I closed my eyes and waited for it all to end. I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t plead. I wouldn’t waver. I wouldn’t go out any other way than the way I’d lived my life . . . I was going to go out bravely and there was no fucking way this piece of shit would ever know how scared I was that not only was I leaving my brother behind in this tragic place, but I was leaving my girl . . . the girl. When I was gone she was going to unleash hell, and Conner Roark had no clue what a vengeful woman who was far more bad than good could do when she was suffering from a broken heart.
BANG!
EPIGRAPH
Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.
—Tennessee Williams
Chapter 1
Reeve
THERE WERE TWO PLACES in the world that I never thought I was going to step foot in again. One was the crumbling and rotting surface of the city simply known as the Point. The other was the police station that sat in the heart of that city and had just as much corruption and crime inside its walls as the town had on its streets. I hated everything about why I was here and yet I put one foot in front of the other, knowing if I ever wanted a shot at being the type of woman that could live with the person looking back at herself in the mirror every day, I had to do something guided by right decisions for once in my life. I had to do something not motivated by my own selfish desires and my own burning need for payback and revenge against the cruel injustices I knew this place was capable of doling out. Good or bad, we all had a target on our backs if we called the Point home. The city didn’t discriminate when causing pain and tearing apart lives.
My hands shook as I reached for the handle on the door. I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this city. Not at this building. Not in this life that wasn’t mine anymore.
I was supposed to be hiding. I was supposed to be someone new, someone that had been handed a chance to start all over. I was supposed to be a girl that didn’t know what death and revenge felt like even though they lived so hot and angry under her skin. The new me was supposed to be safe, supposed to be insulated and so far removed from the crime and sleaze that was the lifeblood of the Point, that she wouldn’t last five minutes in this terrible place.
Only the new me had never stuck, and truthfully, I had never been a fan of that girl’s fragile and soft disguise. Hiding was for the weak, and I knew deep down to the core of who I was that I would never, ever actually be safe. I had harbored too many demons, made too many deals with devils along the way to ever think I was going to get away with walking out of the Point without doing some sort of bloody penance for my misdeeds.
I was standing on unsteady legs, asking the young cop who was sheltered behind bars and bulletproof glass at the front desk of the station to go find the one man, the only good I had ever seen in the godforsaken place. If I was going to throw my new life away, jump feetfirst back into the fire, Detective Titus King was the only person I was going to trust to keep me safe from the flames.
Some men wanted to watch the world burn. Titus was a man that wanted to put out all the flames single-handedly from inside the blaze. He was the only one I trusted with the information I was holding on to. He was the only one I trusted to help me find a safe place to land after I kicked the new me to the curb and dusted the old me off and put back on her damaged and tattered skin. Lord only knew how long I would last now that I was back, but I knew if I had Titus on my side I would stand a better chance of making it to the finale, to the end, to the place I needed to be in order to right one wrong. One of so many in this hellhole.
The Point was going to war and I was about to become the advantage that the good guys were going to need if they wanted any chance of being able to hold their own.
The young cop asked me my name and when I muttered “Reeve Black” I saw the way his eyes went from appreciating the fall of my long black hair and the way my T-shirt hung against curves that were more dangerous than he would ever know, to speculative and almost disgusted. I had a reputation and it wasn’t a good one. Even in this place full of bad people doing bad things, there was still room for the worst of the worst. I was the worst and I never pretended to be anything else.
The cop picked up the phone and spoke softly. I heard him say my name more than once and then shake his head. I really, really wasn’t supposed to be here, and I knew Titus was going to be anything but happy to see me. He didn’t need to be happy, he just needed to hear what I had to say and agree to help me help him.
I pushed some of my hair back behind my ear and willed my hands to stop quivering. This wasn’t a time to betray weakness. I wasn’t afraid of him. I was afraid for him.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a door that had his name and title scrawled across it in peeling black vinyl letters swing open. I felt my heart quiver a little bit, felt my tummy pull tight as his dark head poked out of the opening. Even across the distance and through all the barriers keeping us apart, I could feel the impact of his outrageously blue eyes and the fury captured inside them as they landed on me.