Chapter One
Fifteen Years Ago
Awesome. Another back alley.
There were only a handful of activities that regularly occurred in the darkened backstreets of downtown DC and none of them were appropriate for a ten-year-old girl.
I knew that well, since I had witnessed my fair share of seedy behavior from this city. But that had never stopped my pops from dragging me along with him to all of his work dealings.
“Keep up, Caro,” he snapped when his crew came into sight.
The morning sun didn’t reach this alley, and the cool air pulled the hair to standing on my bare arms. “I should be in school, Dad. I have a science test today.”
He glanced quickly over his shoulder at me, his expression only marginally apologetic. “I called them this morning. Told them you had strep.”
Anger burned beneath my skin, turning my face red with frustrated emotion. I ducked my head and let my short bob fall over my cheeks.
“Relax. It’s a free day off school. You should be thanking me. When I was a kid I would have killed for my old man to call in for me. The test’ll be there tomorrow.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t care that I’m not there. I don’t want to be here.”
He grunted. “Yeah? Then you shouldn’t be so good at what you do.”
I stopped walking and ground to a halt. He was blaming this on me? Me? I didn’t even know what to say. The words and arguments and furious thoughts I wanted to throw at him tangled on my dry tongue, a retort-worthy traffic jam.
Sensing that I wasn’t following him, he turned around and walked the few steps back to me. He shot a glance to the cluster of men hovering between a rusted metal door and an oozing dumpster.
“Come on, Caro, I’m just kidding,” he insisted, even though we both knew he was not. “This is a favor to Roman, all right? There’s this truck. The cargo is… worth our time, yeah?”
I lifted my chin defiantly. “I thought you didn’t do this stuff anymore. I thought you got promoted.”
His bulbous nose turned red. “I did get promoted. This is a one-time thing. They need me. And I need you.”
My dad, Leon Valero, had recently been bumped up from high level lackey to bookie. He worked for brothers that ran an organized crime syndicate in the underbelly of Washington, DC. They weren’t the biggest outfit or the most infamous, but over the years they’d developed a reputation that held weight.
My dad had worked for them way longer than I had been alive. Bookie was supposed to be a better job than whatever he was doing before. Bookmaker meant more respect in the organization, a bigger cut of the paycheck. He took bets on anything you could take bets on and paid out winners and beat the crap out of you if you couldn’t settle your debt.
This promotion was supposed to mean more stability for me. He wouldn’t be gone as much. He’d make more money. He wouldn’t need me for jobs anymore.
Promises, promises.
“Look,” Dad coaxed. “Frankie’s here.”
I glared over at the only other girl my age I was allowed to play with. Her long hair was somehow darker than mine, and I had always considered mine black. Hers was more like ink. Or oil. Today she hid it beneath a hat. “That’s ‘cause Frankie will do whatever it takes to prove she’s not a princess.”
My dad ignored my comment. He knew I was right. But the problem was she was a princess. At least as far as the two of us were concerned.
“We need you, Caro.” His voice dropped when he continued. “Frankie and Gus ain’t got half the set of balls you do. This can’t happen without you.”
I rolled my eyes and turned to glare at the ivy clustered brick wall that lined the alley but something else captured my attention instead. Not really something, but someone. Someone new.
I could recognize all the usual players. They were guys my dad and his bosses trusted. Most of them were grown-ups that I was supposed to call uncle. As if making them part of our already dysfunctional family somehow made them better humans. They were low-level goons at best—murderers, criminals and drug dealers at worst. But I went along with the lie. Uncle Brick. Uncle Vinny. Uncle Fat Jack. My life was a cautionary tale.
Then there were the kids. Frankie was the only other girl I really knew. There were girls at school, but none of them paid attention to me. I was the poor, tragic outcast that cut her hair short because she didn’t have a mom around to teach her how to braid it or hell, put it in something as simple as a ponytail. Frankie and I were close for that reason. It wasn’t easy being raised by this pack of animals. But she didn’t go to my school. She went to some swanky private school that made her wear skirts and knee-high socks every day. As the orphan niece of the three brothers that ran the syndicate, she was basically royalty as far as I was concerned, and way higher up on the food chain.
