Unveil (Frayed Satin #1)

Prologue

Ten years ago

“ Y ou did what?!”

At the sound of my momma’s shout, Lucy and Brylie fall out of their pirouettes. I stutter mid-fouetté, forcing my adopted cousin, Benoit, to catch me for the billionth time.

I growl my frustration, but he chuckles.

“It’s okay, cher . We’ll try again later. Rest for a minute.”

He’s a saint for putting up with me while I figure out this new turn. I’m almost twelve, and my teacher says I’m not ready, but I swear I nearly have it. Kind of.

As much as I want to try again, my momma’s still yelling. My twin, Nox, and I exchange confused glances as he straightens in his seat in the corner. All five of us stare at the closed stage curtain, where my dad’s voice echoes from the auditorium beyond.

“ Ma muse , I was drunk, young, jaded, and so fucking foolish. I never dreamed I’d have you, let alone a family. None of us did.”

“Don’t you ‘ ma muse ’ me, Sol. I can’t believe you’d gamble your daughter’s life away! I can’t believe any of you did! Especially you, Kian. I thought you were a romantic!”

Lucy stills at the mention of her father.

“Obviously, it’s no fecking excuse, but in our minds, we were betting house money that night,” Uncle Kian answers.

“ Cazzo , I thought my vendetta would kill me sooner rather than later,” my Uncle Sev, Brylie’s dad, adds.

“Exactly,” Uncle Kian agrees. “What does it matter to lose something you thought you’d never have?”

“Well that’s funny,” Lucy’s mom snaps. “Considering you claim you were in love with me before we even met. Where was that energy, hm?”

“At the bottom of a liquor bottle,” Lucy’s dad grumbles. “ Tine , there’s a reason I quit drinking.”

I motion for us to sneak closer to the curtain. There’s no way we’ll finish practicing Swan Lake with this as our background noise, and we’re all too curious to keep going anyway. At least, I know I am.

“What if we get c-caught?” Lucy’s so nervous her stutter’s back, even after a year without it, and she’s twisted her strawberry-blonde ponytail tightly around her finger, turning the tip purple.

Nox snorts. “Never have before. We’ve gotten too good at it.”

Lucy’s eyes widen. “You d-do this a lot?”

“Of course not, Loose,” I whisper.

She’s younger than the rest of us, and her kitten, Dinah, is braver than she is.

When my friends are here at Bordeaux Boarding School from their real homes—Lucy from Las Vegas and Brylie from Italy—we try to convince Loose to join in on our fun, but our skittish little rabbit would sooner read about adventures than have them.

She used to be wild like us, but ever since she was kidna?—

I close my eyes.

We don’t talk about that.

When I open them again, I lean around her so she can’t see me stick my tongue out at Nox for worrying her. He smirks and shrugs. Butthead.

Momma’s yelling again, but there’s a sadness in her voice too. It tugs my chest forward, leading me to push aside the curtain?—

“What’re you doing?” Brylie hisses, yanking me back by my practice tutu before I can reveal our hiding spot.

I know she saved me from blowing our cover, but I still glare at her. She gives me a sassy look back, and I sigh before peering out, opening the heavy curtain enough for her to look beside me, with Nox and Benoit sneaking in above us.

My parents are in box five, where they take business meetings and hear updates from Daddy’s shadows, the people who secretly work for him. They’re the ones who help with his “dirty work,” as Momma calls it. He says they’re a “necessary evil.” Whatever that means.

There’s a bunch of people up with them now, crowding the not-so-big space. Uncle Ben—who I haven’t seen since his family moved to New York—the McKennons, Lucy’s parents, and the Lucianos, Brylie’s. Both their families flew in for our end-of-summer recital, but why are they up there now?

I squint until I make out a man and woman standing apart from them in a dark corner at the back of the box. I can’t see their faces in the shadows, but my dad isn’t wearing his mask, which only means one thing. They’re either friends… or enemies.

“Luna, d-do you know who those other p-people are?” Lucy asks in her barely-there southern accent as she squeezes underneath me to eavesdrop with the rest of us. Stutter, disobeying rules, and an accent? She must be really anxious.

“No clue,” I answer.

“What’re they talking about?” Brylie asks in her own light southern and Italian accent, her green eyes as confused as ours.

I shrug again. “How the heck should I know?”

“It’s your mom who’s doing most of the shouting.” Her eyes dart from me to Nox.

“You know what? No. This is bullshit!” Aunt Tallie, Brylie’s mom, hisses like a snake. “This was at McKennon Casino, wasn’t it? Why the hell didn’t you just cheat?”

