“Come on, Kari.”
And suddenly I know who it is. The man pacing my bedroom, idly destroying its walls, isn’t a man. It’s a boy of eighteen—my age.
Lachlan McManus.
Son of Creighton McManus.
My heart sinks so much further that I want to cry.
My dad didn’t just get into debt again. He got into debt with the largest crime family in the South Island. The McManus clan has a stranglehold over the city; they take a cut from every income-generating crime that occurs within its boundaries.
A shady deal with a second-tier bookie hanging around the back of the TAB I can handle. A debt to a family this powerful, a debt so bad he’s sent his only son to deal with it, no.
This is so far out of our league that I’d be impressed if I weren’t about to get a front-row seat to the aftermath of my father’s compulsion.
Lachlan goes to my school, but that’s where our similarities end. And it would be more proper to say, I go to Lachlan’s school. Given the money his family has invested in Kingswood College, not to mention the legacy of attendees stretching back ad infinitum, he exerts more power there than the principal.
The only way I can even attend the private school is through a scholarship, turned down at the last minute by another deserving candidate. A set of circumstances I mistakenly took as a sign our luck was turning.
I doubt he knows my name; I learned his on the first day.
Kari Abercrombie’s father is a lieutenant in their enterprise. A power couple of the underworld in the making. The only person with enough standing to defy him and apparently, she’s putting that to good use right now.
Couldn’t have picked a worse time, girl.
My shoulders tense so hard, they’re close to cramping. No blood flow can get through while they do their best imitation of concrete.
I clutch the ring box in one hand while the other tries to punch nail holes in my palm—finally a good reason to keep biting them, a habit I’ve never been able to shake, even whenpainting them with that horrible polish that tastes like Chernobyl took a dump on my hand.
“If you do this, I’ll make you regret it.”
The warning sounds terrifying to me, but I hear the careless tinkle of her laughter, a response that eats away at him so hard I can actually hear his muscles tensing.
For every new bit of anger surging through Lachlan’s body, there’s a likely target for its release.
My dad.
“You’ll be the one crying to your father when I dump your arse and find someone who doesn’t need to count money to get wet.”
The low growl turns the insult into a threat. If I thought there was a chance in hell of me making it out of there if I bolted right now, I’d take it.
Instead, I listen as the conversation devolves another notch.
“Then fuck you and fuck your family.”
Something hits the wall, and it takes a second to realise it must be his phone. When I turn my head to the extreme right, so extreme my neck is in danger of seizing, I can just see it, lying on the floor.
Two heavy boots appear either side of it.
I hold my breath. He’s so close if I were a complete madwoman, I could reach out and touch him.
Instead, I try to stop moving, stop even the blood travelling around my body. Become something that absorbs sound rather than emitting it.
Freeze so solid nobody could suspect there was a living, breathing human being tucked under the bed.
Lachlan squats, one hand seizing the phone, the other dangling between his legs.
My eyes bug out as my blood pressure goes full throttle. Spots dance in front of my eyes. The room dims.
