The bunker became my place. Cold concrete. Metal shelves. The smell of oil and rust settling into my skin. I learned the weight of a rifle before I learned basic math. Learned how to break one down and put it back together faster than the older boys. Mama watched sometimes from the stairs, cigarette burning down between her fingers until it singed her skin. When I finished, Papa checked my work. He didn’t praise me, but he stopped correcting me, and that felt like success.
“You’re quiet,” he said once, crouching in front of me, breath sour with alcohol. “Quiet boys live longer.”
Right. That made sense.
It wasn’t a grand life. Looking back now, with enough years and distance to name things properly, I’m pretty fucking sure I was complicit in more than one murder. But…I could laughthen. At least, if I hadn’t chosen quiet, then I could have. I could’ve babbled and screamed and filled the house with noise if I wanted to. I had a working voice. I even had working ears. I could hear the ravens nesting in the big tree out front and the train horn screaming as it tore past and shook the walls. I could hear everything. Talk about everything. But I never really did, and sometimes I wish I had enjoyed having a voice while I had one, and then I think about Arden, about how I never would’ve known her if I’d been a loud kid. Instead I would’ve burned in one of those barrels. Been nothing but smoke on the wind, not a day old past seven. I never would’ve met Thorne and Kane either. It’s a fucking brutal thing—all our shit we went through and yet I wouldn’t trade it for peace if it meant not having Creed.
So when Viktor Shaw came to the foster house, I guess I’ve no choice now but to call it fate.
I used to climb this tree out front of the foster house and sit with the ravens. They seemed to nest there, and I liked to curl into the branch opposite them, sketching them with a dull steak knife into whatever trash I found around the house—usually metal canisters were the best because the knife’s marks showed up better than on cardboard. That day while I sketched, a rich car pulled up to the house, and I knew it was rich purely by the fact that it had all its taillights and not a dent in sight. The man that stepped out was tall and lean, dressed nicely in slacks and a button down. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and aviators, the kind that reflected the summer sun in every direction. An expensive-looking watch flashed under the sunlight too, followed by the rings adorning his fingers. He looked like a caricature—some man from some imagination. He didn’t belong in my world, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. It was a rare day that Mama was home despite the daylight, and she was on the porch in seconds, rifle cocked.
“Who the fuck’re you?” she spat, aiming at the rich man.
He raised his hands slowly and smiled wide in the way I imagined a crocodile would before it eats you alive. “I’m the man who’s about to make you a very rich woman.”
The deal was made in five minutes. I was Mama and Papa’s favorite kid, and it only took them 300 seconds and one thousand dollars to sell me to Viktor Shaw. I always wondered what they bought with the money.
Probably more guns.
“They said your name was Rafe,” Viktor said as he drove us. It was the first thing he’d said to me after hours of long silence.
I clutched the seat belt, sitting in the backseat with tears down my face. I hadn’t gotten to tell the ravens goodbye since Mama had wrenched me out of the tree. I was cut along my legs and forearms from the bark, blood pitter-patting to the vinyl seat.
“Rafe works then,” Viktor said when I didn’t answer. “Dry those eyes. I don’t like tears from the boys.”
I sniffed and wiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands.
Viktor flashed a smile in the rear view mirror. “You’re a good listener. That will get you far with me. You do as your told, and you’ll be just fine.”
“Where…” I cleared my throat, stumbling over the words. “Where?”Where are we going?
“You’ll love it. It’s a big house with other kids like you. Just a handful at the moment but I’ll be fixing that soon.” Viktor looked at me in the mirror. At least, I think he was. It was hard to tell with his reflective glasses. “I heard through the grapevine that your foster parents had a pretty boy who was good with guns. You’re lucky, Rafe, to have me now. I can show you how to do much more than clean them.”
I hugged myself.
“Don’t be scared. Life doesn’t get better than this, kid.”
I closed my eyes. “Rafe,” I said, because I hated the way he said kid. I peered through my lashes when he didn’t respond.
Viktor was smiling again. He’d sat his hat on the dash and flung his glasses to the passenger seat, revealing the eyes he’d so carefully kept hidden. I liked to think that had Mama and Papa seen the darkness waiting in that man’s gaze that they never would’ve sold me. Viktor was evil. I knew it at seven, looking in those eyes for the first time.
“You’ve made it, kid,” he said and lifted a bottle of brandy to his lips with one hand on the wheel, flashing me a wink. “I’m going to make you worth millions.”
And he did. That’s the fucking kicker. Viktor can burn in hell, but the man knew what he was doing when it came to business. His entire estate was built with the singular purpose to make him a richer man, and he did most of it with long drives across the country plucking kids from foster homes for chump change.
That first night at the estate was eerie at best. The place creaked and moaned. It was old and needed to be refurbished, but it was only the beginning of Viktor Shaw’s little empire. He didn’t have all his wealth yet—just enough to launch himself into the stratosphere of trafficking. A lot of my early days were spent pulling weeds, raking the courtyard, and maintaining the estate. I didn’t actually think it was that bad. It wasn’t that different from cleaning Mama and Papa’s guns. There weren’t many other kids at the time. Maybe only three or four. I rarely saw them, all of us kept to separate wings of the estate. There was one though,another boy, that I crossed paths with more regularly as weeks went by and I settled into my routine.
He was…stern. Not in a disciplined way but more so in the way that a kid becomes when he’s been beaten down one time too many, and it was clear he had been. He was always different colors. Blue and purple and yellow and green. Splotches mottled his flesh. We didn’t talk to each other, barely acknowledged each others’ presence. For the first few months, I’d just sweep the hallway and notice him lurking in windowsills or tending to his own wounds. Red became a more common color when I was near him, especially around month five or six. His clothes were always stained red, and it took me a couple weeks before I realized it was blood.
Then I caught him settled in a corner of the estate, sewing shut a wound on his hip. He’d had his pants pulled down to his knees as he worked, and I just remember being frozen in place. He was cut and bruised and so brutally maimed below the waist that I swear I felt my own dick shrivel up inside me.
“Are you…you okay?” I asked him.
He startled, wincing when his jolt caused him to prick himself with the needle he was using to stitch. He didn’t seem embarrassed to be caught with his pants down or even all that irritated though. He just seemed…gone. His eyes were so vacant, and his darkish blond hair was matted. It was strange how dirty the kid was because Viktor made me bathe with him every night. I thought that all the kids at the estate were doing so.
“Fine,” he muttered blankly and continued his stitch work.
Still, I didn’t leave, and still, it didn’t seem that he cared. I stepped a little closer. Morbid curiosity, I guess. He was older than me by a few years at least. His face didn’t have the same roundness of youth that mine or the others’ had.
