Page 1 of Twisted (Never After)

Prologue

JULIAN

My mother used to have me pick my own switches. I’d traipse through the small, wooded area at the back of our house and find the smallest branch I could: one that was thick enough to replace the belt but wouldn’t hurt quite as bad.

Then she’d whip me until I bled.

“It will only hurt for a little, piccolo,” she’d always murmur.

Afterward, she’d apologize and take me for gelato.

Dark chocolate raspberry. Her favorite.

Sometimes, I deserved the whippings. I was a boy who rebelled at the idea of following in my father’s footsteps, taking over the dry- cleaning business started from the ground up by my grandparents when they immigrated from Calabria, Italy. Other times, you had to look deeper for the cause.

Any time my father would come home, after being ridiculed and talked down to by the customers he cleaned stains for, he’d beat my mother black and blue. Our walls were thin, and I’d lie awake to the sounds of a broken woman’s whimpers and an angry man’s curses. I’d always know that not long after, she’d come into my room, her midnight-black hair so similar to mine, pulled back as tight as her smile while she passed along the torture.

My family has always been predictable that way— taking power from those too weak to keep it.

Maybe that was why I started sneaking away and watching the hapkido classes that took place at the end of our block. I’d see them train and wonder what it would feel like to be so powerful. To have such control over your opponent that you had no fear of being hurt.

I’d imagine learning how to use the short stick or the staff and beating the hell out of my piece-of- shit father, making sure he could never touch my mother again.

If she found some peace, maybe I could as well.

It will only hurt for a little.

I snap out of the memory, allowing it to fade into the recesses of my mind where I keep it locked up tight and straighten from where I’m leaning against the wall in the dimly lit hidden room of my house. The plastic tarp that I hung earlier from the ceiling covers the floor, creating a cocoon around the man currently bound to the chair in the middle of the space.

His breathing is heavy, the sound accompanied only by the hissing of Isabella, my twenty-three- foot python, as she slithers her way around his feet and up his legs. The second she hits his calves, he jerks, his once perfectly pressed suit soaked through with perspiration.

“Careful,” I tsk. “She likes when you put up a fight. Itexcitesher.”

I rub my palm over my jaw, the three-day stubble rough beneath the pads of my fingers, and then I sigh, reaching into my pocket and gripping my custom- made compact metal staff.

Pulling it out, I press a button on the side, and it elongates until it’s full size, the silver ends shimmering against the black metal. I twirl it in my hand as I step toward him.

“Pl- please,” he begs.

A chuckle escapes my chest as Isabella continues to curl her way around his body.

“Your manners areimpeccable, Samuel. I suppose that’s expected of the son of a wealthy businessman,” I drawl. “But I don’t have any use for them.” My footsteps halt when I stop in front of him, my muscles tight with anticipation. “Do you know why you’re here?”

His brows furrow, small beads of sweat trickling down the sides of his ashen face. “I’m just here for the girl,” he rasps, his bottom lip trembling. “They told me to come. I— ”

“The girl and everything that comes with her aremine,” I say, my eyes flaring.

I bring the staff upward in my grasp, spinning it around sharply, reveling in the fear percolating through his dark eyes.

“Don’t worry.” I grin. “This will only hurt for a little.”

Chapter1

Yasmin

“He doesn’t look sick.”

The words slice through my clothes and prick against my chest. If I weren’t brought up to remain politically shrewd and cordial, I’d snap and say something out of turn like…