Chapter 1
“What’s free? Free is when nobody else can tell us what to be…”
Harbor Lawson
“Harbor, let’s go!” my sister, Harmonie, shouted to me from downstairs.
I was staring at my reflection in the mirror.
The short yellow dress hanging off my frame was sleeveless and strapless, leaving nothing to the imagination.
My small waist and thick hips were accented, along with my shapely legs in the gold heels I slayed with my freshly pedicured feet.
I swiped my hand down the front of the dress and admired my wavy hair as it flowed down my back.
Turning to the side, I made sure my ass was still sitting up on point and smiled to myself.
It was Friday night, and I wanted nothing more than to have a few drinks and cut loose.
There was a party on the college campus, and since my sister and I were both attending Virginia State, we’d been invited.
Technically, she was invited, and I was tagging along.
Harmonie and I were like day and night. She was sweet, bubbly, and very sociable.
I was a flake. I didn’t have a lot of friends, and I was self-absorbed.
“Coming!” I shouted, snatching up my clutch off the foot of my bed.
We were on spring break, and my room was a hot mess.
I had shit scattered everywhere and hadn’t even unpacked my bags.
My laptop had been booted up on my desk because I was working on a project for school and trying to get ready for a night out at the same damn time.
After hitting a few keystrokes, I accomplished what I needed and went to close the application I had running.
I closed the laptop and took one last peek at myself in the mirror before running my fingers through my long jet-black tresses.
Rushing out of the room,I left it smelling like Calvin Klein perfume as I sprinted down the staircase of our two-story home.
My heels clicked with each step on the wooden stairs.
“Harbor, is that you!” My stepmother’s voice rang out from the kitchen.
“Yeah! I’m leaving!” I called back, racing past the open door of my father’s office to the front door.
“Harbor!” His deep voice halted me.
Sighing heavily, I spun toward his door right before passing it.
My father, Harold Lawson, was a very stern, by the book man.
He was a computer specialist/engineer, and he didn’t like to talk about his job.
I just knew he made decent money and dealt with a lot of government agencies.
To me, my dad was a square. He was a handsome one though.
All the girls I knew thought he was sexy underneath his designer signature frames.
Peering at me over them, he examined my outfit.
“Yes?” I stopped in his doorway and waited for him to continue.
“That’s an interesting outfit you have there. Where is the rest of it?” he questioned, taking his glasses off and examining me closer.
The way his thick brow lifted was comical.
I pushed my eyes back into my head and shook my head before looking down at my outfit.
When he took his glasses off, he looked like another man.
One with a mask. The glasses made him appear softer, more approachable.
The hard stare he gave without them pierced me in that moment.
“It’s a dress, Daddy. It’s the latest from the DKNY collection,” I said, hand on my hip.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? It looks like a piece of cloth, very tight cloth at that.” He didn’t like it. He rarely approved of anything I did, but my big sister could get away with high crimes.
“I bet Harmonie didn’t get this type of treatment, and her outfit is more than likely worse than mine.” I pouted, and he fell back in his chair.
“If you dress a certain way, you bring a level of attention I don’t think you are ready for. Harmonie is different.” My father disputed, placing his glasses back over his face.
“Right, because I’m just some na?ve little bird,” I muttered with sarcasm. “Or you think if something happens to me, I’m asking for it because of how I’m dressed?” I said rhetorically.
My father’s view of me never changed, no matter what I did.
I had always been good in school, excelling far better than Harmonie’s lazy ass, yet none of that mattered.
To him, I was Halo. That was my mother. She was always pulling disappearing acts on my daddy, and he didn’t like that shit.
When I was eleven, she was gone, and she never looked back.
He had grown fed up. The night they had their last fight that I remembered, it escalated like nothing ever before.
I was a kid so I didn’t get the specifics of it all.
What I do recall is that my mother was doing something outside of their marriage and my father found out about it.
“Harbor, I would never say that you were asking for anything. Why are you always so hostile with me?” he questioned.
“Why are you always nitpicking at me? What did I do other than look too much like the woman that birthed me. Is that the problem? Is that why you can’t seem to get past my decisions? I bust my ass in school and barely get a fucking pat on the back—”
“Watch your mouth,” he warned, bringing a hand up to silence me, and a notification from his computer screen distracted him.
My father looked as if he wanted to say something else but his display in front of him held his focus.
His face twisted up in confusion first before anger seemed to cloud his features.
His job pissed him off regularly, and he always had to leave spur of the moment on business.
Sometimes the luxuries we could afford even surprised me.
I thought maybe he got bonuses or something with the way he was able to splurge on us.
The more I got involved with the dark web and everything behind the scenes, I understood how easy it was to make hard cash with a quick turnaround.
When that cryptocurrency began rolling in, the game changed.
“Daddy—”
“Just… have a good night and be safe, Harbor.” He waved me off and kept his eyes glued to his computer.
“Okay. Good night.” I turned to go, but an unsettled feeling grew in my stomach. I shook it off when I saw my sister impatiently standing in the hallway near the front door going through her phone.
“Damn. What took so long?” she asked, her face frowned up as I strutted toward her.
“What else? Daddy trying to regulate me once again like I’m twelve,” I answered while she pulled the door open. “And I had to send off the information for this job I was running.”
“Well, let’s go before we are late to this party.” Harmonie scrunched up her nose and shoved her phone down into her crossbody bag she was wearing.
“Girls—” Our stepmother, Chaya, stopped us before we could leave.
Chaya was cool. She was also about fifteen years younger than our father.
Her profile was simple: gorgeous, carefree, and the total opposite of him.
She was wild and outgoing and into natural healing, herbs, and all that other shit.
They married when I was just fifteen years old.
Before that, my father spent a lot of time alone after my mother decided she had enough of the domestic life.
I could tell that always left him feeling some kind of way.
Sometimes it even felt like he looked at me like I was her.
It seemed to be hard for him to differentiate.
I worked my ass off to prove that I was my own person.
But a slip-up here and bad decision there, and he never let me forget that I was more like her than my older sister.
He pretty much resented me for it. He damn sure didn’t encourage or hype me up like he did my big sis.
I used to take offense to the shit, but eventually, I had to develop thick skin around the house.
I simply existed because these walls hadn’t been home in a long time.
“What’s up?” Harmonie quipped.
“Have fun and be careful,” Chaya acknowledged.
“Thanks,” Harmonie said, waving for me to walk out ahead of her.
Once we were on the porch and the breeze hit us, I raised my head to the sky and inhaled.
It smelled like rain, but that wasn’t going to stop shit I had planned tonight.
I had been busting my ass in school for the last three years, and I was starting to get sick of the routine of my life.
That was literally all I ever did—go to class and study on repeat for months at a time.
I told myself this year I was going to find the fun in life.
Since my sister and I had our own dorm room on campus that we shared, she was encouraging me every other weekend to go out with her.
Harmonie was the life of the party. She thrived off attention and having a good time.
She was actually more like our mother than my father cared to admit.
The difference with me and her was that she hid her dirt a hell of a lot better than anyone else I knew.
I was content reading the latest financial news and software upgrades.
I guess the technical bug from our father spilled over onto me because I, too, was pretty useful when it came to programming, among other things.
I used my powers for good, unlike some hackers in the world.
It was easy to get sucked in. The sense of power it gave, infiltrating a secret world and obtaining top secret and critical information, provided me a high I never knew I could enjoy.
“Let’s get out of here before one of them pops out with something else to say.” Harmonie urged me down the steps and onto the sidewalk.