestow the same luxury on myself.

“Find anything last night?” I scoop his bowl off the floor and set it on the counter.

He leaps to the worktop without a second thought, much the same as how I swing my arm to knock his ass back where it belongs: on the ground.

Animals and food preparation should never mix. Ever.

“Take that as a no.” I reach into the fridge and pluck out his small container of chopped liver and horse meat.

Fucker knew what he was doing when he tricked me into pet ownership.

A cursory glance at the clock on the oven reassures me that I have enough time to indulge in a minor mental breakdown before work. My skin prickles as I set the overlord’s dish on the floor; the mere sight of the grain in the timber is enough to throw my subconscious back five hours to when I contemplated living the rest of my life in a coma.

I shake out the sensation and curse my quickening heart rate. Fuck this shit. The adrenal hangover is always the worst. I am safe. I am okay.

Fuck this life. I am not okay. But that’s what’s okay.

I am human. I am allowed to grieve. I am strong because I endure this shit.

Much better.

Fingers combing my black, shaggy shoulder-length cut, I move through to my bedroom and pick out a suitable outfit for the day. Long denim shorts, comfortable Vans, and a faded band T-shirt that won’t give me a panic attack if it gets dirty complete the look. I thread my emotional support hair tie onto my wrist and then pull my hair back into a low half-up half-down style with another.

Ten minutes later, I pause in my doorway, sporting a sharp-as-fuck winged eye, and glance around, running a mental inventory of the things I need. Got my water. Keys. Money. Will to live still loading. Set. Deep breath in, pep-talk ready to roll, I pop in a single earbud and step back to pull the door shut on my sanctuary in this evil world.

My heel catches on something small yet hard.

I stiffen, using my grasp on the door handle to save my balance and glance beneath my sneaker. What the fuck? Mail isn’t unusual. A parcel isn’t anything to incite panic in any normal person’s day.

What freaks me the fuck out is that it has my name on it. My name. Not the fucking pseudonym I use for online purchases, but the assigned moniker I was given at birth by the devil spawn posing as my parents. Shit.

My heart lives in my fucking throat, pulse pounding so hard in my neck that I swear anyone passing by would think a goddamn gibbon lives in the house. Palm to my heated flesh, I rub the pulse point as I bend down and retrieve the padded mailer.

My hands shake as I turn it over to search for a return address. Some lawyer in Oklahoma. Not shady at all.

I’ve got a minute, at best, before I need to have feet on the pavement if I want to maintain any hope at hell of not being late to work. Which means one thing. The fucking mail has to come with me.

Mystery in hand, I turn toward the road and slide my oversized shades over my eyes. You’re a bad bitch. Nobody fucks with your peace. You’ve got this.

Only I don’t. And the people I cut out of my life over a decade ago continue to disturb the peace with their memory alone.

Fuck it. I tear the serrated strip from the back of the mailer and shove it into my fist as I balloon the edges of the packet.

A single document lives inside. Two pages at most. Folded in half and ominous in the care taken to ensure it got to me via a method other than snail mail. Pausing to let myself through the picket fence gate, I take a second to revel in the present, the sun on my skin, the breeze against my face. Mini-meditations. Don’t knock the benefits.

Work. Right.

Veering left, I nudge my crossbody bag around my waist to rest against my hip and puff the envelope again. The scent of warm dust mingles with freshly cut grass as I start the fifteen-minute walk toward town, ambient rock in one ear accented by the rustle of wind through the tall elm trees in the other.

I pay no mind to the distant growl of a tractor as it works the fields, pinching the unexpected papers between forefinger and thumb to slide them from their envelope. The growl grows in intensity—enough that I glance up as the papers pull free to notice that there’s no fucking tractor. It’s three motorbikes roaring toward me on the dirt road.

Fuck. There goes any hope of staying clean. Goddamn summer and dry-ass dirt clouding the air.

Got to be tourists. Anyone who lives here knows the road leads nowhere, ending shortly before the jagged riverbank cuts down to the thin trickle that feeds into the tributary.

I lift my hand with the mail to shield my eyes as the riders tear past, solid men kitted out all in black on an eighty-five degree day. Makes sense—not. The document catches in the breeze they create, pulling from my fingers as the bikes disappear past my property toward the river end of the rural road.

“Shit!” I spin on my heel and scramble after the mail, collecting one page before trapping the second beneath my shoe in the grass on the roadside.

My joy at recovering the pages diminishes with a wash of cold sweat. The fuck? My gaze falls on the bold words at the top of the page. YOU DID THIS.

My hands shake, heart nearing critical speeds as I lift the second page and scan the details listed in perfectly spaced segments down the page.

No. Absolutely no fucking way am I believing this bullshit. I would have known. Wouldn’t I?

Shit. I may have fucking escaped the devil’s hold, but I sure never made it out of hell.

It’s a trap. It’s got to be. Nothing more than a means to guilting me into returning. No fucking way would I ever agree to walk my fucking ass back into purgatory, no matter the consequence for me or anyone else.

As long as that man lives, I don’t.

He took enough from me the first nineteen years of my life. He doesn’t get this too.