Then there were Atticus and Augustus—known as Gus—brothers and sons of the derzhatel obschaka, the bookkeeper, Ozzie Usenko. He held one of the highest positions in the bratva. Even though the brothers weren’t much older than me, they were already in training to be regular, paid members of the crew.
Especially Atticus, even though he’d just turned sixteen. He was born for the life. I saw the hunger in his eyes every time we were allowed to be part of a job. He wanted this. He wanted to be one of the soldiers.
Gus wasn’t as serious about it. He wasn’t really serious about anything. Atticus was scary and intense and so devoted to the brothers. Gus just didn’t want the shit beat out of him by his dad should he choose not to participate.
It was a worthy pursuit. His dad was mean as hell.
The syndicate didn’t enlist kids to help with big jobs often. It was usually just me or the brothers. There was less at stake if they lost one of us. It sounded harsh, but I knew it to be true. And I was the most expendable of them all. I was a minor and the daughter of a bookie, a position easily replaceable and not all that important. Which was why I made it a point to never get pinched. They might not care what happened to me, but I did.
The brothers that ran the syndicate would always protect Frankie—the only surviving child of their beloved dead sister. The only reason she was allowed to go along for the ride was because nobody wanted to tell her no. Although they were going to have to start soon. Frankie hated her uncles. She blamed them for the death of her parents. Her mom was killed by soldiers from the Italian family competing for the same foothold the pakhan, her brothers, also known as the bosses, were. And her dad, who happened to be Italian, died at their hands in retaliation. Frankie only did this shit to punish her uncles.
The kid against the wall was probably Gus’s age. Although it was hard to tell. Despite his height, he was half-starved and too skinny. His gangly arms and legs looked like I could snap them in half if I put enough pressure on them. But then his face looked old. Older than Gus and Atticus, maybe even older than my dad. His eyes were tired and his mouth pulled into a tight frown that was both sad and scary at the same time.
“Who’s that?” I lifted my chin in the direction of the kid.
Dad shook his head. “We need someone skinny for the back end.”
“He’s bratva?”
“Nah, he’s a stray. Jack found him digging through a dumpster and offered him a meal for his help.”
I looked at my Uncle Jack who happened to be the size of a dumpster and wouldn’t know the first thing about living on the streets and starving. Not that I did either. For all of Dad’s shortcomings, he had at least always made sure we had a place to stay and food to eat.
But this kid screamed street urchin. He had that cagey look about him that said way more about his current lifestyle than he wanted anyone to see. I would have bet anything that a hot meal had sounded like winning the lottery. I could imagine Uncle Jack’s promises of low risk for a big reward.
Of course the kid would say yes.
The problem was, I knew my Uncle Jack and there was no way he was going to waste another second on this kid once the job was done. Unless it was to tie up loose ends, which meant the kid would disappear.
Forever.
My stomach turned uneasily. “The Smithsonian,” I looked my father in the eye. “If I help you, you take me to the Smithsonian.”
“Again?” I stared him down. He rolled his eyes. “Is that it?”
“And I want to bring Frankie.”
His frown turned into a grimace. “Yeah, well we’ll see what Roman has to say about that.”
Her oldest uncle would say yes. After I gave Frankie the opportunity to spend the day with me and my dad, she wouldn’t care where we were going. And Roman wouldn’t be able to tell her no. He never could.
“So you’re in?”
It pained me to agree to today’s activities, but I did. I didn’t really have a choice anyway. “What’s the job?”
“The Screaming Eagle,” he explained. “The mark is that electronics store next to the 7-Eleven. They got a big truck of TVs coming in.”
My lips parted and I breathed a slow, steady exhale of relief. As far as jobs went, the Screaming Eagle was low risk, little more than normal kid stuff. The most danger I would see was having my ass chewed by the electronics store manager.
