Page 5

Chapter Five

Sutton

T he stench of alcohol and sweat soaked my nostrils. From the bus to the city streets and finally, into the club, the smell of barely concealed desperation grew stronger. But nothing reeked quite like the lie that Jack Kang was trying to feed me right now.

“Mara left, Sutton. Wanted to do her own thing,” he said with a half smirk, his crooked white smile slicing across his otherwise flat face.

Jack Kang, with his trimmed hair and smart though slightly wrinkled black suit, was a wannabe criminal. He was a low-level drug dealer who wanted to be recruited by the Wah Ching, the local San Francisco chapter of the Chinese Triad. The problem with Kang was that he treated criminality like CrossFit: he told everyone about it.

He boasted about his product. His sales. His goals. It was easy to see why he’d never made it past the position of Blue Lantern, an uninitiated member of the Wah Ching, but I’d never understand why they let him flit around their territory without reproach. Nor why the police hadn’t arrested him.

Maybe they both saw how pathetic he was. Or maybe the police hoped if he was recruited, that big mouth of his would lead detectives right to the high-ranking members.

How did I know so much about the Wah Ching? Randy—Mom’s boyfriend, the disgusting pig who fed her drug addiction and then killed her—was one of them.

At seventeen, I didn’t know the specifics of the gang or how they worked, but that all changed when I went to juvie. Three and a half years spent with their army of underaged dealers was a long time to get a sense of the ins and outs.

Wah Ching literally means “Chinese Youth,” and underserved teenagers made an easy target for the gang leaders like White Paper Fan and Straw Sandal to exploit. Teenagers didn’t need to know much. They didn’t need a lot of money. And if they were caught, not only was it much harder for law enforcement to beat information out of them because they were under eighteen, but they didn’t spend too much time locked up.

Kids younger than me had tried to recruit me while we’d been locked up. They stopped once I told them why I was there. No one bothered me once they learned why I was there.

“Bullshit,” I told him, my jaw tightening.

I had no idea what the hell had drawn Mara to Jack in the first place, but I blamed myself. I hadn’t been there for her. We’d both gone through our rebellious phase together, both suffering shitty and abusive home lives, and we’d kept each other in line. We’d been each other’s tether to morality when one of us got too close to the edge.

But then I’d gone to juvie.

By the time I got out, she was mixed up with Jack. He’d gotten her off track. Into drugs. Into selling. He was the reason we argued and she kicked me out of her apartment and told me she never wanted to see me again.

“You should just forget about Mara like she forgot about us and let me buy you a drink.” Jack eyed me with that same fucking grin he’d worn the day Mara and I fought as he watched from the background.

My fist balled at my side, my nails piercing the skin of my palm. I inhaled deep and searched for my mental armor.

He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.

I exhaled and took Sun Tzu’s advice and prudently buried the urge to strangle the smirk off Jack’s face. I could do it. Easily . Except we stood in the middle of the White Pearl, a seedy club in downtown San Francisco, surrounded by people who belonged to the underbelly of the city. Drug deals, illegal trade, and gambling were all protected by the barely concealed weapons that were more shrouded by the shadows than the suits of the men who carried them.

It was no real secret that the White Pearl was a frequent hangout for higher-ranking Wah Ching members. Maybe Jack was the reason it wasn’t a secret, maybe not. Regardless, Jack could be found most weekend nights here trying to look the part of an organized crime boss in the hopes they’d finally bring him into their circle.

“Then why is all her stuff still at her apartment?” I demanded and folded my arms.

His eyes dropped not-so-subtly to my chest. Pig. When he looked back up, there was something different about his stare. Like my question put a chink in his story’s facade.

“Because she was unstable and unpredictable. You of all people should know that,” he insisted, his emphasis unmistakable.

I bristled. Yes, it wasn’t…normal for her and me to fight like we had. In the history of dynamic duos, there would always be Batman and Robin, Timon and Pumba, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Mara and Sutton. We’d braved my mom’s bipolar episodes and drug addiction together. We’d faced her dad’s physical abuse and alcoholism together. My dad’s death. Her mom’s passing. Even during my incarceration, she’d written to me every week. Because of her, I wasn’t alone.

