by Lacey Dailey
Copyright © 2019 by Lacey Dailey
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First Edition
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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
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This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by: Lacey Dailey
Editing: Bookfully Yours
Proofreading: All Encompassing Books
Cover Design: X-Potion Designs
To Brett–
Mischief was my greatest love. Then I met you.
Ace
Contents
Prologue
1. Ace
2. Ace
3. Brett
4. Ace
5. Ace
6. Brett
7. Brett
8. Brett
9. Ace
10. Ace
11. Ace
12. Brett
13. Brett
14. Brett
15. Ace
16. Brett
17. Ace
18. Ace
19. Brett
20. Ace
21. Ace
22. Ace
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
A familiar smell filtered up his nostrils. A sickeningly sweet, metallic smell. It was all around him, permeating the air with its vile pungency, threatening to smother his brain and suffocate him. The head on his shoulders felt more like a bag of bricks as he attempted to lift it off the hard surface it'd been resting on. Pain passed through his body in tremulous waves with each inch he moved. Peeling open his eyelids felt like lifting ten-ton boulders covered in thick plaster. When he was successful, he found his surroundings to be discombobulated. Disjointed. Hazy and unfamiliar. Whatever was in front of him was stuck behind a film of fog thick enough to cut with a blade.
The cold, sticky liquid beneath his cheek gave insight into what the metallic smell was and why it was making his eyes burn like somebody had poured bleach into them. With a loud grunt, he forced his head off the unforgiving surface and immediately pushed both hands to the side of his head in an attempt to calm some of the aggressive thumping.
He groaned and rubbed at his face, discovering a thick substance smeared across his forehead and caked in his hairline. Bringing his open hand to his mouth, he swiped his tongue across his palm. The bitter taste of iron was like a shock to his senses. His nerves reawakened and his limbs jolted against the fabric beneath him. He widened his eyes, fighting against the groggy sensation desperate to pull him under.
He smacked himself in the face and let out a snarl. He was stronger than that.
As the edges of his vision cleared, he was able to make out pieces of broken glass, shining against the moonlight like a pile of diamonds. He reached down into his lap and picked up a piece, wondering how it got there. With a roll of his head, he found himself looking into darkness. As additional pieces of the fog gave way, he was able to make out stars above him and a river flowing calmly below him. He was somehow suspended between the two of them, rooted in place.
Each time he tried to shift, he was held in place by a force strapped tightly across his chest. His head screamed at him when he dipped his chin, finding old vinyl pulled tautly across the hooded sweatshirt he was wearing. His eyes roamed freely, finding where it ended. Realization crept up on him slowly and thickly as he pushed a button and released the seatbelt holding him captive. The vinyl made a screeching noise and the buckle clanked against the car door shoved flush against his side.
With a flick of his eyes, he looked back out into the night and felt a cold draft of wind roll across his skin. It was then that he discovered the glass was from the windshield that was no longer intact. He took in the sight of the blood smeared vilely across the dashboard before him.
Awareness pricked at the back of his neck as memories replaced the fog in his brain.
“You stupid fuck!” D screamed at him. “I’m so sick of putting myself on the line for you. Find a new person to manipulate into driving you around when you’re plastered. I have better things to do than fuck around with a drunk who refuses to get help. I’ve reached my limit with you, man. I’m done.”
D’s words enraged him. They'd cast a fire that burned low in his belly and carefully spread through his veins. An unrestrained howl ripped from his chest when he slammed his fist into the dashboard. Nobody got to tell him what to do or who he was. He called the shots. It was why he had all the money. Why he had drugs in his pocket worth more than the car he was riding in. He was in control. He was always fucking in control, and he’ll be damned if anybody tried to steal that power away from him. There was only room for one God in this life.
And that was him.
“You watch your fucking mouth, D.” He sneered. “You best remember who you’re talking to.”
D snorted and slammed his foot on the gas. The car lurched forward with the acceleration and barreled down the bridge. “Who? Who are you?” D taunted. “Nothing. Despite all the money I’ve loaned you and the help I’ve given you, you’re nothing but a criminal. As soon as I get off the bridge, you’re on your own. Don’t fucking call me or come around my kids.”
He burst into hyena-like laughs. He held his gut and cackled, enjoying his entertainment for the night. He felt D watching him from the corner of his eye, looking at him as though he was manic. But there was only one man in the car who qualified as crazy and it sure as fuck wasn't him. “That’s what you always say, D. But you show up, anyway. Every fucking time.”
“Not anymore.” D shook his head adamantly. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want this shit around my kids. You were supposed to get help.”
“Don’t need help.” He spat a hunk of phlegm out the window and crossed his arms over his chest. “Ain’t no problems with me.”
“Your problem is that you don’t see a problem.” D laughed. “You deluded bastard. Look at you right now, you’re plastered out of your mind.”
He snarled at the insult, his fists clenching. “Insult me again and I’ll pop your fucking brains out.”
“That won’t be necessary.” He nudged his head forward. “One more mile and I’m done.”
“You delusional fuck. Family can’t get rid of family.”
