Page 7

EMBER

My appointment runs over by forty-five minutes, but I don’t bother texting Lucas to let him know. I don’t want him to know anything more about this than he needs to.

If he finds out just how much my brother’s death has fucked me up, he might decide I’m too much of a liability to keep around, and I’ve seen firsthand what Lucas does to those he no longer needs.

I press my eyes closed to blink back the memory, but it hits me so hard it takes my breath away.

The parking lot is deserted and cold.

It’s the middle of the night, a rare time that the City of Angels isn’t warm, and I’m standing beside my brother, trembling from something other than the cold.

Fear.

At sixteen, I should be out with friends, or studying, or doing something fun and innocent.

What I should absolutely not be doing is preparing to kill a man.

Travis said it was necessary. That we couldn’t be initiated if we didn’t do it. I’ve tried reasoning with him over the last fewweeks, but he keeps telling me we owe Lucas. For what, I’m not sure, but he never elaborates.

It’s been three years since we ran from our last group home, and my brother has protected me every day. He says he failed me once when he allowed our foster father to sneak in one night when Lucas was fast asleep down the hall.

When he found out what happened, he packed us both a backpack, and we ran. And we’ve never stopped running.

We’ve lived on the street, in halfway houses, and we even squatted for a few months in a derelict house ready for demolition, but he’s never let anyone touch me.

I owe Travis everything.

Which is why I’m here.

I can’t let him down, not when it’s my fault we ever had to start living this life.

An old, beat-up sedan drives into the parking lot. Travis takes my hand and grips it tightly, silently giving me the support I need to go through with this.

Trembles rack through my body, but I force myself to stand still as the car parks a few yards away from us, and two men clamber out.

The stench of alcohol and weed is thick the moment the door swings open, and I swallow the bile that rises up my throat.

So maybe these two aren’t the most upstanding citizens, but I don’t think they deserve to die. Or maybe they do, but I don’t know that I should be the one who ends either of them. I just don’t have a choice.

One of Lucas’s men steps up behind the guys and kicks the backs of their knees, forcing them to the ground with a crunch that makes my stomach roll.

Travis drops my hand when Lucas turns to face us.

It’s time.

He looks between us, his eyes moving over our faces before his hand reaches toward me, and I drop my gaze to see what he’s holding out to me.

A gun.

I open my mouth to insist that Travis go first, that I’ve never held a gun, let alone shot one, but I snap it shut again. Will watching my brother kill someone really make it easier for me to do the same?

Or will the sight of a dead body turn my stomach before I can go through with my own initiation?

I wrap my fingers around the handle and test the weight. It’s heavier than I thought it would be, but it settles in my hand with an unsettling amount of ease.

“What the fuck?” The guy on the left demands, his frantic eyes suddenly holding more lucidity than when they climbed out of the car.

“Did you think you could steal from me?” Lucas asks, his face devoid of emotion. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out that you were pulling jobs behind my back? Stealing money from our operation?”