But I couldn’t let my dad know that. If he even got a whiff of my relief, he wouldn’t hesitate to force me into more if this crap.
Instead I asked, “It takes all of us to pull off The Screaming Eagle?”
He made a sound in the back of his throat. “Lest I insult your ego, it will only be you, Gus and Frankie on the inside. Atticus is here to drive the truck.”
“And the new kid?”
Dad glanced at him one more time. “Don’t worry about the new kid.”
I looked at Frankie so I could check out the new kid one more time without being noticed. If Dad didn’t want me to worry about him, the kid must have a super bad part today. Or for after the robbery.
Leon was many things, but he always shot shit straight with me.
The kid in question stared down at his sneakers that were full of holes. His dark hair was long and shaggy over his ears, and his skin had that dull quality that happened when you didn’t eat healthy food. He’d shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, but his thumbs stuck out revealing dirty fingernails and grimy fingers.
“What’s the hold up, Valero?” Vinnie called from the back of the alley.
My dad didn’t even spare him a glance, just shouted over his shoulder. “Just a minute.” He turned to face me. “I’ll let you know when we’re ready to go. You good with everything else?”
I wasn’t good with any of it, but I nodded anyway.
Dad left me to go talk to the guys. To be honest, what I did was a small part of the job. I created a distraction by causing a scene—classic misdirection. While everyone’s eyes were on me, the rest of the guys slipped inside and took what they wanted.
It sounded simple. But it wasn’t. There was finesse to it, skill. Frankie and Gus could make a lot of noise, but rarely could they capture an entire store’s attention for the necessary amount of time. The real reason Dad kept me out of school today was because I was the best damn liar he’d ever met.
Frankie and Gus started walking over to me. Frankie looked pissed as usual and Gus looked like he could care less. Like usual. But my eyes were on the new kid.
My dad’s words bounced around my head like a pinball in one of those trucker games at the arcade. He’d said not to worry about the new kid.
Yeah, right.
His eyes darted around the alley as I approached him, like he was trying to look at anything but me. He bounced up and down on his heels, his elbows locked at his side. He was getting ready to run.
Seeing his nerves made me slow my approach. I’d met plenty of street kids over the years. The syndicate always seemed to have low risk, odd jobs for them that paid in hot meals or a ride somewhere. The kids got something out of it and the syndicate got practically free labor from minors that didn’t know anything about the organization. It was a win for everybody but the FBI who would rather arrest someone integral to the brotherhood, someone that they could prosecute. As long as they were low level jobs, I never worried about what happened to the kids. But this was different.
Pulling one into an actual con meant an extra witness, someone that hadn’t pledged their loyalty to the crew.
I smelled him before I reached him and my heart kicked in my chest. He was like a stray puppy. With a broken leg. And someone had just cut off his tail, stolen his bone and then dragged him through the sewer.
Seriously, what was that smell?
“Hey,” I called out softly, trying not to spook him. “I’m Caroline.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “Uh, hey.”
He looked away again, dismissing me. I recognized the look. I was dismissed a lot around my dad’s associates. Nobody thought much of the little girl that was always tagging along with her part-time loser of a dad. Nobody noticed me when they talked business in hushed tones or passed money back and forth in dimly lit bars that smelled like piss and old men. I was just the sometimes useful child of a bookie.
But it irked me that this homeless kid treated me the same way.
At least I had showered this morning.
“I’ve never seen you around before,” I pushed, my voice harder, my body stiffer.
He tipped his head back and looked at the narrow strip of sky visible between the two tall buildings surrounding us. “Huh.”
He kept his mouth open and I got a good look at his teeth. He had all of them that I could see, which was surprising. And even more confusing was that they were mostly white. He smelled bad, but with teeth like that, he couldn’t have been homeless for too long.
“Do you have a name?”
“No.”
I resisted the urge to growl. “If we’re going to work together, I should know your name.”
