Chapter 2
Taryn
“But I didn’t do anything,” I say for what must be the tenth time. “You can’t hold me without charges.”
The officer—Burbank, according to his badge—slams the door in my face, then leers at me through the bars. “We can do whatever we want,” he snaps. “Until you give us your name and the name of your lawyer.”
I shut my mouth at that, because he’s right. I didn’t take my wallet with me to the café, mostly because I didn’t want anyone to know who I was if we got caught, so I’m here without any identification.
And I’ve refused to tell them who I am. Or call anyone to come save me.
I’m sure they think I’m insane for that.
Here I am, locked in a jail cell without any idea of why I’m being held, and I’m refusing to do anything to get myself back out.
I’m wearing clothes that label me as a rich girl, and I’m positive the cops have guessed that I have family that could get me out of this.
And I do.
But I don’t want to see them, because I’m not sure I can trust them.
My name is Taryn Matthews, and I’m surrounded by people I can’t trust.
That wasn’t always true. For a while, I lived the dream.
My mother and father loved each other so much it made me sick, and we had a gorgeous brownstone in the city.
My father was a surgeon, my mother a stay-at-home mom who did society parties on the weekends.
We had enough money to be safe, and my father believed in putting me above anyone else.
He took me to carnivals when they came to town.
Street fairs every weekend. Ice skating in Central Park the moment they offered it, and the zoo when it was warm enough for the animals to be out.
He taught me to dance to our song—Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison—and promised me everything I asked for.
We went to upstate New York a couple times a year to do wholesome things like apple picking and tours of the old-fashioned farms up there and I went to sleep every night to the sound of my mom and dad’s laughter downstairs, knowing my place in the world and feeling like nothing would ever destroy the beautiful, rainbow-colored bubble that surrounded my life.
Then my father was killed and my universe shattered.
And I was left with only my mother. She’d loved me for my father’s sake, but we’d never quite been close.
She was disappointed in me from the start and never bothered to hide it.
I wasn’t smart enough. Pretty enough. Adventurous enough.
If I did something, I did it wrong. And if she caught me doing anything I wasn’t supposed to be doing, I was in trouble for weeks.
She told me regularly, through words and deeds, that I wasn’t enough, and that belief crawled into the depths of my soul and stuck.
Now that I’m older, I wonder if half of it was jealousy. My father loved her, sure.
But he’d loved me more, and I suspect she knew it.
Still, she was my mother, and part of my foundation.
I didn’t love her and knew she didn’t love me, but I still thought she would take care of me when it came down to it.
Then, in the space of five bullets and one horror-filled night, the mother I’d known all my life disappeared and became someone who only thought of herself.
She worried about getting the brownstone sold and moving as far from New York as possible.
Getting a new husband. Finding security for herself.
She didn’t ask what I wanted, because it didn’t matter to her.
She never even told me what actually happened to my father. I had to find out through the newspaper clipping my best friend handed me under our desks at school.
I run my finger over the scars on my palm, pushing on them until they hurt, and feel a single tear slide its way down my cheek, wet and sticky.
My heart still breaks when I remember my father.
Blond, hazel-eyed, and always smiling, he was sunshine on a fall day.
Hot chocolate and autumn leaves. Flannel and scarves.
Warm and hazy, bathing your skin in the glow of love and laughter.
He always had a joke to tell. Always held my hand when I was scared.
He loved caramel apples.
Bought us the biggest Christmas tree and left it up until February, no matter what my mother said.
He was my best friend, my safe space, and when he died and my mother changed...
A part of me went into hiding to protect itself.
He would have saved me tonight. He would have been my first call if he was still around, and I know he would have showed up, no questions asked, and laughed at how I was always giving him a new challenge.
Then he would have taken me for milkshakes and French fries and we would have conspired over how to keep this information from my mother.
I shake my head and dash the tear from my face. This isn’t the time for reminiscing. I’m in jail, for fuck’s sake, and need to find a way out of here that doesn’t include calling my mother or the man she’s now married to.
Johnny Massimo. Part of the leadership of the Massimo family, and though I’ve never done much research into them—I’ve tried not to be involved—I’ve been in the city for four years now, and it’s been nearly impossible to avoid finding out who he is.
Nephew to the head of the family and cousin to the man trying to take over, he handles the business arm of the organization, and though that should mean he’s not an assassin, I’ve never believed that.
The first time I met him, when I was only sixteen, his eyes roved from my face to my toes and back, taking in every inch of me with a glittering interest that told me everything I needed to know.
