Page 2 of Ambition

“No one,” he agrees, his words barely audible, but I know he means them.

I run my thumb over his lips and his eyes flutter, but he keeps his gaze on me.

“We are in this together,” I say quietly.

His bare chest heaves, a bullet wound just above his heart. He almost left me from that one, a shot he took shielding me many years ago, when we were Isadora and my son, Von’s age. “Together,” he says.

I lift his chin, pulling his throat taut, staring at the crusted gore on his skin.

Then I swipe the knife’s tip over his neck in a fluid, fast motion, grazing him once more. His body flinches, but he does not pull out of my grip, and I smile at the blood which begins to slowly trickle down over the hollow of his throat.

He will bleed for me.

He will love me.

We will not separate.

I think of my son as I study the blood.

I care for Isadora. For what she will do tonight. But I know it is business, and shewantsto fuck the leader of Vipera for his secrets. She will be rewarded for it and one day, she could stand where I’m standing, leading Writhe as I do.

Von will hate every moment of tonight. He may throw up on his hands and knees inside the shared bathroom of their condo. His childhood best friend is being thrown to the dealer’s den.

But he will get over it, just as I did when I received the tattoo on my chest of my former leader’s name. I didn’t want it, but it was a sacrifice forhim.Von’s misery is the same forher.

We do what we have to.

We do it for Writhe.

Besides, seven years ago Isadora did exactly that. Something neither Rig nor Von nor myself have ever done.

And despite my bleeding best friend kneeling at my feet, the coolness of the basement, the bizarre ceremony intended for tomorrow night to regroup Writhe underme,a chill slides down my spine that has nothing to do with any of it, and everything to do with the intestines I know were spooled on a cement floor in a burning warehouse.

VON

2:00 A.M. ON HALLOWEEN, 7 YEARS AGO

She is screaming. My name, raw and cutting up her throat.

I clench my fingers around the gun, wishing it felt more dangerous than it does. I know what it can do. I’veseenit. But in the darkness of the abandoned warehouse right now, it feels inadequate.

I rush through plastic tarps and makeshift doors as if it were a haunted house. And it is pitch-dark in here. Beneath my mask—black, with blue diamonds around the cutouts for my eyes, but not sheer—everything is always drenched in gloom, but it’s worse in this fucking warehouse.

My breath warms my lips from the fabric of the covering, and I push through another entrance, erected black walls like a maze inside this hell. It’s stifling hot and the scent of smoke dances in my nose. Not enough to choke me, but onlynot yet.

“Von! Von, I’m here!” She sounds terrified, and Isadora Croft is never scared.

My pulse thumps faster and I hiss under my breath, “Fuck, fuck,fuck!”I hate this feeling. It’s like having your heart hacked from your chest and someone dangles it on a string just out of reach. If you grab it, you go on living. You stuff it back in and try to forget the horror.

But if you can’t reach for the bloody mass of veins and arteries andlife,you aren’t coming back from something like that.

The reasons I’m here—a kidnapping, a ransom—are common among crime families. In our underground circuit, this is nothing new. Another day in the fucking life.

Yet as I sprint through more plastic, slithering along my back over the all-black I’m dressed in, it does not feel like something normal.

Having your childhood best friend screaming your name, begging for you to find them because you got there before either set of your parents could… There is no greater torture.

She screams again, but this time she says nothing.

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