His head dropped and he finally met my eyes. Bright, deep, impossibly blue. I wasn’t prepared for eyes like that. Against his dirty face, they shined like lasers. “We’re not working together. I’m doing something different.”
My curiosity jumped inside me, like bubbles fizzing in a Coke. “What are you doing?”
His gaze shifted to Jack and Vinnie. “Something different.”
I had decided to kick him in the shin when Frankie and Gus stepped up next to us. Irritation buzzed beneath my skin. I liked Frankie. I did. But she was so pretty. And now the new kid would only pay attention to her and I would never figure out what his role was.
Or what his name was.
“Who’s your new friend, Caro?” Gus asked, all wide smiles and happy energy.
Frankie adjusted her worn baseball cap. “New recruit?”
The kid quickly shook his head. “Nah. This is a one-time thing.”
The three of us exchanged a look. We’d heard that before. Not with kids our age, but men that got sucked into the life. Everyone said that. The job, whatever the job was, was always a one-time thing. Nobody set out to live a life of crime. It was something you fell into ass-backward and then spent the rest of your life trying to figure out how to crawl your way out.
Or you just succumbed.
Either way, it always started out as a one-time-only promise.
“You hungry?” I guessed.
His too-bright gaze cut to mine. “Fucking starving.”
I backed up another step at his harsh language. It wasn’t the words that surprised me, it was how he said it. The tone that punched through the air and hit my cheek with a bruising blow.
This kid was desperate. And that made him something more than pathetic or worrisome. It made him feral. Predatory.
He wasn’t here because he wanted to be, but because he had to do something to survive. And for some stupid reason, that made me want to help him.
I had a tiny, beat up little black kitten in the corner of my bedroom for the very same reason.
“Enough with the cats, Caro,” my dad had groaned last week when I brought the battered thing home. “You can’t save all the stray cats in DC. You know that, right?”
Maybe Dad was right about the cats, but I could save this kid.
“What’s your name?” I asked him bluntly.
He glared at me until I wanted to look away, until I wanted to let him win this staring contest and pretend like I hadn’t said anything. “Sayer,” he finally admitted. “Sayer Wesley.”
“Sayer Wesley,” I repeated as if I couldn’t help myself. The words whooshed out of me on a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding. It was probably a fake name, but it sounded so real. So right. Like the first real piece of truth I’d ever heard.
His expression turned into a sneer, “That’s right, Caroline. Got a problem with my name?”
I felt Gus and Frankie look at me, their eyes curious and accusing. Nobody called me Caroline. Not even my dad. I was always Caro. But I had introduced myself to this kid as Caroline.
Why had I done that?
Feeling weird and off my game and completely unnerved by this street kid, I rolled my eyes like it wasn’t a big deal. “Frankie, give Sayer your hat.”
She tugged it down over her eyes. “No.”
Shooting her a frustrated scowl, I jerked my chin at Sayer Wesley. “He’s not doing what we’re doing, and there are cameras all over those streets. Let him protect his face at least.”
She sucked in her bottom lip and contemplated my suggestion. Turning to him, she asked, “What are they paying you?”
He lifted one shoulder, his jaw ticking near his ear. “Food. Maybe a place to stay tonight.”
The three of us shared another look.
“Caro, Frankie, let’s go!” my dad shouted from across the alley.
“Give him your hat, Frankie,” I hissed. “At least give him a chance to get away from the cops.”
Sayer’s body had tensed at my words, keen awareness rocking through him and transforming his face from desperate to terrified.
Someone else shouted at us to hurry up. Frankie ripped off her hat, her black curls cascading down her back like a waterfall. I watched Sayer’s expression, waiting for him to be momentarily mesmerized, but his expression stayed the same. He had a good poker face. I could give him that.
She tossed the hat at him. He caught it and slammed it on, pulling it low on his forehead.
“Let’s go,” Gus suggested. “It’s not worth pissing them off.”
