Chapter 2
LYRA
Ilight the candle, even though I feel ridiculous doing it.
It's one of those shitty supermarket cupcakes where the vanilla frosting is dyed a shade of pink for some unknown reason. The single candle burns unevenly, wax already curling down the side.
To top it off, it sits on a chipped plate I stole from the diner down the street.
Twenty-five years old today. Happy fucking birthday to me.
I sigh.
Eleven years ago, almost to the day, my father sold me to the Albanians because he'd amassed a debt worthy of a person, they told me.
I remember that day better than I remember my first kiss. Better than the first time I saw blood or bone or brains spilled on concrete. Because it was the moment everything changed and I stopped being someone with a future and became mafia inventory.
On a brighter note, if there is one, it's also been exactly one year since I bought myself back.
They told me it wasn't possible. That once the Albanians owned you, they never let go. But they did. Because I saved money, I kept my head down, and I did everything they asked.
I bought my freedom. Got a shitty apartment and a cupcake in return.
Outside, sirens wail. Hey, at least my night's going better than someone else's.
I take a deep breath, leaning forward to blow out the candle. The flame illuminates something on my wrist, a smear of dried blood.
Not mine. His.
Declan fucking Killaney.
I scrape at it with my thumbnail, revealing the small scalpel tattoo underneath. The mark of ownership the Albanians put on me to identify my skills to their network. I see it now as a permanent reminder that I once belonged to someone else.
When I get enough money, I'm lasering this fucking thing off, I think to myself, looking at it in disgust.
I run my finger over the frosting and taste it. Mmm, artificial vanilla and regret. I may be adding the last one.
I toss the cupcake in the trash and head for the shower.
The hot water barely trickles out, and the pressure is so weak it takes twice as long to wash my hair. I scrub myself hard, like I can remove the memories.
I close my eyes, but all I see is Declan's face, the fury in those green eyes when he recognized me. Him looking at me. Judging me. Blaming me for something I never had the power to change.
All this time and he still looked at me like he wanted to tear my throat out.
That night rushes back.
I was working in the Albanian clinic in Dorchester. A concrete room in the basement of a building compound that smelled like bleach and desperation. I'd just finished setting a broken hand—one of the enforcers had gotten careless during a collection—and was cleaning up when the door crashed open.
He was already shouting.
A tall man stumbled in, supporting someone else. Both covered in blood. So much blood it looked black under the fluorescent lights.
"Help him," the man demanded, laying the other one on my table. "He's been stabbed."
I didn't move. I'd never seen this man before. He wasn't Albanian, nor was I told he was coming.
"Did you hear me?" the man shouted. "He's dying!"
The man on my table was pale, barely conscious, with blood bubbling from a wound in his chest. He was gasping for air. I could tell he had a collapsed lung. If I didn't help him soon, he would die.
"Fucking do something!" The man grabbed my arm, fingers digging into my bicep. "You're the Ghost Angel, right?"
Fuck I hated that name.
I looked down at his hand, then back at his face. "I can't," I say, tearing my arm away.
"What do you mean you can't?"
"I mean I'm not allowed."
His eyes widened in disbelief, then narrowed with murderous intent. "You fucking—"
"Look, I don't know how you got here, but this is an Albanian clinic," I said as firm as I could. "I treat Albanian-approved targets only. If I touch him, I die. My family."
"He's my cousin," the man growled.
"Do you know about the mark?" I asked, hoping he could know about my scalpel tattoo. All the approved people did.
"Mark? I don't have time for this bullshit," he snarled.
He pulled a gun from his waistband and jammed it against my forehead. Just like that. Not even a moment of hesitation.
"You help him," he said, "or you die first."
My hand shook for a second, just one. But I kept my voice calm. I remember thinking if I showed fear, I was dead.
"You won't save him this way," I told him. "You'll just make it worse. Leave. Take him to a hospital. There's still time." I lied.
He didn't move and for a moment, I thought he was going to do it. I thought I'd finally be free.
Then the door slammed again.
Albanian enforcers. Three of them. Guns drawn.
They shouted at Declan to drop his weapon. He didn't.
Instead, he lunged at me, spun me around, and put me between himself and the men.
"You are not welcome here. Take your trash and go," one of the enforcers said.
"She can save him," Declan said as he pressed the gun into my temple. "Tell her to save him."
The enforcer laughed. "She won't. She follows orders. Like good girl. Now go, or die with him."
I said nothing. Did nothing. Just waited.
Finally, Declan gathered his cousin in his arms. His head limp against his shoulder, lifeless. Maybe already gone.
At the door, Declan turned to the men. "I'll find you," he promised. "And when I do, I'll make you watch someone you love die, too."
And then he was gone.
I would learn later both their names when the men went over the security tapes. Declan and Joyce.
I get out of the shower and towel off quickly, skin still burning from how hard I scrubbed.
I drop onto my mattress. There's no frame. Just a mattress on the floor. I stare at the crack on my ceiling. I can hear the couple upstairs screaming again. It's probably about money, or fucking, or both.
As I lie there, listening, I wonder what would've happened if I had helped him that night.
Would the Albanians have made good on their threat to send my sister to me in pieces?
Would Declan have still looked at me like he wanted to kill me?
Would I have died anyway? Would Joyce?
I don't have any answers.
What I do know is this: I've got one plan left. Two more years of stitching up men who think they own the world. Of watching them bleed and scream and grunt through broken jaws and noses in the ring. Of taking the cash and staying quiet, and then I vanish.
There's a city in Romania I heard about once.
Cobblestone streets, surrounded by the Carpathians.
A man told me about it years ago, a client with a dislocated shoulder who yelled when I popped it back into place.
He said it was the only place he'd ever felt peace.
That if I had the money, I could disappear there.
I've never forgotten it.
I even clipped a picture out of a travel magazine and kept it hidden in a medical file for years. The Albanians found it once. They ripped it up in front of me and said dreams were for girls who still had choices.
I do now, so that's where I'm heading when I have enough.
Soon I won't have to be around people like Declan.
Fuck him. Fuck all mafia men. With their two-faced smiles and their violence just beneath the surface. They're all the same, treating people like property, deciding who lives and who dies. Playing god with other people's lives.
"Your only job is to keep women good enough to be on their backs to fuck and men on their feet to defend what we have," the Albanians used to tell me. I patched up sex workers after brutal clients, stitched together enforcers after turf wars. I kept my head down and my mouth shut.
And in those eleven years, I learned one thing: there are no good mafia men in this world. Only men who haven't shown their true nature yet.
I sit up and look at my reflection from the bathroom mirror.
I'm twenty-five years old, a quarter of a century, and what do I have to show for it?
I don't answer the question. I just repeat to myself my mantra.
Two more years. That's all I need. Just 24 months of patching up fighters and hustlers, of keeping my head down and saving every penny.
Then I can disappear. Start over. Build the quiet life I deserve and people like Declan can rot in hell.