Mara was the one waiting for me when I was released. I’d wanted to stay with her during my parole, but when I told Daws, he informed me that Mara had a record now, too, so it wasn’t allowed.

I remembered the day she picked me up. It was so bittersweet to see her again. Three and a half years was a long time for a best friend to change. And for her to not tell me about her own run-ins with the law.

Maybe she hadn’t said anything because she’d wanted to tell me in person. That was the assumption I’d went with when I’d asked her. She’d hesitated to tell me, but then admitted to the drug stuff, her disappointment in herself painted all over her face. And she promised she was done with all of it. That she’d found a new purpose. That her life was on a better track.

I remembered smiling at her and thinking both of ours finally were.

It took quite a few weeks before I’d met Jack. Not on purpose either. He’d shown up to her apartment excited about something. He’d barged right in, waving around a bag of pills and begging Mara to celebrate with him. She’d been flustered. Embarrassed. Afraid as she introduced me to him.

They’d been dating for months, and she hadn’t told me. And instantly, I was afraid that what she had told me—about being clean and on the path to something better—was a lie.

It didn’t take long after that to realize the kind of character Jack was and the type of things he was involved in, and after finding out, I didn’t wait to confront Mara. That was when we’d argued. Over him. Over everything Jack represented. And then she’d kicked me out of her apartment and told me she never wanted to see me again.

“Mara wouldn’t have left everything, Jack. I know her. Just like I know you’re full of shit.” I pressed on that button harder. I refused to believe her angry words. Refused to believe she’d pick Jack over me. And I’d continue refusing to believe it until I saw her again.

The soft curve of Jack’s jaw flexed, his expression souring. Good .

“Then why aren’t the police looking for her?”

“Because they’re idiots, and I’m not.”

After we’d fought, I gave her a couple of weeks to cool off. Not entirely disconnected because I wasn’t the kind of person who was kept quiet. I texted her every day, telling her she needed to cut the drugs and cut Jack. Telling her that I wasn’t going anywhere. Reminding her of our promise to take care of each other. And when none of that got her to respond, I texted her one final message: Legal prey.

As two girls who dressed in black, had our septums pierced, acted like tomboys, and came from immigrant families, there was no shortage of bullies at school who tried to prey on us. At fourteen, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo wasn’t exactly the kind of book we should’ve been reading or referencing, but Mom couldn’t care less, and Mara’s dad only cared about the bottle. So, we read it, internalized it, and immortalized Lisbeth Salander, the badass girl with the dragon tattoo, as our idol. We picked fights with bullies at school to prove we could hold our own . And we’d adopted the moniker in the book, legal prey, like a badge of honor—a kind of code to remind us to never be taken advantage of.

Legal prey got Mara to respond. She’d hearted the message, and I’d had hope. But then every subsequent message over the next four days was left unread. At that point, I’d had enough. So, I went to her apartment to talk to her, but there was no answer .

I asked the security guard who first tried to extort sexual favors from me in exchange for an answer. I gave him a knife to the throat instead. No wonder he didn’t like me. On threat of bodily harm, he told me last he saw her, she was leaving with her boyfriend.

Jack.

I first went to the police and reported her missing. But… legal prey. I was who I was. Looked how I did. And the moment they pulled up her name, saw her record, and then heard that Jack Kang, rumored drug dealer, was the last to be seen with her, the two officers at the desk pieced together the picture they wanted to see and promptly overlooked my concern.

And that was the moment I realized nothing had really changed in the last almost four years and that I would have to find Mara on my own.

So, I went back to Mara’s apartment, intent on finding some kind of clue or evidence, but we all know how that turned out: with me on Tynan’s doorstep when I really needed to be here, getting answers from Jack.

“She’s gone, Sutton. Stop looking for her,” he repeated, losing some of the flippancy in his voice.

Slivers of icy dread scraped through my veins. “Where is she, Jack?” I demanded, stepping closer to him. “Or do I have to make a scene and make you look bad in front of your precious Wah Ching?”

That earned me a snarl.

“I’m not here for them,” he snapped low.

“Well, you’re certainly not here to be made to look like a pussy in front of all of these people.” I never liked Jack, and he never liked me. I saw him for what he was, and he saw me as a threat to whatever hold he had over Mara. “Especially by a girl.”

