Chapter1
RAYVEN
Dead men told no tales,but theydidfill my bank account. The ones worth a damn anyway.
It wasn’t easy. I’d sunk so much time and energy into perfecting my craft, not to mention the physical exertion it took to exhume the corpses.
Grave robber, grave digger, tomb raider… There were many names for my chosen career path, but I preferredasset repossessor.It had a nice ring to it.
It wasn’t honest work, but I didn’t give two fucks about that. It paid decently, and that was good enough for me. The heirlooms, jewels, and dollars I collected covered my necessities like rent, but it was never enough to scratch the insatiable itch for more.
My favorite part wasn’t even the money. It was the high that came with every job. That’s what drove me at the end of the day. I was addicted to the hours of late-night research, the careful plotting, staking out the cemetery, and my favorite part of all: actually pulling it off.
And tonight promised to be my biggest payday ever.
Nothing I’d uncovered over the years could hold a candle to the riches rumored to be hidden in the Petherick family tomb. Even the name oozed opulence and grandeur. It was everything I’d been waiting for, the big break that would change my life completely, and after weeks of plotting and planning, the time had finally come.
As I stared up at the impressive mausoleum, my pulse quickened. The family name was chiseled into the stone above the steel door, along with some indecipherable details. It had been a bitch to get to this point, from hiding the car half a mile away in the closest patch of trees, to scaling, not one, buttwowrought iron fences. I had a nasty scar on my thigh from my first time climbing one of those things.
Now that I was finally here, my mind ran rampant with ideas of what awaited behind the sealed entrance, fingertips tingling in anticipation.
This right here? The moment of silence before cracking into some rich asshole’s final resting place? It was my drug. The money was great. But the rush I got from disturbing the eternal rest of those who looked down on people like me in their waking life? That was better than gold.
The building was tall and wide, a sharp steeple stretching up from the stone roof. There were no flowers or decorations adorning it aside from the detailed images chiseled into the walls, but they were too compacted with dirt and dust to make out clearly. It was raised on a dais in the middle of the cemetery, three marble steps leading up to it, making it the focal point of the dilapidated graveyard.
Even after centuries of weathering the elements, whispers of grandeur remained, but there was a lot of mystery surrounding the mausoleum. Despite extensive internet searches and even delving into public records at City Hall, I still had no idea exactly which member–or members–of the Petherick family were buried here.
Whatever was inside had been hidden there for centuries, and I was minutes away from unearthing it.
Little sparks of electricity danced through my bloodstream. I could hardly contain my excitement.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mark asked in my ear, keeping his voice low. I’d been so focused on the excitement buzzing through me and entranced by the towering mausoleum in front of me, I’d almost forgotten he was there.
He was quiet on the job, but I liked it that way. His voice got on my nerves after a while. That probably should have been my sign to break up with the guy. We’d been dating for over a year, if you could call lame dates and disappointing dick “dating”. I wasn’t feeling it. But…he was. So I was putting off ending things.
While we’d been sleeping together for a year, we’d been working and living together for almost five. I didn’t want him to get mad and refuse to work with me anymore, especially when I needed the help. While he was a bit on the nervous side when it came to the whole filthy criminal thing, he was a good asset. These graves weren’t going to dig themselves, and being just over five feet made it difficult for me to swing a shovel for hours on end.
Mark was the muscle of this outfit, and I was…Well, I was everything else.
Tonight was like most nights, in that we knew the drill. Get in. Take as much as we could fit in the duffle bag clutched in my hand. Get out without being seen.
But with this job, the stakes were higher. Tonight we were hitting the Petherick tomb, and they weren’t just rich bureaucrats or trust fund babies. They were royalty, and they came from one of the richest families to ever grace this continent.
These people were so upper crust that there was a crazy myth about the entire family being descended from gods, a direct bloodline to supernatural deities. I called bullshit. What Ididbelieve were the rumors about them being filthy fucking rich. And greedy rich people of their caliber loved being buried with their earthly riches.
“Of course I want to do this,” I snapped back, slinging the backpack off my shoulder and letting it fall with athudto the ground. I knelt beside it, tearing open the zipper, and rummaging through it for my tools. “We have rent to make, remember? Don’t tell me you’re chickening out, babe.” I didn’t bother biting back the annoyance in my tone. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d backed out of a job.
He forced a laugh, but I could hear what he didn’t say. There was something off about this. Something that had his skin crawling. I felt it too.
It wasn’t unusual for Mark to get a bit nervous before a job. But usually he got over himself once we arrived on site. Since we'd parked the car and made our way to the middle of this private graveyard, he’d only gotten more nervous.
“It’s gonna be okay. This place is out in the middle of nowhere. No one's gonna catch us,” I assured him. “This is gonna be cake. This place is supposed to be untouched. No one’s had the balls to hit this place yet. Just think of the payday waiting for us inside.”
My mind teeming with delicious possibilities, I pulled on a headlamp and passed one to Mark.
"Why don't you make yourself useful and get to work on the door?" I asked sweetly, batting my eyelashes up at him, even though it was too dark for him to see.
Mark’s broad shoulders and athlete's physique made him perfect for wielding a shovel or a crowbar, though he did get a little queasy depending on the age of the graves. Dead bodies never bothered me. I actually found bones quite beautiful.
