Page 3 of Pray for the Damned

She swallows heavily as she shuffles in place, and my gaze drops to her bare feet. It’s the middle of winter in South Dakota, so it’s cold as fuck, making my chest clench for her again.

A car backfiring makes us both jump, but the way her eyes dart around the otherwise quiet night tells me she’s scared. I mean, of course she is. She’s staring at the man that just broke into her house to kill her piece-of-shit father. But when the emerald orbs meet mine again, it’s not fear that stares back at me.

It’s trust.

Before I can stop myself, I move toward her, closing the distance in a few quick steps, but she’s rooted in place with wide eyes and her breath caught in her throat.

“You need to go,” I rush out.

“What?” Her brows pull together.

“You need to pack and get out of this house right now. Your father owed Salvatore Draper a lot of money, and he’s going to send someone to collect you. To pay the debt.”

Her delicate body flinches at my choice of words, but she doesn’t make a move to do as I’ve told her.

I flick my gaze to the front door. I don’t have much time before Kade will come to check on me. I’ve already been in the house for too long. And yet I push past the wisp of a girl, forcing myself not to notice how fucking tiny she is up close, and find a beat-up suitcase on top of her closet.

Before I can think too much about what I’m doing, I tear open the first drawer I find and start throwing anything I find inside, a protective urge I’ve never felt before forcing me to keep moving even when I should be walking the fuck out of this house.

The clothes and shoes she owns barely half fill the suitcase, and a growl rises up the back of my throat at that thought, but I push past it, quickly zipping it and moving on to shoving her old-as-hell laptop and textbooks into the worn backpack. Is everything this girl owns older than she is?

I don’t let myself think about that because at this point I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind, and that rabbit hole isn’t likely to help me find it.

When I look up, she’s standing in the doorway, her entire body trembling.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispers. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because you don’t deserve to go to hell for your father’s sins.”

CHAPTER ONE

WAVERLY

TEN YEARS LATER

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Every slap of my thrifted black heels on the pavement is more labored than the last, but I can’t slow down. I can’t afford to lose this job before I’ve even started.

Well, I don’t actually have the job yet.

Tonight is a trial.

But I can’t afford to fuck it up. Which is how I find myself sprinting through the streets of New York in the tiniest black dress I could find in the charity store down the street from my shithole of an apartment.

Today has been a comedy of errors. Or maybe I shouldn’t call it that, seeing as not a single part of my day has been funny.

It all started when my alarm failed to go off because my power was shut off at some point through the night because I couldn’t pay the bill.

Then I was late for work at the diner down the street, which earned me a serving from Denise, my boss, and a threat that if I’m late one more time, I’ll be out on my ass.

It’s not that I like working there, because I really don’t, but if the lack of power wasn’t a dead giveaway, I need the money.

And then, as if the universe felt like I could handle one more shitty thing being thrown at me, my subway line was shut down, meaning I’ve had to sprint through the trash-lined streets in the middle of summer.

I must look a sight, but I’ve stopped caring what people think about me. Or at least I try not to. It’s hard when I see the way people look at me. How they judge me for how I look. But they haven’t seen my struggle. They haven’t seen how fucking hard the last ten years have been. Not that the time that came before that was a walk in the park either, now that I think about it.

Shaking off the thought as I round the corner, I set my sights on the Scarlet Lounge for the first time.

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