My heart beats hard in my chest. That’s the closest anyone’s ever come to confronting me. I’ve actually been spoken to.
I smile, a thrill bubbling up in my throat, then quickly head to the escalator and hurry downstairs.
I can already picture myself in that gorgeous sparkly pink dress, and as I close my eyes for an instant, I let myself daydream of a life filled with sparkly dresses and not a single trace of Ben.
I’m so lost in my thoughts, as I walk out of the swiveling doors, that I don’t see them. Not until it’s too late.
My vision suddenly goes dark. Something like a bag has been forced down over my head. The next moment, I feel myself being grabbed and lifted up over someone’s shoulder. Then I’m pushed into what I assume is the backseat of a car. My arms are pinned behind my back, and cold metal is pressed around my wrists, then snapped into place.
I never think of screaming. I don’t believe I even know how to scream.
A voice sounds in my ear. “Careful. Don’t touch her. Mr. Wells wouldn’t like that.”
A second later, the engine roars to a start, and I fall back against the seat as the car drives away.
My heart hammers harder than ever, insane, out of control.
As I feel beads of cold sweat prick their way down my temples, a sudden realization overwhelms me:
Am I being kidnapped?
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 apunch 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.