I don’t know how my mother met him, but I do know I can’t trust him. And ever since she took up with him, I can’t trust her, either. She never wanted to hear about my needs or take my feelings into account, but since she married Johnny, she...
Well, I stopped being a person to her. That’s the only way to explain it.
I became a tool to be used. And a route to what my father left behind.
The truth is, I’ve been looking for a way out from under their thumb for years, now. And I’m so close. So fucking close. One more semester of school, and I’ll graduate and be on my own. This December, in just a few short weeks, I turn twenty-one. I’ll be legal. An adult.
Free.
I just need to hang on that long, so I can escape.
And everything inside me is screaming that if they see me here—if they come to jail and bail me out—that escape becomes a whole lot harder.
I can’t explain it, and I’m not sure I even understand it, really.
But I know I have something they want, or I will when I turn twenty-one, I’m afraid that if they save me now, it’ll give them the power to take what I have.
They already control me, courtesy of my age, and if they step in and spend money to get me out of here. ..
Look, I don’t know how that works. I’ve never been in the mafia. But I don’t want my mother or Johnny to have any more control over me than they already do.
I need someone to bail me out, and it can’t be them.
They also don’t know I’m here yet, because I haven’t told anyone who I am, and that means I’ve disappeared. One moment I was in that diner in the city, and the next...
Vanished.
I almost smile at that. If I can get out of here before anyone figures out who I am and calls my mother…
God, I could actually win my freedom right now, and suddenly I’m breathless with excitement at the thought.
I walk quickly toward the back wall of my cell, my mind racing with ideas in the stark, white-washed room.
When I hit the wall, I turn and walk back toward the bars, my eyes on the unfinished floor.
Then again. And then again. If I’m going to do this, I need to act quickly.
Johnny has contacts everywhere, and I bet he has dirty cops on his payroll.
Which means the moment these cops learn my name, the gig will be up.
I need safety. A place where my mother and Johnny will never look for me until I can figure out what to do.
And I sound like a fucking Monday night cop drama, thinking things like that.
That doesn’t make it any less true.
I can’t go to Stella’s. Her dad isn’t a Massimo, but those guys are all either friends or enemies.
If he’s friends with Johnny, he’ll turn me over as a favor.
If they’re enemies, he’ll hold me for ransom.
Arden’s house is no better. She’s already told me her family is at war with the Massimo clan.
It’ll be ransom for sure, and once Johnny gets me home, I’ll owe him for having spent money to get me back.
And I don’t know anyone else in the city. Not well enough to ask for help, anyhow.
“God dammit, think, Taryn,” I hiss. Who do I know that can help? Where can I go, and how can I get there?
A place where my mother won’t look for me. A place she won’t even think of. With someone who will agree to hide me for a couple weeks. A month. Just until I turn twenty-one and can sign my own paperwork legally.
Wait.
A place she would never look for me.
Because she hasn’t been back there in four years and pretends it doesn’t exist.
God, the answer is so obvious I want to hit myself for not having thought of it sooner.
Hawke’s Wood.
“Gunner,” I breathe, my heart in my throat and butterflies erupting in my stomach.
Gunner Hawke. My mother’s other husband.
The one she married right after my father died.
He lives in a village in the Adirondacks that his ancestors actually founded.
It’s the epitome of a small town, everyone half related to each other and the outside world a distant echo they can barely hear.
My mother married him when I was only twelve and transplanted us both to that small town, never mind that it took me out of school in the middle of the year and sent me into a home with a man I’d never even met.
My mother hadn’t cared about my welfare, or my feelings.
She also hadn’t expected me to get to Gunner’s house and fall in love with him and his son.
It was four years of safety and sunshine, a real family after two years of me living with the ghost of my father, and when my mother divorced Gunner and pulled me back out of his life, his last words to me were that if I ever needed him, he’d come flying to me.
He was the last man who made me feel safe, with his rough auburn beard and his constant scent of freshly cut wood. The enormous cabin that always had a fire burning in it. My room, where he’d read a story to me whenever I asked. He became everything to me in the short time I knew him.
And right now, he’s the only man I want to see. Because he’ll take me far from here, and if I ask him not to tell my mother, he won’t.
I rush to the bars and put my face against them, looking desperately one way and then the other down the hall. Where’s Burbank? How far has he gone?
“Officer Burbank?” I shout. “Can you take me to a phone? I need to make that phone call!”
I hear him muttering down the hall and have to stop myself from grinning like a maniac, because in a night full of confusion and horror, my heart has found Gunner Hawke’s name.
And for the first time in years, I feel like I know what I’m doing.
I just hope he remembers his promise to me.
And still plans to honor it.