I batted my eyelashes and smiled, looking like some pin-up anime character with my chunky black boots, short slinky dress, and long black hair that I’d pulled into a tight bun with what looked like two chopsticks. Only I knew they were knives—as sharp and as slender and as underestimated as I was.

“You wouldn’t touch me,” he sneered, stepping closer like it would make me feel threatened. Instead, all I could think was I felt more in danger from the much older, much more muscled former soldier—who would never actually harm a hair on my head—than I did from this piece of shit whose threats felt like toy guns.

“Wouldn’t I?” I bit my bottom lip coyly and then reached out and traced my pointed black nail down the center of his chest like it was a scalpel and I was slicing him open.

His eyes darted around, a sudden panic shattering his calm, before he grabbed my wrist painfully and pulled me to him. “Not here.”

I was so relieved, I let myself ignore the urge to maim him for how he wrenched my wrist as he led me through the crush of people. I didn’t care about the pain if it meant he’d tell me what the hell happened to Mara.

The flashing lights slashed through the faces of the crowd like sharp shards of reality, exposing glazed eyes and needle-stained arms. Men groped ragdoll-like women, too distanced from reality to realize how they were being preyed on.

Jack led me to a door at the back of the club, and it opened to the alley behind the building, the asphalt gnarled and pockmarked, the disease of disuse rampant in the strewn trash and heavy shadows.

He hauled me outside and then spun me until my back hit the old brick of the building. Thankfully, my leather jacket took the brunt of the blow.

“I’m warning you, Sutton. Drop it,” he said through his teeth. “Mara’s gone. She didn’t want to see you anymore, remember?”

“Bullshit.” My pulse thrummed. I wouldn’t believe him. I wouldn’t believe that. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” he spat.

“You’re a horrible liar. No wonder the Wah Ching wants nothing to do with you.” Not all weapons were physical, but the damage my words rendered could be just as effective as any of my knives.

“You want to know what happened to her?” he growled and flattened himself to me. I silenced the warning flares going off in my brain and still the riotous anger in my blood. “I’ll tell you what happened to her.” His eyes lowered to my chest. “But you have to give me something first.”

Pig.

He maneuvered my wrists into one hand, and I let him. He stared at me, smiling, as he slid his free hand down my arm, and I let him.

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.

My mental armor locked on Sun Tzu’s words of war.

“You don’t want to do that.” I gave Jack a warning not because he deserved one but because when this was all over, I wanted him to remember he had a choice…and that he’d made the wrong one.

His smile widened. “You’re the one who wants to know.”

The smugness on his face would’ve been sickening if I hadn’t seen the look before, and that was when I felt it—the rush of calm like cool fuel through my veins. And then his hand closed painfully over my breast.

“Pierced tits.” His brows rose. “How’d that feel?”

The cold fuel ignited into something charringly vicious.

“How about I show you?” I said so low that by the time he heard me—by the time his brow creased in confusion—I’d already started to move.

He thought I wouldn’t fight back because I was intimidated. Because I was some helpless woman he believed he could overpower and take advantage of. He was wrong.

I jerked my one arm down, connecting my elbow right into his nose, the crunch of broken bone and cartilage almost as satisfying as his shout of pain.

“ Fuck!” Jack reached for his gushing, broken nose, and I used the moment of distraction to my advantage.

I pulled free one of the slender knives holding my hair and brought the tip under his chin. Instantly, his garbled string of curses silenced, and he glared at me.

“Let me go.” I made my first demand and happily watched him hesitate so I could dig the knife a little deeper.

“You’re a fucking cunt, you know that?” he ground out through carefully locked teeth. Too much emotion, and he’d impale his own chin on my blade.

I smiled and pressed harder, instantly feeling his hand spring open and release my wrist as a rivulet of red trickled down my slim silver blade.

“You’re going to pay for this.”

“You should probably wait until I’ve put my knife away before threatening me, Jack,” I drawled and smirked.

His eyes bugged wide for a second, and then he let out a hiss of pain as I pressed the knife and forced him to turn.

“Against the wall,” I directed.

“You’re a fucking cunt,” he repeated once our positions were reversed and it was his back pressed to the brick, his head tipped to try to stop the bleeding, his arms spread to the sides, hands up in a show of surrender.

“So you’ve said,” I quipped, watching the blood soak the white cuff of his shirt and drip onto the ground.

