Chapter 2
Damien
“Hey. We have a problem with the pet.”
I tear my eyes away from the screen and turn around. My first instinct is to roll my eyes. They’ve taken to calling the girl ‘the pet’. It’s a step up from the previous nicknames: ‘the charity case’, the ‘pet project’. Now it’s just the pet.
I’d just been watching her. Or rather, watching the surveillance tapes of her. I do it whenever I have a moment during the day, and before I go to sleep.
I can tell where she’s from just by looking at her.
She’s an Oakley kid, same as me. Same as all of us.
And Oakley kids are tough. You can’t make it through the school system in that town without going out into the world hard, combative.
You learn early on that a punch to the nose is a lot more forthcoming than a hug.
Everyone has a preconceived idea of you: drug addict, gang member, high school dropout.
And it’s a lot easier to conform to those ideas than to fight them.
Well, we Devil boys did manage to fight them. Still, we’re hard. And I’ve never met an Oakley girl who wasn’t.
Until I spotted her.
It was really a coincidence that I even saw her. We’d gone to meet with the director of our Astley department store, and when we toured the surveillance room, Logan laughed.
“Great job you’re doing, huh? You’ve got people stealing from you right under your noses.”
The surveillance guy stammered an embarrassed excuse. Then he stood up, ready to go out onto the floor to arrest her, when I put a hand on his arm.
“Wait a second. Let’s see what she does.”
I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the long dark hair that partially covered the girl’s overly-large eyes, and the rail-thin body that seemed turned inward, as if she spent her time shrinking into herself.
There was no doubt about it, when I saw the shitty clothes and unkempt appearance: this was an Oakley girl.
Yet at the same time, she wasn’t. She wasn’t harsh, or loud. She seemed… breakable. Lonely.
Well, I didn’t know about the lonely part. Maybe that was a projection on my part. But there was something unusual about her. Something that awoke the protective part of me. The part that had been hungering for something more.
It’s not that I’m needy. Damien Wells can get just about any girl he wants, and I have. But it’s never gone beyond the physical. Rich girls don’t know hunger, the kind that makes you ache with every fiber of your being. And poor girls are too independent.
Which is why, when I spotted the dark-haired girl on the surveillance tape, I pretty quickly developed something of an obsession.
I’m too embarrassed to let the others know just how bad I’ve got it.
Maybe embarrassed isn’t the right word—I don’t think I’ve truly been embarrassed about anything since my father punched me in the jaw right outside of school in kindergarten.
But I don’t want to appear weak. Weakness is the worst thing you can show if you want to keep power.
And these days, what power I have is hanging on by a thread.
Still, I spend every free moment I have looking at footage. I’ve made sure everyone who works for me got the memo: let the girl take what she wants. Don’t stop her. Leave her alone. And send me the tapes.
The boys are understanding, to a degree. After all, she’s objectively attractive. Logan even had a whole new camera system installed so I could see her better, “your Christmas present,” he smirked. Asshole.
What none of them get is why I won’t just meet her. It would take our team less than ten minutes to get her contact info.
But I’m not ready. Not yet. When I make myself known to her, it will be to possess her. Nothing less.
And possessing girls, even the lonely, broken Oakley type, takes preparation.
“Did you hear me, Damien?” asks Logan. “I said, we have a problem with the pet.”
“What?” I grunt, snapping out of my thoughts.
“She stole something.”
I snort. “Isn’t that her thing?”
“I mean, a real something. Not a perfume package. The perfume package, the one we used to hide the chip.”
I stare at him in confusion. “The nanochip? What the fuck?”
“I know. She intercepted the handover. Now neither Angel nor we have it, and everyone’s freaking out.”
I pass a hand over my eyes. “Where did she find it? There’s no way we could have been sloppy enough to leave it lying around…”
“It wasn’t lying around. Lucy says Angel gave her the package, as planned, but the pet stole it right from her. Literally took the perfume out of her hands. Like she was looking for it specifically.”
“Doesn’t make sense.” I shake my head. “She’s not that kind of girl.”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know anything about her.”
I bite down a reply. He’s right. And it wouldn’t do well for me to insist. I need to keep this absurd obsession under control.
“Walk me through it,” I request. “I suppose this was after the surveillance cameras got turned off?”
