Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
It wasn’t until I was safely in my car and heading back to my apartment, where I knew Hunter was waiting for me, that I started to feel a little silly for running. He was probably just a celebrity or some crypto bro who hired all that muscle to feel important.
Shaking my head, I parked my car once I reached home and then tiptoed inside the dark apartment that I shared with my best friend. I didn’t let myself breathe until I spotted Hunter lying on the couch. She was fast asleep with her cell phone clutched in her hand. I didn’t even think about it as I grabbed the blanket tossed over the back of the couch and covered her with it.
When she didn’t stir, I let myself watch her for a little while until I felt the crushing weight of my sorrow return. I had no idea where we stood after our fight. Hunter and I met when we were fifteen. Our souls have been tied from that first moment.
She was my best friend. My twin flame. The yang to my yin.
I’d rather lose myself than be without her, so if pretending is what Hunter needed to go on, then so be it.
Quietly, I wrote my capitulation in a note and placed it where she would find it easily in the morning. I then kissed her soft cheek before leaving the living room. Locked inside my room, I filled the tub with water and tossed in one of my bath bombs before shedding my clothes and sinking into the hot water. Usually, I read to pass the time, but I couldn’t focus beyond replaying the events of tonight in my head. Once I started nodding off, I used the last of my energy to drag myself out of the tub before dying off,. I then dressed in sleep shorts and a matching camisole.
I then slid into bed and shut my eyes as I sobbed into my pillow to muffle the sound.
In the midst of my undoing, the man from the club suddenly invaded my mind, and I shut my eyes against it, but that only sharpened the image.
That’s when my shitty-ass memory finally whispered a name, and I sat up with a terrified gasp.
I knew him.
And I didn’t just know his name. I’d seen him once before. Three years ago, shortly after my brother opened his club.
With any luck, I’ll never have to see the heir to the Fola again.
COBY
Two years later…
“Will you hurry up?” I urged my best friend.
“Bitch, I’m trying,” Hunter huffed back as she shoved and yanked on the old-ass window of the apartment we were attempting to break into. “I think this shit is stuck.”
Our window didn’t even lock, so it was a good thing we didn’t have a ground-floor apartment like our landlord, Luther. I bounced anxiously on my toes while keeping an eye out for other tenants and Luther. Luckily, most of the street lights around our apartment building no longer fucking worked, so we were at least partially concealed to anyone who happened to pass by.
And then there was the fog.
Sunny days were rare in Black Veil. My great aunt used to say that there was too much sin, so God had turned his back on us like Babylon. A month later, she retired to Florida, and I never saw her again. The old bitch never called and didn’t seem to give a shit if Roshaun and I were still alive or not, so on a good day, it felt like my brother was the only family I had left. On a worse day, it felt as if I had no family at all since my relationship with my brother was rocky at best. Still, my Aunt Pat might have been on to something.
After all, Black Veil belonged to the Fola.
Or as everyone who wasn’t made called the infamous crime family—the Blood mafia.
The corruption and crime that ran rampant in this city all led back to them. If you were selling ass, the Fola was taking a cut. If you specialized in street pharmacy, they supplied the pills and potions. And if you wanted to settle a feud the old-fashioned way, the mafia was the only way you were getting your hands on the hardware. Even legitimate businesses like my brother’s had fallen under their heel.
It was even rumored that the Kilpatrick family founded Black Veil when they immigrated from Ireland before the Prohibition era, but anyone with access to a textbook knew that couldn’t be true.
The Fola hadn’t founded Black Veil. They seized it.
Their influence and might had grown so much that the government had pretty much given up trying to do anything about them. And Black Veil had been living in a dark cloud ever since—like an obscure island covered by never-ending fog, except we weren’t hidden at all.