“Just like Mara.” When he spoke, blood sprayed from his lips, but I didn’t flinch when it landed on my chest.

“We’ll get to her in a moment.” I moved closer to him—as close as he’d been to me before, but now our roles were reversed. The power was reversed. And he was quaking. Imagine that.

I lifted my free hand and pulled the other knife from my hair, the long black length tumbling down my back now with nothing to hold it up.

“What the hell—are you fucking psycho? I said I’d fucking tell you?—”

“Psycho? To defend myself from a man trying to threaten me? To hurt me? To touch me without my permission?” My head cocked. “You had your chance to tell me. Now, I want something in return.”

“Something— fuck!” he roared in pain as I drove the second knife through his open palm and nailed it to the brick behind it.

“You wanted to know how it felt,” I reminded him coolly as he struggled to control his pain.

Any movement made, one or both knives wound him deeper.

“You’re. Fucking. Psychotic,” he panted, the veins in his face thumping.

“Because I defended myself? Or because I penetrated your body without your consent?” I felt a thrill of pleasure as I mocked him.

He huffed raggedly, sweat mixing with the blood running from his nose.

“That was what you were going to do to me, right?” I asked as I slowly dragged the knife from the base of his chin down his neck, watching the sharp blade redden the skin it threatened to puncture with just the flick of my wrist. “But I’m the psycho.” I let out a forced laugh, bringing the knife through the part in his collar and slicing the button from its mooring.

“Fuck you,” he forced out, more bloodied spittle landing on my chest.

I smirked and pressed the tip of the blade a little harder to his skin, continuing its path through the buttons until the front of his shirt gaped open.

“Now, tell me what happened to Mara.”

“Fuck. You.” He managed one more show of bravado until I let the knife slice a smooth cut down the center of his chest. Nothing deep. Just enough to draw blood…and make him think twice about not answering me again.

“Where is she?” I demanded low, finding his wild, strained eyes as he battled the pain.

“I don’t know.”

I pressed the edge of the knife to the top of the first cut and then swooped it out and back in a curve, turning the single line into the letter P.

“Ahhhh, fuck ,” he groaned and then rambled quickly. “I don’t fucking know where she is. I fucking swear. But I know she’s with him.”

“Who’s him?”

“I don’t know—” He broke off in another cry as I sliced another single line into his chest.

“You better start knowing something, Jack, or you’re going to run out of skin to cut.”

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he repeated, and I gave the piece of shit a moment to collect himself. “I don’t know who he is. All I know is one night, Mara and I were at the club. I was making my rounds, and some guy came up to me, asking about Mara. Gave me a card for a cam site and said she could make good money on it.”

Jesus, Mara.

“So, I set her up on it.”

“And she agreed?” My voice felt brittle—as brittle as the restraint holding the knife back from breaking into another patch of his sweat-drenched skin.

His mouth opened and shut. “I made her comfortable.”

Made her.

“You drugged her.” It wasn’t a question as I let the knife puncture a new wound in his chest.

“What are you doing?” he cried out as I moved the blade in a new curve right over where a normal person had a heart. But Jack Kang wasn’t a person. He was a fucking pig. “I’m telling you the fucking truth!”

“Which is why you’re lucky I’m only cutting skin and not your heart from your chest,” I seethed.

“I got her comfortable, and she didn’t argue!” Blood ran down the blade and onto the decorative handle, making my hands slick where I held it. “She filmed a few things before the guy approached me again. He gave me a stack of cards and said I’d get paid for every girl I referred to the site. And then he said there was a client who wanted to meet Mara.”

“Fuck.” This time, the curse left my lips. “ You brought him to her?”

“No—ahh!” He was crying now as I cut him, crying and rambling through the rest of what he knew, but I couldn’t stop. My mind started to spiral—thinking of Mara and some creep. Thinking of Mom and Randy. Remembering what Randy had done to me.

“What. Happened?” The knife curved deeper, the blood pooling at its tip like tears spilling for his evil.

“I brought her here,” he hissed, breaths pumping through his lips like he was in labor. Maybe that was how painful the truth was for him—having to face the fucked-up thing he’d done. “He said to bring her to the club. So I did. I brought her here. They met. And that was it.”

