Exclusive Chapter
I should have ordered car service. The traffic on Twenty-Fifth is horrendous this morning. The Wesbourne Traveling Art Exhibition has brought thousands of visitors into the city.
To make matters worse, I’m terrible at parallel parking.
Blame that one on my too-busy-with-his-new-wife-and-kids dad.
I can never get close enough to the curb, so I have to pull back into traffic like a fool or risk getting sideswiped.
It looks like that will be the least of my concerns today, though, since no one is letting me back up in the first place.
A roar grows louder behind me, and I catch a glimpse of an old motorcycle in the rearview mirror. Instead of merging into the next lane to avoid hitting me, he whips his bike into the parking space I’ve been trying to get into for the past five minutes.
He. Steals. My. Spot.
I blink into the mirror, thinking maybe my eyes have tricked me, but nope. The man is straddling the bike, looking quite pleased with himself, and wearing way too much leather, even if he is trying to throw off “cool biker guy” vibes. It’s literally eighty-five degrees outside.
“You prick,” I yell at him. My car top is down—you don’t cover a car like this with a roof—so I know he can hear me. “That spot is mine!”
He tugs the helmet from his head, and a mane of thick brown hair spills out from beneath it, way too long to be decent.
It reaches all the way down to his shoulders.
A slow smile spreads across his face as he swings a leg over the bike.
Then—eyes locked on mine in the mirror—he flips me off.
Just tosses that bird into the air and saunters away, like this is all over now that he got what he wanted.
That’s where he’s wrong, the bastard.
My hands tighten around the steering wheel. I briefly consider backing into his bike. The vision of its crushed shape beneath my wheels holds a special appeal, but I really don’t want to scratch the paint on my car.
Horns blare at me now that I am no longer trying to park on what is clearly a full street, but am instead holding up traffic by sitting in the middle of the lane. I shift back into drive and head for the parking garage several blocks away.
Pedestrians clog the sidewalks as I exit the garage.
The salon is six blocks away, and I’m in five-inch Jimmy Choos.
I mentally curse that biker my entire walk.
I haven’t managed to get a spot in front of the shop even once in the past two years, and when the opportunity finally presents itself, some asshole has to steal it from me.
I glare at the bike as I round the corner. Sitting there innocently, waiting for its owner to come back. It’s older than I am and doesn’t look expensive. What would it take to shove it into traffic, let some other wanker run it over? It’s not like they’d have a Ferrari with a paint job to protect.
But as I approach the bike, an even better idea presents itself.
I snap a picture of the license plate and head into the salon.
I’m led to the VIP area, where Taleah is waiting for me.
She listens to my sob story and makes the appropriate sympathetic noises, then fills me in on the latest gossip while massaging her secret regenerative serum into my scalp.
I have a reputation for knowing everything about everyone, thanks to Taleah collecting juicy morsels between my weekly visits.
When she’s done and her assistant starts on my blowout, I open the ALPR app on my phone. It has come in handy more than once since Hans hooked me up. It’s arguably the only good thing to come out of that relationship, but it’s more than most guys leave me with.
You never know when you might need to run someone’s plates.
I enter the number from the bike. It’s registered to Jonathan E. Lawson. I don’t know the name, of course. There’s no way that guy has ever set foot in the Hills unless it was to make a pizza delivery. And judging from the hair, I doubt he’s been inside a decent salon in a long time either.
The ALPR gives me his address, and my GPS tells me it’s in the Junction.
Not that I expected anything different, but it does complicate things.
For starters, I’ve never actually been there before.
I’ve driven past it, of course, and heard all of the horror stories.
Houses that are nothing more than shacks.
Children running around like diseases. Crime that even the police are too scared to fight.
A movement outside the window draws my attention. It’s the prick strolling to his bike holding a brown paper bag marked “Cafe de Olla.” He swings a thick, jean-clad leg over the bike. My own thighs clench in response, startling me into dropping my phone.
By the time the assistant retrieves it from the floor, Jonathan Lawson has disappeared, leaving nothing but a cloud of black smoke and the roar of his engine behind. What the heck was that ? The man is repulsive and the furthest thing from my type.
That makes revenge a necessity. I can’t afford to have that man haunting my dreams, taunting me to get back at him.
The Junction be damned.
I’m supposed to meet several girlfriends for lunch. I use both terms loosely, because while we are friendly, I would never call them during a crisis, and while it may be noon, the most food that will be consumed at our table is three blackberries and several lettuce leaves, sans dressing.
Hardly girlfriends and hardly lunch, but I text them all the same to let them know I won’t be able to make it.
They’re nothing but ladder climbers anyway.
Now they can enjoy their salads and bitch about me all they want, all while plotting how to use their connection to me to score one of Wesbourne’s wealthiest bachelors or a position chairing the next society event.
I ask Taleah’s assistant to snap several photos of my new hair. She does not have an eye for these things, and I have to keep asking her to change the angle or move to a new position. Finally, she produces several that will do. She asks if I took a before photo so I can post them side by side.
I shoot her a look out of the corner of my eye. “Don’t be ridiculous. Before and afters aren’t on brand for me.” God, what a pedestrian idea.
She skedaddles soon after that, and after uploading the new pics to Instagram, I prepare for my new mission. It’s time for a little reconnaissance.
I direct my car toward the seedy side of the city, following the GPS’s instructions. It glitches out several times, as if it’s giving me time to change my mind.
The Junction is pretty much what I imagined.
The houses are no bigger than my bedroom, and they could all use an architect and a landscape artist. Rusted-out cars sit in driveways that used to be gravel but are now nothing more than weeds.
The worst one has grass higher than the porch and a blue tarp where a window should be. I shudder.
There are no children running around, which I suspect is due to school being in session. I expect to see drug deals going down on every corner, maybe a prostitute or two, but aside from several people sitting on their steps, I observe no suspicious behavior.
I find the Lawson house easily enough. It’s a yellow rectangular box, with a dingy white door in the center.
Someone has taken the time to plant flowers in the tiny window boxes, although I’d bet my $2,000 shoes it wasn’t the biker himself.
The whole scene looks cheap and old, but at least it’s not falling apart like some of the others I’ve passed.
I’m not sure how I’d feel about getting revenge on someone who lives in a hovel.
I could maybe convince myself they are a disgrace to humanity, living that way, and need to be taught a lesson, but it would definitely make my mission harder.
But now that I’ve assured myself he is fully deserving of my revenge, Mr. Lawson is going down.
* * *
“What are you going to do when you find him?”
I pause, unsure what my answer should be. But there’s only ever been one option. “Kill him,” I say.
Slate
Life’s taught me not to expect much. Handouts, fair treatment, a decent parking spot downtown. But dead last on that list? Lux Colombia-Clarke showing up at my door, looking like a damn fairytale with a score to settle.
Her proposal knocks me sideways: find the city’s most dangerous drug dealer, and she’ll make sure my sister gets what she needs. I’d be an idiot to refuse, but every time her eyes cut my way, something dark and electric stirs in me.
She’s trouble wrapped in silk, and I’d be wise to stay clear.
Good thing no one ever accused me of being wise.
Lux
Trust me, I can think of better things to do than begging a prime-parking-spot-stealing jerk for help. Like, a million better things. But this leather-clad biker may be the only way to help my brother. If I can endure the boulder-sized attitude he’s carrying around.
We had a deal. One that didn’t include feeling … safe. Protected. Happy . Like, wtf?
In no universe do we make sense together. He looks as out of place in a tuxedo as I do in anything other than vintage Chanel. But when we’re together, it’s like none of that matters.
Until, of course, it does. And then nothing will stand in the way of our epic mutual destruction.