I arch an eyebrow at Bry, who rolls her eyes. She’s my best friend, but she’s so dang prickly. That’s how Antonia Rosalee got her first nickname, ‘Briar Lee,’ when we were kids. She’s thorny as a briar patch, and between Lucy’s speech impediment and our mess of accents, now we’ve got “Brylie.”

Lucy’s mom sighs. “Kian would never cheat in his own casino… no matter how crazy the bet.”

“If I may…” a man starts.

“No, you may not,” Aunt Tallie growls.

“ Dolcezza …” Brylie’s dad murmurs, almost too low to hear.

“Please, Talia, everyone…” a woman begs softly, and my ears perk up. “Once we explain, you’ll understand.”

“Fine, Queenie,” Tallie snaps. “Go ahead. Explain how these fools gambled our daughters’ lives away.”

A sudden, loud bubblegum pop draws my eyes to three boys sitting in the auditorium seats, stage left.

One is sitting up straight, his tanned cheeks aglow with the light of his bright tablet.

The boy in the middle looks younger, maybe Lucy’s age, around ten.

He’s got a wild mess of black hair flopping into his eyes as he lounges across several seats, a sketchbook propped on one splayed leg. And the third boy…

A scowl clouds his face as he rests his arms over the back of the seat in front of him, flicking a pocketknife open and closed.

A knife .

How creepy is that?

The other boys seem to be paying serious attention to anything besides the argument in box five. And the third one stares right at my hiding place. At me .

My fingers clutch the curtain to close it, but the rest of me can’t move. I’m stuck staring back at him as the man who must be his father begins to speak.

“‘Gambling lives away’ is a nasty way to put it. Arranged marriage is much more civilized.”

Momma scoffs. “Civilized? You’re one to talk, King Fury. Everyone back in Appalachia knows about the Wilde and Fury families. How is a Capulet-and-Montague-style feud remotely civilized?”

King? And Tallie called the woman “Queenie.” Are those their real names?

Cool. Weird… but cool.

“Great question, ma muse ,” my dad says to my mom. “And why the fuck would we sacrifice our daughters to save a family of criminals?”

The man’s easy voice turns cold . “Pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?

We’re all criminals. Powerful ones. That’s why I chose your families when I made the bet.

I knew this day would come. The Furys are infighting.

The Wildes are gaining ground. The King Fury branch needs alliances and all the muscle we can get to keep everyone in line, and most importantly, safe . We need the Troisgarde.”

Troy-guard. He actually pronounced it right.

Momma says even though it’s a made-up word, it’s the Louisiana French way of saying it, like how Calliope Street is “Kal-ee-oh-pee” around here.

Our three families use the name because we like each other…

or something. I don’t know. There’s more to it, but Nox is the one who wants to follow in the “Phantom of the French Quarter’s” footsteps.

They tried to teach me all that boring stuff, but I’d rather dance.

“Is this real?” Benoit scoffs. “It sounds like Raymonda .”

The ballet we did last summer had fun costumes and choreography, but the story of a rich guy kidnapping a girl who’s already engaged felt make-believe. Until now.

“They can’t really be talking about marrying you off,” Nox mumbles behind me. “Over my dead body.” He crosses his arms like Daddy does when he says the same thing.

Up in box five, our dad hums thoughtfully. “Don’t you have your own secret club to back you up?”

Mr. Fury huffs. “The fact you know about it is why I didn’t go to them.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Fury,” Uncle Kian says smugly. “We make it our business to know other peoples’ business.”

“And that’s my point. All of us have our own territories.

Bordeauxs have the Deep South. McKennons hold the West, Lucianos, the Northeast. The Furys and Wildes control Appalachia and the Southeastern Coast, with the Furys barely hanging on.

For now . We’re being chopped down branch by branch, and the Wildes keep coming.

Everyone wants the throne, and I won’t be the one to bend the knee.

They’re already pushing into Mississippi and Pennsylvania, Bordeaux and Luciano territory. You don’t want that. Trust me.”

“My cousin controls the Northeast,” Uncle Sev corrects. “I’m no longer a player on the board.”

“What the fuck, Severino?” Uncle Kian growls.

“Look, I’m on your side up until the point my Brylie has to marry a monster.”

“A monster?” Mr. Fury snarls.

“He has a point,” Uncle Kian agrees. “You can’t tell me the one with those crazy eyes is entirely sane. No way I’m letting him marry my girl.”

“They’re not monsters.” Queenie’s soft voice is harder now. “Orion, Dashiel, Hatton… they’re boys .”

King’s tone roughens too. “And each of them have been through more in their lives individually than your pampered princesses have combined. You can’t imagine what we’ve lost to this feud. My own sister—” he chokes.