Chapter 1
Mia
Looking back, everything was so simple when my sister and I were young.
We were best friends then, still sheltered from our father’s world.
We spent our days running around our large, tree-covered yard, chalking in our driveway or running through the sprinkler with the neighborhood kids, and eating Popsicles on the front porch on hot summer afternoons.
On the gloomy, rainy days of winter, we’d hide inside and play house.
Hours would pass as we’d set up our respective “apartments,” decorating our spaces with Mom’s decor.
We’d pretend we were married to the most amazing men, we’d have babies, we’d choose their names, what they looked like, and how they’d grow up.
But we weren’t only moms; we were working women too.
I was usually the editor-in-chief of the world’s top fashion magazine, and Nic was always an interior designer.
Sometimes our older brother, Mason, would join in.
Of course when he did, there would always be an edge of suspense to our games.
Criminals hiding from the hero, soldiers in arms, princes fighting to save the princess.
But we never minded playing what he wanted, because we all had each other.
Always only each other. Me, Nic, and Mason.
The three musketeers who never let anyone into our circle.
Not really, anyway. Because we couldn’t.
We knew very early on about the life our father led when he was discharged from the military. His second family was the Hounds of Hell MC. They often came first, and because of that, trust was fleeting. Even a friend at school could learn too much if we let them in. It was just easier not to.
Of all the memories from our childhood, it’s the good ones that haunt me most. I had no idea how beautiful they were when I lived them.
But those days are long over, and neither Mason nor I could save our sister.
And the end result is she’s dead at nineteen.
Nineteen. Her whole life was ahead of her one minute, then gone the next.
I thought she was doing better. That’s what doesn’t make sense to me.
Why couldn’t I see that she was still lost?
That she was still deep in the trauma of being drugged and sexually assaulted when she was barely seventeen.
Two of the men responsible, Gator Freeland and the Disciples of Sin’s former club president Marco Foxx, were killed by the Hounds two years ago.
Mason wouldn’t tell me the details about their suffering.
I’m his baby sister. I’m sure he doesn’t think that I can handle it.
But violence doesn’t scare me, and I don’t shy away from it when it’s deserved.
In fact, my only regret is that I wasn’t there.
If I had it my way, my smiling face would’ve been the last thing they saw as the life drained from their eyes.