“What do you mean that was it?” I twisted the knife and changed its trajectory.“So you brought her here and she disappeared?”

He let out a sound of pain that tipped between moan and groan.“She went with him!” Spit and blood flew from his lips. “I thought he offered her more money or…something…because he found me later and said that he was taking care of Mara from now on. Like a fuckin’ sugar daddy or ahh?—”

Legal prey.

“You. Left. Her.” I was seeing red. Sparkling, hot red. Fury raged inside me like a thunderstorm booming so loud, I swore I actually heard the grumbling thunder and the way it shook the ground.

I didn’t care what was said in anger. Mara was my family—more family than my absent father. More family than my distant mother. I wasn’t going to give up on the only person I had left to love.

“And you don’t know his name?”

“No—fucking, no,” he whimpered like a pig at the slaughter. And he should be, for what he did. “The way he dressed…acted…he was ordering some of the club security around. I wasn’t going to ask for a name.”

“He was Wah Ching?” And you let Mara go with him? I seethed. Of course he did. This fucker would do anything to get into their proverbial club.

“He ordered them around. That’s all I know.”

Shit. Taking on a wannabe thug like Jack was one thing, but upper-level Chinese organized crime? One step at a time, Sutton.

“Do you have one of the cards?”

Jack blinked at me, his eyes foggy as he processed the question through the pain.

“The business cards for the website. You said the man gave you a stack of them.”

The light bulb went off, and Jack gave me a slight nod.

“Give it to me.”

Muttering a curse, he lowered his blood-soaked hand from his broken nose and reached into his pocket, pulling out a gray business card. I pinned him a little harder with the knife as I switched my hands on the hilt so I could take the card, his guilty fingerprints now stamped over the information.

Wild Side.

And there was an invitation code on the back, so this wasn’t the run-of-the-mill cam site. My teeth locked together. What the fuck are you involved in, Mara?

“I hope they fucking kill you for this.”

I chuckled. “They can try.” I had uncommon skills for a twenty-one-year-old, but I wasn’t an idiot. If Mara was taken by the Wah Ching, that was a dangerous world to tackle on my own, but I wasn’t going to let Jack see my fear.

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

“ Sutton!” a voice boomed down the alleyway.

My head snapped to the side, and I stilled, my show of strength faltering when I saw him. What the fuck was he doing here?

Tynan stalked down the alleyway like a leather-clad Zeus descending from Olympus, his big body seeming to crack the asphalt even more ruinously with each heavy step. His arms hung at his sides, the leather cut of his jacket straining at the seams over his terrifying muscles.

I didn’t remember him looking this massive last night when he stood in the kitchen cooking up his salmon. But now…aman had no right to look as good as he did, all thunder and fury. And then I heard it—the rumble I’d thought was thunder; it was Tynan’s dark gray Harley parked at the end of the alley.

“Hey, man, you have to help me! Please. She’s fucking psychotic. Please,” Jack called out in a panic. No wonder the Wah Ching didn’t want him.

I snapped my eyes back to Tynan, landing on the unfiltered rage in his eyes.He was furious, and I shouldn’t care. This wasn’t his business—his fight. Yet I couldn’t stop myself from shaking.

I shouldn’t be trembling. I hadn’t trembled when Jack tried to assault me. Nor when I assaulted him. But now…every single thud of Tynan’s footfalls sent a quake through me so deep, I felt the shuddering all the way in my bones.

“Step away from him,” he ordered, and even without raising his weapon, I felt compelled to obey.

The wise warrior avoids battle ? —

I’d add a modern clarification to the ancient wisdom— especially when you’ve brought a knife to a gunfight.

I dropped my arm and stepped away from Jack, who sagged against the wall in relief. I pretended to adjust my jacket and quickly slipped the business card into an inside pocket.

“What the…” Jack choked and then glared at me. “What the fuck did you do to me?”

I stared flatly at him, taking in the full sight of his hand staked to the wall and the word “ PIG” carved into his chest, and then slowly smiled. Lisbeth Salander would approve.

“The next time you give out one of those cards, I’ll tattoo the word on your fucking forehead,” I warned low just before Tynan reached me, the size of him completely filling every square inch of my gaze.

Maybe I was a psycho…or maybe that was just what they called women who fought back.