Work for him.
A sick feeling curled in my gut, and I had a feeling that I wouldn’t like working for him.
“What happens if I tell you my sister did it?” My voice was so quiet this time that I wondered if he would even hear me.
“I will set you and your sisters up in a nice house. You’ll have a caretaker until you turn eighteen, after which you will be given enough money to do whatever it is your little heart desires… but, in this scenario, it’s your sister who comes to work for me.”
A shiver rolled through me, and I shook my head immediately, blood-soaked strands of my hair whipping against the sides of my head with the ferocity of the movement.
“No, no. I did it. I killed her,” I rasped, and the man’s smile widened.
He removed his hand from my knee and held it out in front of me again, flashing perfectly straight, white teeth.
I reached out and placed my hand in his. He squeezed my hand firmly, giving it a firm shake.
His whiskey eyes glittered, and he smiled at me, his face inches away from mine.
“Looking forward to doing business with you, Mr. Walker,” he purred, and I wondered if I had just signed a deal with the devil my mother had always talked so much about.
Present Day
(Age twenty-six)
Alexa, Play: Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites - Skrillex
Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Skrillex played through my speakers at a much lower volume than the song deserved.
However, I wasn’t able to crank it the way I wanted to.
I was currently parked across the street from a kid’s play park in my murdered out Bentley, waiting for Naomi to come back with recon on my next target. I was already conspicuousenough without blasting rave-level decibels of dubstep all over this suburb on a casual Tuesday afternoon.
Not that these boring ass people wouldn’t benefit from a little bit of excitement… I just didn’t want to get another fucking lecture from Damian.
‘The loudest man in the room is the weakest, Mr. Walker.’
Fuck.Off.
If I had to listen to that asshole quote ‘American Gangster’ onemore time, I was going to put a bullet through my own damn skull.
As it was, I usually just sat there and absorbed whatever bullshit he was trying to indoctrinate me with.
At the ripe young age of ten, I learned that there was no arguing with Damian Ryker. You just obeyed, or you paid for it.
Happily, we were more or less aligned in our interests, and I rarely felt the need to argue with him.
Taking the deal to work for Damian that day in the precinct had been the best decision of my life. He had stayed true to his word and set my sisters and me up in a house nicer than anything little ten-year-old me had ever seen on fucking TV, let alone in real life.
We all still lived there in this glitz-ass townhouse downtown in Silent Hollow.
Everythinghad been financially taken care of. He said it was because‘I had earned it.’
Which, I guess was pretty fucking true.
Ryker had started conditioning me literally the day after we put my mother in the ground. Some may hear something like that and think it harsh… but I was willing to learn.
The funny thing about being raised in a cage is it makes youangry…and angry people wantvengeance.
The first few kills Ryker weaned me into were child abusers. Parents who had done to their kids what had been done to me,Cass, and Naomi… Or worse. As soon as I learned what their crimes had been, I had no problem slitting their throats.
