Chapter 2
The steel stairs vibrated as my boots descended each step into the basement. The state of the dark walls gloomed over me. It was sickly comparable to any other wet cellar in Indiana, the bricks quickly fading and the hallway opening to an underground bar.
I kissed my middle finger and raised my hand to the wooden plank above the stairs. The pointed inverted crucifix had been there since I could remember, a carving from years before my lifetime.
Being the daughter of our territory’s avtorityet meant I’d known since day one where the big dogs hunted, where the bodies were devoured.
My uncle made me my first drink down under.
He even ripped my first tooth out by tying it to a hammer and tossing it down the stairs. This place was my childhood.
I sucked in an ounce of fresh air and averted my eyes from the seat I always sat in. My eyes scanned the room and cataloged who was enjoying their time without Dominik. Those fuckers didn’t need to be here if they wouldn’t respect my uncle’s space.
Of course, the Vincent boys were here.
They were like rodents, always putting their nose in poison.
“Nice of you to join us.” Maxim smirked from behind the bar. He shouldn’t be the one making drinks. He had a horribly shaky hand after Levi shot him in the shoulder. “Thought you’d bail again.”
“I have a job to finish,” I grumbled.
I rubbed the leather on my palms together and took a seat at the end of the counter. My fingerless gloves brushed the bar top, eyes trailing down to the seat where Dominik engraved my name.
Maxim set a short glass beside me and chuckled. The Vincent boys always thought everything was fucking hilarious—all except for Milo now. He was never really the same since his final stage of training.
Maxim poured the glass over the normal serving line and carelessly dropped a few nuggets of ice inside. It splashed over the rim as he returned his attention to the pool game behind me.
Oscar was playing with Victor—not a surprising sight. Oscar enjoyed hovering around people he wanted something from. He was up my papa’s ass the first three months after I was released from juvie.
I don’t care much for the taste of alcohol anymore, though there was a time when it was all I could drink.
The stinging in the back of my throat kept me from worrying about my future. For two whole weeks, I regretfully drank away my sorrows after finding out I was pregnant. I know. Stupid. From there, it wasn’t about the taste, it was about the reminder of everything I’d done to ruin my life.
The outcomes and effects that might leave me alive a moment more or an hour less were meaningless. Dominik had saved me. He had saved me from myself, and I stupidly thought he’d be here long enough to keep saving me.
Carmel-colored liquid swirled in the crystal glass.
Drinking on the farm without my uncle was wrong.
Dominik always knew when I needed a drink and when I needed something more.
Usually, he opted for guidance and a pat on the back.
Sometimes, it was a moment in the woods with a target and my choice of weaponry.
On rare occasions, a horseback ride along the river.
A deep, wild laugh reached my ears as two heavy sets of feet stomped down the stairs. The air quaked at their power on the metal steps. I nursed my glass and snuck a final sip before our eyes locked across the room.
I planned to humor Levi. It was the most I could wrap my head around, knowing Papa had set up a meeting for me with his secondhand man. Levi might have enjoyed a luxurious life, but he always meant business. A meeting with him wasn’t to check in and catch up, especially not on his turf.
“Ah, Quincy.” Levi turned his palms to me and leaned forward to kiss my cheek. I turned my face and tensed, allowing his hands to reach for my shoulders before relaxing back into my chair. “Those stars look good on you, Kid.”
I swallowed back the bile that rose in my throat and tried to ignore the sunken lip Maxim gave Levi as he sat a bottle down in front of him. No wonder he picked to play bartender. He was nosey as fuck and wanted to get in on the action.
“It’s temporary,” I said, confidently repeating what I told my mother that morning when she saw me in Dominik’s jacket.
Levi rolled his eyes and smacked the end of the beer bottle against the edge of the counter. The vein in his neck bulged when the top didn’t obediently snap to the floor.
“What is this?” he asked. The bottom of his bottle hit the counter again with a distinct thud. “You forget something, boy?”
I turned away as Maxim rushed over with the bottle opener.
What a fool. The only Vincent son who had my respect was Milo, and that wasn’t until I caught him in the graveyard.
He was still a Vincent, an idiot in plain sight.
These boys believed they were the top dogs around here, all because they were the sons of a murderer.
