Chapter One
Present - Ryder
CRAZY HOW MY self-respect has been reduced to a button. Every time I push, I lose a little more, letting it slip into a notion impossible to grasp. Yet, I push that button again and again, granting access to the underbelly of The Swan, where the rich and bored find their heady escape in the finest bottles, colored tablets, or the curve of a woman.
Tonight’s a busy one, being Friday, meaning the bar is full of Ralph Lauren pastels, linen shorts, Sperry shoes, and the pungent scent of Daddy’s money.
“What can I get for you?”
“Manhattan.”
The faces begin to blur after a while, night after night, one drunk patron after the next. It’s as if a lens has slipped over my view of the world, everything appearing in shades of gray. There was a time where I’d seen the world in color. As beautiful as it was, the shades of gray only look grayer now.
Sometimes there’s a variation in it. A lighter gray, like that night I stayed up all night with Connor—who’d call himself my best mate—when he thought his world was falling apart last year. Sometimes, it’s pitch black. But it’s never colorful and never bright.
A thick hand taps the bar three times.
“Yeah?” I lift my eyes just as I plop a cherry in the last one’s drink. Fuck being pleasant if he’s not going to have patience.
“Fireball. Neat.” His breath and stained skin tells me this isn’t a first for him.
My thoughts stray to Theo, making me wonder if Thick-Hand has children at home, but I shake it off and pour his drink. Not my business.
Squeals ring out over the fray, coming from the corner lounge, where a group of young women are celebrating their friend’s last night as a bachelorette. The Swan charms you as quickly as you come through the door, and because of it, no one looks too close. It’s a vintage-looking bar, as if the place is from a better time where men still walked with honor, light shining through the skylights like it has nothing to hide. And that’s what makes it the world’s best ruse.
Another group of trust fund brats make their way in.
Another push of the button.
Another voice and another drink to pour.
And so my night goes in shades of gray.
As I grab a bottle of whiskey to disappear with for a minute, a barely audible shriek, one lined with panic not joy, stops me dead. My eyes flash to the small hallway which leads to the bathrooms and the source of the sound. There I see Thick-Hand, his paws running down one of the ladies from the bachelorette party, and from the look of horror plastered on her face, he didn’t receive an invitation.
Isn’t this why women are supposed to go to the bathroom in twos?
I pause, certain that one of her friends will emerge from the bathroom any second and come to her aid. But now his hands are on her waist and she’s still alone, trying and failing to shove him off. A glance back to the lounge tells me the other girls are too far away and too drunk to notice her struggle.
By the time I look back, Thick-Hand and the girl aren’t standing where they were. Climbing onto the stool that I never get to use on my side of the bar, I spot them moving toward the exit. Thick-Hand is squeezing her arm hard enough to hurt, dragging her toward the door, and not a single person is stopping him to say a thing about it.
I leap down from my lookout and over the bar, pushing through the bodies waiting to order a drink. Someone is calling my name, trying to stop or warn me, but I don’t care. The crowd parts as I stalk through it, catching up just before Thick-Hand has her at the door. She’s crying now, looking for anyone to help her, but the girl’s face is just another one lost in the crowd.
I grab Thick-Hand’s shoulder, forcing him to stop and turn toward me. “Didn’t your mother teach you that ‘no’ means ‘no’?”
The girl cries harder, as if the God she’d been praying to finally answered, but I keep my eyes on the slime in front of me, not allowing myself to lose the grip on my anger.
“Didn’t your mother teach you to mind your own business?”
“Apparently not, since I’m standing here.” I glare at him. “Now let her go and crawl back to whatever cesspit you journeyed out of— alone— or we’re going to have a problem.”
“We already have a problem.” Thick-Hand gives her arm another rough jerk. “I don’t like being interrupted…ever.”
The bar quiets behind me as I grab the index finger he has wrapped around her arm, and pull backward, twisting as I go, freeing her. The girl pulls her arm to her chest and takes a few mindless steps away, no doubt in shock. One of her friends finally appears and wraps her into a hug, guilt and fear written all over her face as she takes in the situation.
Thick-Hand—who was acting real tough a moment ago—is screaming now, and it’s music to my ears. I pull a little harder and feel the tell-tale pop of his knuckle utterly go. Shoving him toward the door, I remind myself that the girl is now safely back with her friends, and this is where I leave him. I mean, really, my night shouldn’t end with seeing how long it takes me to beat my fists through the back of his skull.
“I’m calling the police, you psychotic little prick!” Spittle flies from Thick-Hand’s purpling face.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary.” The lightly accented, deceivingly courteous voice comes from behind me, the timbre like a knife dragging down my spine. “Because then we’d have to show them the footage of you attempting to drag that poor girl away.”
Little does this douchebag know, security cameras cover every inch of this bar, excluding the secret door on the very back wall.
“What would the police have to say about that ?” Nothing scares me, but if something did, it would be Stefan when his voice pitches that way.
“Fuck all of you!” Thick-Hand turns purple and pushes out the door, cradling his hand.
“Ryder, my office, if you wouldn’t mind,” Stefan says as if he was just talking to an old friend. The smooth voice and pleasant set of his mouth would fool most, but I’m all too familiar with the anger that trembles on the edge of his emerald eyes.
I nod, following him back through the hidden door that leads to a dark, invite-only lounge. Red and pink LEDs run between the corners of the room, emitting just enough light to see the rise and fall of bodies on the stage. A smaller bar takes up the back corner of the room, fully stocked with top-shelf liquor and dispensers that contain every high a person could chase.
We push through another hidden door coded to his thumbprint and my stomach sinks. Stefan took over “management” of The Swan almost four years ago. Never thought I’d say I’d miss Victor, the previous boss’s boss, but I do. Victor was a bad guy, through and through, but Stefan is a sadist in designer suits. For him, money is a coincidental advantage to making people suffer.
Stefan takes a seat at his desk made of red marble and gold, indicating for me to follow, using one of the blood-colored chairs across from him. A painting of a vessel hangs behind him. “You’d never intentionally bring the police to my front door, would you, Ryder?”
It’s what I should do, call the police and take down this entire operation, but I’d be simultaneously forfeiting my life. After sinning the way I have in the name of survival, I’m not sure I could withstand it, if every moment of it was for nothing. “Of course not.”
“Then I expect that you will learn something from tonight.”
“And what is that?” A dangerous question to ask a sadist.
The smile of a snake spreads over Stefan’s mouth, as if he’s discovered a mouse stumbling right into his lair. “A girl or two’s innocence isn’t worth the trouble that unintentionally bringing the police to my front door would bring you.”
The eddied grays of the world around me immediately turn obsidian.
“I’m not sure I like the glint in those eyes of yours, Ryder.” Stefan sighs, as if he’s truly disappointed in me. A master manipulator, preying on a human’s innate desire to please. “It looks like the beginning stages of something that could become…shall we say, messy.”
“No, sir.”
Stefan plays with his iron-knuckled ring, shaped like a snake and stained like red wine, from where it winds between his fingers. “I don’t need you developing a conscience.”
“You have nothing to worry about,” I swear to him, even as dirty blonde hair, hazel eyes, and a world that was once in color flicker through my mind. That portion of my character is as empty as the spot in my chest where a heart should be.
A courtier’s laugh. “I’ve always liked you, Ryder. As dark and ruined as they come.”
Nausea sinks in my gut, but I swallow it and walk out.
Like I always do, the good dog I am.