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PROLOGUE - WILLIAM
10 years ago
William 26 years old // Sienna 16 years old
The leather on the steering wheel is slick under my palms, cooled by the vents. I can still hear Charlotte's voice in my ears, which means she was alive when she called.
Mulholland curves left. I follow it.
The clock on the dash reads 1:47 a.m. Too late for her to be out. I should have checked on her hours ago, making sure she ate, that she had studied, like she was supposed to. Checking if she was ok, alone in the apartment now that our father is gone.
Three months since they put him in the ground.
Ten years since he stopped functioning as a father.
After our mother's death, he collapsed. I was sixteen, working nights, making sure Charlotte had anything she needed, making sure the rent was paid, carrying everything he couldn't lift anymore. He never recovered. The doctors called it cirrhosis, but I know what really killed him. He missed my mother. It took him ten years, but he’s finally with her.
And now the only family I have left is Charlotte, twenty minutes away on a dark canyon road, crying so hard I couldn't get a full sentence out of her.
I press the accelerator.
My focus has been on the club that opens in nine days. Every dollar I have is in it. Every hour. Carter and I built this from the ground up, from bouncing doors at twenty to signing contracts at twenty-five, and I've been so focused on making it work that I let Charlotte slip. I let the distance grow. Told myself she was fine, she was handling it, she didn't need me hovering.
I was wrong.
The headlights cut a narrow corridor through the canyon dark, catching scrub brush and rock face, the road ahead bending where I can't see, and I take the curve too fast.
My phone is on the passenger seat, where I throw it, trying to get to her as fast as I can. Her voice is still there, trapped in the silence after she hung up. Hysterical. The last time she sounded like that was at our mother's funeral, when she was six and didn't understand why everyone was dressed in black, crying, and I had to carry her out of the church because our father couldn't stand it.
I will not lose her.
That is the only thought that I can focus on. Everything else, the club, the money, the meetings I missed and the calls I didn't return, all of it compresses into background noise against the single fact that Charlotte called and said the word accident, and I am not there yet.
Then I see it.
Red and blue lights first, strobing against the canyon wall in a pattern that looks almost calm from a distance. Then the cars. A police cruiser angled across the road, its headlights painting the scene in flat white. And beyond it, pulled off the shoulder and resting nose-first against a eucalyptus trunk, is the Volvo.
The Volvo I bought her.
I put it on a credit line that I can’t barely afford because the safety ratings were the highest in its class and that mattered more than my bank account. Its front end is folded in on itself, the hood buckled upward, both airbags visible through the shattered windshield like deflated lungs. Glass everywhere, catching the strobing light in small sharp points across the asphalt.
I park. Hazards on. Engine off.
The night air hits me when I open the door, carrying the thick, chemical stench of burnt rubber and leaking oil with something metallic underneath.
I look around, assessing the situation.
Police near the Volvo. A BMW parked further up the shoulder, engine still running. And standing beside it, being held by a man I don't recognize, is Charlotte.
Alive. Safe.
A pressure releases in my chest, and for a moment I don't move because my legs aren't reliable.
I force myself to move. The gravel crunches under my shoes and Charlotte sees me before I reach her, the sound she makes is so small and so gutted that my stride breaks for half a step before I recover.
"William." She crashes into me. Her arms lock around my ribs with a force that doesn't match her size, and she's shaking, full-body, her face buried in my chest, saying only the same thing over and over.