I was the daughter of a serial executioner.
There was no telling how many lives my father ordered gone.
And my uncle? He was the most feared hitman in the nineties.
Dominik made his first kill at a mere ten years old with the guidance of my grandfather.
Some of these men forgot I was the granddaughter of our pakhan, the gruesome boss up in Chicago.
If these Vincent men thought they were the shit of the season, they had another thing coming. Dominik left his stars to me—apparently. He left all his sick hopes and dying dreams to me.
My uncle was such a dick for that.
“Your papa tells me Q left you to be made.” Levi tapped his fingers on the bar and spun in his seat to watch his nephews play pool. “You make your hit yet?”
“Nope.” I popped the p without any regret and watched the black billiard ball slam into the pool table’s bumper, nearly falling into the hole early. “I’m on probation. Can’t afford to get nailed again by them pigs.”
Levi rolled his neck to inspect me and laughed. “I’d find some cash then.” He leaned back against the counter and smirked. “You got some paying up to do.”
I avoided his eyes with a stiff glare to the leather chair across the room.
He snapped his fingers and motioned to one of the men nearby. Felix stepped between us and dropped a folder on the bar. Our gazes met for a moment before I hid my eyes from his cruel state. He, like everyone else, expected me to take this position without question.
It was disrespectful to go against the calling. Still, when it was my father making the call, I couldn’t help but press against it.
Dominik wanted this for me, but I was still trying to wrap my head around that fact.
I still couldn’t believe it. Even after everything we talked about, that son of a bitch went and wrote in his fucking will how badly he wanted me to accept his stars.
I searched that note for any signs of tampering or a shift in his handwriting, but nothing.
My heart burned thinking of her lie to my face about helping me get Estelle out of here.
This assignment wasn’t light—it was a mere beginning to the hell I’d be put through if I didn’t find a way to get me and Estelle out of this. Making a hit for an initiation was a big deal. No one hands over the stars of Harrekson to just anyone.
Stars were a big deal in my family, a symbol of power. This jacket allowed me to wear them with pride, even if I didn’t wish to.
Uncle used to let me wear his jacket for a few group projects.
That way, no one would give me shit. Sadly, for me, this was different.
Everyone knew I was a low-level recruit by my father for the sake of trying to pair me with some sleaze bag male I didn’t care for.
I did what he wanted with Christian and fucked the entire thing up.
It made no sense now for him to let me wear the stars without being more aligned with the Harrekson bloodline.
The family, as most referred to my legacy’s linage.
I knew who I was. I was Eleanor Harrekson. She was all I’d ever be to this family, but I couldn’t let myself be her if I wanted to escape. She was a monster. She was the one who made the dark father proud, not me.
When I was sentenced to almost a year in juvenile detention, I made the choice to let Dominik tattoo me before going in.
He protected me on the inside, let me find loyalty with other young members who might not have known who I was.
My name got me places, but the eight-point stars on my collar bones were a sign of high rank, a universal don’t fucking start with me to the cunts inside who found fun in testing the new girls.
I’d had these tattoos for about two years now, same with the one I was forced to get in juvie.
Destiny and Waverly, two girls I met on the inside, betrayed me within the first month—a gift from my father.
He paid them generously, and they held me down and tattooed the rose and chain tag over my right hip, a mark that deemed me incarcerated before eighteen.
It was all a reminder I had lost my child to my father’s stupid games.
“Word on the street says an old friend of ours is back in town.” Levi sat back in the leather stool with a cigar in hand. He abandoned his beer beside the folder as he shook a pile of pictures out.
I twirled lazily in my chair and leaned my elbows on the counter. The ice in my glass slipped along my tongue as I took a sip. It crunched under the force of my molars as I finally gave in and rummaged through the endless photos with my eyes.
There was an old Mustang in every one. Its baby blue paint looked new, and the wheels were surprisingly clean. It was a convertible, a ’69, or maybe a ’66, with its soft top in its original creamy glory. Too much work had been done for me to tell exactly which beautiful age this fossil belonged in.
“We are not turning this baby into a skeleton,” I scoffed in protest. “It’s vintage. Easy to trace—the work on this is insane!”
A sickening laugh escaped his lips, mocking me with a smile to Felix.