Page 4 of Fire Fight

“I’m sorry, Drake.”

Sorry?

I’mfucking appalled.

“I didn’t mean it.”

He straightens and steps away from me, blurring into one with the distant trees and the soggy playing fields.

I feel the splash as liquid douses me.

I hear the flick of a lighter.

My vision sharpens as I blink, frantic, fast as I can. Desperate to see despite the pain.

Drake stands a metre in front of me. Zippo snapped open. Flame steady.

I scream, tugging at my bonds, wrenching at them while the pain explodes in my wrists and shoulders. Planting my feet on the cage for more leverage while he calmly tilts the lighter from side to side, his smirk growing wider as my head bloats to bursting with adrenalised panic.

“Catch,” he says…

And tosses the lighter straight at me.

CHAPTER TWO

One yearlater

CADENCE

I gasp as Arnold navigates his luxurious, late-model Mercedes around the twisty, narrow bend in the hilltop road and his house comes into view. Among the gorgeous properties dotting the summit, it’s easily the most spectacular.

Seaside cottage, he said while collecting us from the hotel room he’d generously financed for the past week. His understated description doesn’t even come close.

The property has a soaring glass frontage that reflects the clouds, tricking my eye into thinking it stretches up forever. The windows are set between shale stacked sides, the rocks adding black, brown, grey, and the pale green of lichen to the spectacle, another mirage as they blend with the tussock coated hills behind.

A mansion. At least. Maybe even an estate.

I guess that’s what being a Fletcher of the owns-half-of-downtown-Christchurch-and-runs-a-Marlborough-Winery-for-fun Fletchers gets you.

Mum reaches back to squeeze my forearm. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

“And then some.”

It eclipses every other house I’ve seen in real life, giving even those on fancy designer shows a run for their money.

To go from the rundown hostel where the raggedy old sofa served as my bed and our dining table besides its primary function—planting our arses on to watch the world’s cheapest TV—to this?

I blink back ecstatic tears, feeling like Cinderella.

Last week, a guy cornered me in the emergency housing stairwell, demanding I prostitute myself for his client list with a generous offer to keep forty percent of what I earned.

The, “No, thanks,” didn’t take.

We spent the nights after huddled together, our few pieces of furniture barricading the door while Mum reached out to every number on her phone. Relief flooded me to the point of tears when she told me Arnold—an old booty call—had offered us a place to stay.

I never imagined anything like this.

My pulse races like my nerves are working hard to find trouble. I used to be understandably wary, but nowadays, I panic atnothing.

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