Page 66 of Amber Gambler

Too bad Little didn’t get the memo it was time to back off.

Bottom lip trembling, she made fists down at her sides. “But maybe she can?—”

“Keep talking, and I’ll triple your take. You’ve already doubled it disrespecting me in front of our guests.”

The girl, Little, shrank into herself when he started cracking his knuckles and retreated without another peep. The threat was clear. Either she shut her mouth or he shut it for her. And if he laid hands on her in front of me, I wouldn’t let his age stop me from punishing him any more than Little’s age saved her.

“Farah Kent.” Harrow took the opening Little gave us. “Name ring a bell?”

“Lots of girls named Farah out in the world.” He blew smoke rings. “Plenty in Georgia too.”

“I met her spirit on the bridge over Herb River.” I pitched my voice loud enough for the little girl to hear. “She’s dead, but you probably figured that. She’s worried about another girl. Her friend. Audrey Collins.”

“You’re a regular chatterbox, huh?” Ian’s keen gaze bored into me. “You talk to Audrey too?”

Carter exchanged a glance with Harrow. “Are you saying she’s dead?”

“Your friend here saying she’s not?” Ian straightened his legs until his heels dug into the dust. “I’ll do you a favor since you came all the way out here and let you leave without paying a tribute.”

“Kid,” Carter said on a laugh, “I wouldn’t pay you a compliment.”

Provoking Ian would only result in the kids under his thumb suffering for his dinged pride.

“Let’s go.” I lacked the authority to make that call, but Harrow and Carter listened to me. “We’re done.”

The longer we stayed, the more we riled him, the greater the danger for Little and the others.

“Listen to your ghost whisperer,” Ian mocked from his warped and cracking throne.

To prevent any small ears that might be trailing us from overhearing, I waited until we got in the truck to comment.

“Audrey is either dead or she left.” I chewed my bottom lip. “He meant it when he asked about her.”

“That’s the vibe I got too.” Carter pulled out of the driveway. “He’s a cool one, but he’d have to be to keep the others in line. Hard too. He came down on that girl without blinking.”

A doubled fine, even a tripled one, was nothing compared to the punishment she was likely to receive for her insubordination behind closed doors.

Jaw flexing in profile, Harrow asked, “Do you think we should go back for her?”

“Unless she was kept on lockdown, which isn’t happening without dumping her in juvie, Little would run right back to him the first chance she got.” I had seen it play out a hundred times. “He’s her home.”

Those kids, that life. It was all she knew. Ian kept her safe. Even if it hurt. Even if it cost.

Carter slammed her palm against the steering wheel. “That’s fucked up, Frankie.”

“Yeah.” I agreed one hundred percent. “It is.”

The cab grew quiet, yet again, but this time it was on me. I did a decent job of acting like a well-adjusted adult. Sometimes I even believed it. Especially during long stretches when my real job hit a dry spell, and I got to play at being an office worker whose biggest responsibility was chasing down parts orders. I liked that version of me. She was the person I might have become if I’d had a normal life, a normal upbringing with parents and a house and new clothes and regular meals. Maybe even a dog.

But she was a polished veneer I used to hide the woman I was down at my core.

Ruthless, pitiless, merciless.

I could be vicious when it came to my family.

To survive was to whittle away the soft parts the world salivated to devour. To survive was to harden your heart until nothing anyone said or did to you could penetrate your shell. To survive was to give away pieces of your soul until the bits remaining no longer fit within the shape you saw in the mirror.

No one liked to think about it, or be reminded of it, me most of all.

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