Frankie and Gus turned toward my dad and the rest of the crew, stalking off down the alley already playing the part of obnoxious kids without supervision.
Sayer started to walk after them, but I grabbed his forearm, unwilling to let him enter into this unprepared. “Make them realize you’re valuable,” I told him quickly.
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything.
Not knowing if he got it or not, I went on. “If you want food or a place to stay you have to earn it. And if you don’t, they’ll let you get caught.” I glanced over my shoulder toward my dad and his associates. “Or worse.”
When I turned back to Sayer, those freaky blue eyes were glued to me again. “Why are you telling me this?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really have an answer. “You’d do the same for me.”
His head tilted. “No, I wouldn’t.”
His honesty made me smirk. “Now you will.” I leaned in, dropping my voice to a whisper. “You owe me a favor.”
His eyes widened and his lips pressed into a straight line. I was too pleased with myself not to smile, so I quickly turned around and hurried to catch up with my friends.
“Let’s go, kid!” Jack shouted after Sayer. He stepped forward, out of the alley and into the confidence game that would irrevocably change his life. The confidence game that would change us both forever.
I didn’t know what happened to Sayer until later that night. Frankie, Gus and I did our thing. We walked into the electronic store and cased the joint for an hour. We never intended to steal anything, but we acted suspicious as hell until all of the store employees had their eyes on us. Just when the manager made a beeline over to kick us out, I pulled out pockets full of crumpled one dollar bills and with tears in my eyes, asked what I could buy my dad for his birthday.
He took me over to a display of watches and feeling sufficiently guilty, he gave me all his attention. Frankie and Gus crowded around when he bent over to pick one up for me and I pickpocketed his wallet just for fun.
I had a bad habit of taking something for myself whenever I was on a job. Frankie called them my trophies. But it wasn’t like I wanted to remember the job or show off or anything. It was more like insurance or collateral. I needed to start saving for the day my dad stopped taking care of me or got himself killed.
I paid for a cheap watch with a black cuff and made sure to sniffle in gratitude at the counter. Frankie, Gus and I left the store. The alarm rang just as we stepped on the sidewalk.
A delivery truck driver came sprinting around the corner, shouting after his truck that was speeding off down the street, already lost in traffic.
After driving another block, the truck would pull into a parking garage that happened to have no working security cameras, where it would quickly be unloaded into another truck and abandoned for the feds to find.
Sirens blared through the afternoon bustle of downtown DC and two cop cars screeched to a halt in front of us. Frankie, Gus and I stared at the entire scene with wide-eyed fascination—like ten-year-old kids were supposed to do. We moved out of the way when asked, but hung around while the cops took statements and talked to witnesses and tried to figure out what had happened.
Turns out the security cameras had been turned off during the heist. And the delivery driver had been somehow locked in the dumpster behind the building. Nobody saw the thief or realized anything was wrong until the driver had been able to get free of his trash prison. Nobody could even identify the driver since it hadn’t seemed that anything was amiss until after the truck was gone.
The manager of the store was dumbfounded. The driver understandably furious. And the cops totally befuddled.
They even asked us if we had seen anything. To which we replied, “No, officer, we were just buying a birthday present for my dad.”
“Why don’t you get on home then,” they suggested. “You don’t need to be hanging around a crime scene.”
We nodded solemnly and headed off down the street. Our job was over so we had the rest of the day to kill. We decided to grab pizza at our favorite place.
Later that night, my dad would tell me what a great job I did and hand me fifty bucks for being such a good girl. I would ask him how much his cut was and he would smile slyly at me and say, “Don’t you worry about it, baby girl. Just know that we don’t need to worry about anything for a while.”
That was always his answer. He was obsessed with this idea of not worrying about anything.
The irony was that because of his job, I worried about everything all the time.
But we didn’t get caught today. So at least there was that.
And neither did Sayer Wesley.
I wouldn’t know what happened to him for a couple of months, but I would think of him every day until then.