“Right after,” confirms Logan. “Like she knew. She never shoplifts in the evening. Just this once. She never goes to the third floor, but she did, as if she was biding her time.”
I shake my head. “None of that proves anything.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence,” insists Logan. “She was on the third floor, the clothing department, right until the surveillance cameras turned off. Like she was timing it.”
I listen, my hands clenched into fists. I know in my gut the girl is innocent, but I’m going to need to use tact.
“The last footage we have is of her taking the escalator up,” continues Logan. “Just two minutes later, according to Lucy, the girl grabbed the perfume.”
I shake my head. “I never liked this deal.”
“Well, it was the best thing we could negotiate. An Angel guy gave it to Lucy, Lucy was supposed to hand it to Vale. That way, everyone’s hands would have stayed clean. None of us would benefit from getting dragged down over the Cole affair.”
“But you know who would benefit from the chip getting stolen?” I argue. “Angel.”
Logan stares at me blankly. “Why would it benefit them?”
“Angel had the most to gain. Hold on to it, remove any information related to them, pin the murder only on us. I said from the start involving them was a mistake.”
At this point, Vale walks in. He’s clearly heard what I just said, and his face is tight.
“Don’t be an idiot. Why would they steal it back? They gave it to Lucy. She had it in her hands. The Angel guys were nowhere in sight by the time the girl went up. Check the tapes if you don’t believe me.”
My jaw flexes. Amongst us Devil boys, Vale is the most power-hungry one. But he didn’t end up the de facto leader of our little group. I did. Because what he has in ambition, he sorely lacks in social skills.
So, I’m used to his harshness. I don’t usually mind it. But right now, I want to punch him in the face.
I avoid that impulse by taking a sip from the glass of whiskey that’s been sitting in front of me, untouched, for the past hour.
“No one wants a feud,” grumbles Vale. “The Cole clusterfuck could’ve happened to anyone we hired. Their job was to get the nanochip, and they kept their end of the bargain. Now, it’s gone, and we’re fucked.”
“But we don’t know that Lucy…” I begin.
“We know Lucy better than the pet,” objects Logan. “In fact, we don’t know the pet at all. And the simplest explanations are usually the right ones. Let it go, Damien. I know you like her, but let it go.”
“I don’t give a fuck about her,” I snap, a little too hotly.
Vale raises an eyebrow.
“What’s next?” I ask quickly, trying to recover from my outburst. “Did you find out where the girl lives?”
“Better than that: we found her,” says Logan. “She’s in a car on her way here as we speak. I told them to bring her to my office. Igor is already there.”
My blood goes cold. It feels like someone’s just drop-kicked me in the stomach. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.
After all my months of waiting, everything’s unraveling in front of me. Fuck.
Now, she’s on their radar. On Vale’s radar.
If he has his way, I know what awaits her. And it isn’t good.
I do my best to suppress the protective instinct that’s flared up inside me. I need to figure out how to keep her safe without appearing weak. Without giving Vale something to latch onto.
“I’m going to take a walk,” I mutter. “I need some air. Don’t do a thing without me.”
Logan looks at me, concern flickering in his eyes. He may be an asshole, but deep down, he has a good heart. Out of all of them, he’s the one who always has my back.
“Look,” he says, “you’re right. We don’t know anything. We won’t kill her unless we’re absolutely sure.”
Well. That’s a consolation.
“In any case, we’ll wait for you,” he promises. “She was surprisingly energetic, so they sedated her, a small dose to keep her unconscious while we assessed. That way, they didn’t need to keep the handcuffs on her. They were worried she’d hurt herself.”
What the fuck. They touched her without my permission. They drugged her.
It takes everything I have to keep control of my rising anger.
“We had no time,” he says defensively, as if he can read my inner thoughts. He probably can. “As soon as Lucy realized what the girl had taken, she called the guys waiting in the car. Another minute and it would have been too late.”
I nod shortly, trying to keep a mask on my face. What’s done is done. No use showing them how much it angers me. What I need to focus on is protecting the girl. Making sure things go my way.
Still, as I leave the room, I can’t help but insist, “No touching her until I get there. Got it?”
And I know that at least Logan has understood my unspoken threat. Don’t touch her... or else you’re all dead.