Prologue
Raven
I never had the childhood like most girls do—or boys for that matter—the girls with fairy tales in their eyes and hopes in their dreams. It wasn’t for me. I had a dad who was a drunk who liked to use his fists, and a junkie for a mom. Dad did us a favor when he left. I guess when you’re seven years old, you see more, you hear more, and you definitely do more than you ever should. My dad didn’t do much in the way of being a parent. Him leaving was the best gift he ever gave us. Though I’m not sure leaving a child with a junkie for a mom is the best thing. We made do, and at least this way, he wasn’t using his fists on her or slapping me when I tried to get between them. That wasn’t easy to explain to the teachers at school, I somehow managed well with a little help from my friend, Selena.
That’s neither here nor there, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. At least that’s what I told myself growing up. I dealt with my mother the best I knew how. If that meant putting her to bed at night, making sure she ate, or even shoving my fingers down her throat to induce vomiting after she took one too many prescription drugs that weren’t hers to begin with, that’s what I did. My one saving grace was always Selena and her parents. If things were too bad, if the guys coming around our beat-up old single wide trailer, I ran like the flames of hell were on my heels for their house. Always knowing that I’d have a place to stay.
I guess that’s why my independence streak is a mile wide. Even though there was always a place with the Perez family, my feet would take me back home, scared to leave my mother to die a lonely death. It was that thought of her dying a horrible death with no one there, probably drowning in her own sickness.
Now that I’m in my twenties, I realize it should have never been my responsibility, now that my life is finally put together—my own doing, starting to work a job at Selena’s family restaurant at the age of fifteen, washing dishes until they could legally pay me, going to school, saving everything I had to leave that rundown trailer was my only goal outside of graduating high school. One day, I arrived home, taking it all in. The once blue siding was chipping away in certain areas, not to mention the siding that was missing in other places. I almost broke my neck on the second step caving in as I stepped on it, barely able to catch myself on the rickety railing. It was in a rundown place where other families could actually afford the rent. I still have no idea how my mother managed to even keep a roof over our heads, let alone the electricity on. I take that back. I didn’t want to know what she was doing. As long as I had a place to lay my head down at night, with a lock on my door, that was the only thing I cared about. It’s a wonder the place wasn’t demolished. It was the inside that had me stopping, my key still hanging in the lock, that jangles of keychains moving from the way the door always shook was the only sound that greeted me. But nothing was the same. On my eighteenth birthday, just months away from graduating in the top five percent of my class, everything changed in a heartbeat. There was nothing left—no furniture, my mother’s belongings were gone, there wasn’t even a note.
I put on my big girl panties, went to my room, packed my bags, and moved in with Selena and her family to finish out my high school career. That’s exactly what I did, even getting a few scholarships and grants. Too bad it wasn’t enough to cover my first year, let alone the four years I needed to complete my degree.
That leads me to the here and now at the ripe age of twenty-two, wanting to go further than those four years that would guarantee me a cushy job. I wanted to piss excellence and rank higher than the jerk wad jocks in my college classes thinking their shit didn’t stink. It did, by the way. I unfortunately had to smell them a time or two. Working in an elite gentlemen’s strip club, dancing my ass off Thursdays through Saturdays to make the money I need to succeed were my two goals in life right now.
Too bad a certain man in a leather vest, worn jeans, scruffy beard, tattoos from his wrists until they disappeared underneath his white cotton shirt, peeking out on his neck, walked into Diamond’s in the Sky. I almost stopped in the middle of my dance, something that has never, and I mean never, happened before. It didn’t help that he took a seat right in front of me. This man is the epitome of tall, dark, dangerous, and he’s staring at me like I’m his last meal while he’s on death row.