The Initiation (Darkness Within Duet 1)

“We need to make amends for sending his precious lawyer to the city?” Axel asked.

“Nope. You heard anything from your dad?”

“My sire doesn’t even want me in the house tonight,” Axel said. “There’s an auction going on.” He twisted the cap off a bottle of beer.

Draven snagged one, doing the same.

“What kind of auction?” Buck asked.

“The kind that sells women. Young women.”

“Isn’t that a little dangerous? You know, doing it at the house?”

“Why? It’s not like cops give a shit about that. Most of the women have been walking around the place naked. Whenever Dad says drop and service, they do. They’re trained slaves. It’s what they’ve been working on all summer. Any that try to escape or make waves, end up dead, or hurt in such a way that they don’t fight back.” Axel shrugged.

Axel lived in the biggest house of Stonewell. If Draven’s dad was the muscle, Axel’s owned all of it. The town, the land, the people, all of it.

Draven rarely got the chance to see Axel’s dad as he was always making deals, always advancing, always building.

He was a deadly son of a bitch that you didn’t cross. One day Axel would own all of that. They would all own what they’d been born into. Apart from Buck and Jett. They were going to make them kings just like them.

“Dad doesn’t like me being there when the shit hits the fan. There’s a lot of perverts, and I’m a pretty boy. He doesn’t want to start a war when he refuses to sell his son’s ass to a prospective buyer, and I do not want to know if I have a price tag.” Axel shrugged. “This place is nice.”

“Thanks,” Harper said, joining them. “Hannah did everything from what I recall.” She stared at all the artwork, the furniture with disdain.

He smirked. The disdain was a good look on her. It really brought out the ice within her eyes.

“In that case.” Jett pierced the cushion beside him and drew the blade up.

“What are you doing? You can’t do that?”

“Why not?” Jett asked. “It’s not your money, and Hannah rode your dad’s dick when he should have been at home with you and your mom.”

He kept on stabbing the blade right in. Then Jett stood up and walked toward her. “Give it a try.”

Draven watched as Jett handed her the knife.

She shook her head and held the knife as far away from her own body as was physically possible. “I can’t do this. I don’t … no.”

“You want to, Harper. The good girl inside you is fighting. What do you think when you see Hannah?”

Silence met Jett’s words.

Draven sat and watched her. She’d tucked her raven hair behind her ears. The clothes she wore clung to every curve and served to enhance her figure. They were not the usual baggy clothes that hid everything from sight.

“I hate her,” Harper said. “I hate her smile and the fact she thinks I want to go on a diet. How she controls everything and I can’t even complain to my dad because he believes I’m being difficult on purpose.”

“Then stab that perfection,” he said.

She stood over one of the cushions, and he watched as she slowly placed the tip of the knife against the pillow.

She held herself still.

He waited. Sipping at his beer, he watched her. The good girl, fighting with the one in pain. The one that had seen her mother.

“What do you see when you think of your mother?” Draven asked, invading the moment.

Harper turned toward him, the ice in her eyes shining right back at him.

She was breathing heavily, her tits pressing against the band of her shirt that seemed to enhance her cleavage.

“Blood. I think of blood.”

“She killed herself.”

“I don’t even know why she did it. Why she picked that day. What had happened for her to give up?” She took a look at the pillow. “There was so much blood. It turned the water red. She laid in the bath, naked. The water was so cold. Her lips, blue. She looked … looked so sad even in death. I held her even as I called an ambulance. They took so long.”

He watched as the tears spilled down her cheeks as she told them what happened. There was pain in her voice as she relived that moment.

She lifted up the blade and hit the cushion. She attacked each cushion, stabbing the blade once inside it. When she finished the last cushion, she picked up the lamp on the end table and threw it across the room until it shattered on the floor.

Draven watched her commit destruction, seeing the pain that she’d been hiding. This was just beneath the surface of her, threatening to come out. She needed them, all of them.

She grabbed a picture frame, one of Hannah and Ian’s wedding photos.