The man in charge watched the whole thing go down. Instead of asking me for money to stay in his city, he offered me papers that were fake but good enough to make me legalish. He asked me if I could get my hands on some armor-piercing rounds. I said yes to both the papers and the ammo, and my plan for laying low swelled up like a balloon and popped right over my head. I would never be able to run from who I was, or what I was, so I figured I might as well make the most of it in this place that was eager to embrace it. This place was a different kind of war zone, where every man seemed to be fighting for himself. It was familiar enough that I knew I could thrive here, could find a place where I fit. I could absolutely work with what made the Point tick, and while here, I could watch the girl. I could wait for her while she realized this was hell on earth—and when you make your home in hell, you want to have the devil in your corner.
I could fight for her even if she thought I was a monster. After all, I already knew all about chasing a lost cause.
Epigraph
The devil’s voice is sweet.
—Stephen King
Chapter 1
Keelyn
Maybe if I hadn’t spent the last six months slinging pancakes and greasy hash to hungover hipsters and avoiding the too-curious eyes of the cops who liked to hit up the diner for early-morning breakfast, I would have noticed the ominous shift in the air.
Before I came to Denver six months ago, my senses had been honed to pick up on the slightest threat. Before, anything that might be dangerous, that might put me in peril, had made my skin tingle, made everything inside of me vibrate with awareness. Now I had settled into a simple, dreary rhythm. Every day was the same as the one before it and there was no outside threat constantly hounding me, hunting me, haunting me. I let my guard down. I had gone soft, and as a result the biggest danger of them all managed to slip into my new normal without giving any kind of hint he was there.
My nonslip shoes—that were probably the ugliest things ever made but absolutely necessary considering the greasy food the tiny kitchen pumped out—squeaked on the laminate floor as I made my way over to the lone patron who had taken the last available seat in my section. The massive plastic menu completely covered his face, but the Rolex on his wrist and the perfect cut of his suit jacket let me know he wasn’t my typical kind of customer. There wasn’t a flannel shirt or police blues in sight, and as I got closer, a whiff of something exotic and familiar engulfed my senses and stopped me in my tracks. Of all the things I had left behind, he was the one I had tried hardest to forget.
The tingling across my skin spread. My tummy tightened. Blood rushed loudly between my ears. My shaking fingers curled around the pen in my hand like it was a weapon. Before I could pull it together and walk away, the menu lowered and I was pinned to the spot, immobilized by eyes the color of spiced rum.
They were wicked eyes. Eyes that saw far too much and gave nothing away. Eyes I daydreamed about. Eyes that caused me to wake up in a cold sweat. Eyes that turned me inside out and shook me up as they made a slow perusal from the top of my head to the tips of my god-awful shoes, returning to my face and staying there as I struggled to keep my shit together.
He slowly put the menu down on the cracked tabletop and leaned back in the booth. He was strikingly out of place here and I absolutely hated how that sexy twist of his mouth, a mouth that I dreamed about almost every night, made my traitorous heart flutter and my pulse kick.
I was also strikingly out of place here, but I’d learned to fake it. He, obviously, never bothered to fake anything. He wasn’t a man with virtuous intentions and he never pretended to be.
Gone were the mile-high stilettos that I always wore. In their place I now donned work shoes that prevented me from falling on my ass as I ran food and dirty dishes to and from the kitchen. I was hiding in plain sight, knowing that the last place on earth anyone who might come looking for me would check out would be this greasy spoon. This was the opposite of me and the life I had always lived, so even though I could afford better, craved more, this was where I needed to be . . . until he showed up.
Gone was the long, flowing hair dyed the perfect shade of auburn and styled in a way meant to give men dirty ideas. In its place was a boring, brown bob that hit my chin. There was hardly enough hair left on my head to inspire men to do anything other than feel sorry for me. Gone were the short skirts that left nothing to the imagination, and the shirts cut down to my navel so that the boobs I paid a small fortune for were on obvious and prominent display. Today I wore faded skinny jeans with a hole in the knee and a plain black T-shirt that covered those spectacular boobs. I hadn’t put on a full face of makeup in over six months, and since I was no longer dancing hours upon hours a night, I had put on some weight. I would never pass for a plain Jane, but I was close. Average was probably the first thing that came to mind when strangers laid eyes on me, especially if they didn’t bother to look closely. I definitely wasn’t the same girl that had left this man, and the world he not only came from, but ruled.
Those predatory eyes rolled over me again, and his lips twitched in amusement when they landed back on my ugly footwear. “Nice shoes, Key.”
My fingers tightened instinctively on the pen I was clutching, and I heard the plastic crack under the pressure. I resisted the urge to shift in said ugly-ass shoes, and instead narrowed my eyes at him. Weakness around a killer should never be shown, and I knew this particular predator would eat me alive if he got even the slightest chance. He’d been hungry for a taste since the first day I met him, and while I had always been tempted to feed the beast, fear of losing more than my fingers to those vicious jaws always kept me from offering up myself on a platter. The only thing I ever wanted was to be my own person, to thrive and be independent, making my own rules and answering to no one. The only thing Nassir Gates wanted was for me to be his.
“What are you doing here, Nassir?”
Nassir Gates, half man and half monster. He was lethal and toxic, keeping all that sinister beauty covered up in a ridiculously expensive suit that made him look elegant and falsely civilized. To the untrained eye, Nassir was an outrageously handsome man that looked like he was on his way to a business meeting, but if you had spent any time on the streets, if you were familiar with life in the gutter, there was no missing who he really was, what he was. The top of the food chain. If you knew about what it took to make it where I came from, you could look at Nassir and see that he not only thrived in chaos, but was comfortable there. He even managed to make it look good.