The Initiation (Darkness Within Duet 1)

“We’ll send her a little message. She’ll know not to mess with us.”

“Who would mess with us?” Axel said, full of cockiness.

They all knew the answer to that, no one.

Even little miss goody two shoes wouldn’t be listened to. Their families spoke for themselves.

“What business did she have in the woods?” Jett asked.

“I don’t know.” It was the first time Draven had ever seen her in the woods, or anywhere near where they usually hung out.

Leaving the park, he followed in the path she’d gone. He wasn’t following her. Draven happened to live on the same road as her father.

Hands in his jacket, he watched everything. He saw a few curtains twitch in bedrooms as people stared out the window.

Some feared them. Others hated them.

He relished it all.

Stopping a few feet from Harper’s home, he saw her. He paused, as did his friends. Harper wasn’t inside her home though or even within the gates. She stood, hands clenched up at her sides, staring up at the house.

No one spoke.

Jett dropped his knife, the only sound to be made, alerting her to their presence.

Slowly, she turned her head toward them, her blue eyes dropping to the knife before lifting up to look at each of them in turn.

When she stared at him, he saw the pain in her eyes. The intrigue. The questions. She didn’t run away, nor did she look away.

He kept his gaze on her, waiting to see what she’d do.

“Where the hell have you been?” Ian Miller asked. His voice rose to a shout.

Harper finally broke eye contact, and he saw her father step toward her.

“I went out.”

“Don’t even for a second think about being rude. I won’t have it. Not in my house.”

Draven watched as Ian grabbed her arm and began to tug her back into the house. He didn’t like the way her father held her, the firm grip or the anger that seemed to be simmering beneath the surface.

He moved toward the entrance of the house and cleared his voice.

Ian stopped, and Draven stared at his hand. He knew Ian, knew the kind of asshole her father was. After all, Ian was his father’s lawyer. This house had been paid for by most of them. Ian’s wealth came from them.

“Hello, Draven,” Ian said.

He didn’t speak, and Buck sniggered. Axel snorted, and Jett, being Jett, cut a branch off one of the hedges, holding it up to his face.

“You know my daughter, Harper.”

Again, he didn’t speak.

He saw Hannah at the house and Harper’s obvious anger, but she didn’t react. She stayed perfectly still, not saying or doing anything.

“See you around, Harper,” Draven said.

With that, he turned away and made his way down the street to his own home.

Once at the driveway, he saw six cars parked there.

A busy day.

He knew what to expect when he walked in. The signs of a party were clear: his mother drinking straight from the bottle, semi-naked women walking around, and his father with a stripper on his lap.

“There you are, son, come here. Come and play.”

With his friends behind him, he entered his father’s office. This was a normal day for him. His father didn’t give a flying fuck about his marriage, or about anything but his own agenda.

Draven shouldn’t criticize. His mother was a pain in the ass, and they were both toxic together.

“See the tits on this one,” his father said, lifting up the woman’s tits.

Draven waited as he was forced to watch the display, his father groping the girl and her pretending to like it.

Once he’d done his time, he walked down to the basement, where he could hang out with his boys.

His father rarely used the basement to hurt people anymore. There was a time it was a torture chamber, but once the cops came calling a few years ago, he now took all of his serious work out to the warehouse. It saved him from having to cover his tracks.

Dropping down into his seat, he took the beer Axel had gotten for him and thought about Harper.

She’d changed.

No, she hadn’t changed.

There had always been something about her that drew him in, that called to him. Even when they passed in the hallways, he liked the way she looked. She wasn’t like other girls or women. She had curves. Some people called her fat, and in a way, she was.

At eighteen she possessed a decent pair of tits and an ass that wasn’t bought from a cosmetic surgeon.

“What are we going to do about Harper?” Axel said.

“We can’t let that shit slide,” Buck said.

Jett didn’t say anything. He held the knife in his hand, the point resting against his jeans-covered thigh. Sipping his beer, Draven saw the clenched hands, the anger.

“She’s different.”

“I imagine finding your mother dead changes you,” Jett said.

“You got that look,” Axel said.

“What look?” Draven turned to his friend.