D’s hands flexed against the steering wheel. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re no longer family. I tried to help you. I showed up tonight ready to take you to rehab only to learn you manipulated me again. I’m not your fucking puppet. I have plans that don’t include getting arrested for driving your sorry ass around town.”
Red flashed in front of his eyes. “Who the fuck you calling a sorry ass?” Heat exploded beneath the surface of his skin. He threw his elbow into D’s nose with a shout. The car jerked and suddenly, they were spinning. He wasn’t sure if it was the copious amount of alcohol pulsing through his blood or the hunk of metal they were in. Bile rose up his throat and sputtered down his chin. A grinding noise pulled a deep cringe out of his body. He swayed forward with a harsh lurch.
His forehead cracked against a surface like an eggshell breaking under the smallest of force. His head was rolling on his shoulders when it was yanked upright again with an unfeasibly strong current of wind. His head bounced off the surface one last time. And then everything went black.
Piece by piece, he recounted the events. He opene
d his mouth to speak, a foul taste lingering inside his throat. He smacked his lips together to gain moisture. “D?”
With a grunt, he flipped his head around. The hair on his body stood straight up. Dread and a small dose of panic slithered down his spine. His eyes roamed the bloodied and deformed body. It looked to have been folded completely in half. Thick blood was running down D’s chin, drenching the collar of his shirt. He made contact with D’s eyes, wide open and devoid of life.
With a sigh and a heave, he flailed himself toward D and undid the seatbelt still secured across his corpse. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. Judging by the warmth still in D’s body, it couldn’t have been too long. Time started ticking right then. The bridge they were on was empty at night but not so empty somebody wouldn’t eventually pass by and report the accident.
Despite what D thought, he wasn’t a fucking idiot. Huh. Funny how D thought that and now he’s dead. The two were unexplainably relatable. He was positive of that.
He gritted his teeth and held back his scream of pain as he heaved D’s body free of its confines. With a look around, his eyes landed on the river and something struck him. He knew what he needed to do.
D was going swimming.
1
Ace
Secrets.
I fucking hated them, and I was awful at keeping them. The code on my personal safe was easy to crack. I wished I wasn’t this way, but the fact was, if you wanted a secret kept, you shouldn’t tell me. I probably wouldn’t leak it the same day or even the day after. Maybe I’d even hold off a couple of months. But you could bet your bottom dollar that sometime within the next three hundred and sixty-five days, I would spill your beans somewhere to someone or another. Most likely to my best friend Brett. Probably in our apartment. Under the influence of alcohol with the whispered demand he tells no one else.
It wasn’t totally the alcohol’s fault. Really, I think I sucked at keeping other people’s secrets because I was fully incapable of keeping my own. I was one thousand percent an open book. There were no skeletons in my closet that hadn’t been exposed, wet down, and aired out to dry.
Now, I wasn’t a total fucking dick. If a secret was dire and would cause someone to be fired, shamed, arrested, or tarred and feathered, then I’d keep my yapping mouth zipped shut. But if you came to me and casually mentioned you hated your girlfriend’s new dog, or you spent your evenings thinking up ways to poison your boss, I wasn’t able to hold that shit in. Secrets like that were child’s play. Exposing that stuff was like plopping a giant ass red button in front of me and asking me not to push it.
Spoiler alert: I was gonna push it.
But I’d be lying if I said some buttons weren’t harder to push than others. As sweaty and squirrelly as I became with a secret lingering inside me, I was smart enough to know some buttons should never be pushed. Not just for the good of the person with the secret, but for the rest of the world too. There was a fine line between secrets that ruined lives and secrets that saved them.
I walked that line every day of my life.
The old credit union across from Dunkin Donuts on Hartley Drive was the button I’d never push. The secret I would never expose despite how much alcohol I’d consumed. On the outside, it just looked like a shitty old building nobody wanted to buy. There was a fake for sale sign in the window with a disconnected phone number attached to it. Some of the thick paper on the windows was peeled away, giving people the opportunity to peer inside and get a good ol’ look at a whole lot of nothing. Unless you got hard for a couple of dusty counters, a giant chandelier lying on the floor, and ladders strategically placed throughout the building, then you’d turn your ass around and head right back into Dunkin Donuts. You’d go purchase your overpriced coffee and day old doughnut, walking down the sidewalk without ever really knowing the rundown waste of space was the biggest fucking giant red button in America.
“So, you gonna stare at it or go in?”
My lips pulled into a smirk. I turned my head to find Wren standing beside me, half a doughnut shoved in his mouth. He adjusted his glasses and licked frosting off his lips, peering up at the building as if it had changed in the twelve hours since we were last inside.
It hadn’t.
“I just like staring, bro.”
“Well, don’t.” He hip-checked me and started across the street. “How suspicious would it be if someone saw you gawking at a broken building?”
“A broken building?” I gaped and followed his skinny self across the street. “Please do not disrespect the most marvelous place on earth, Wren. Fucking Christ. It can probably hear you.”
“It’s a building, Ace. It can’t hear me.”
I shoved him out of the way and wrapped my hand around the door handle. “We both know this isn’t just a building, man.”
He took another bite of his doughnut, completely unconcerned Hacking Jesus was looking down on him, shaking his head at all the disrespect my brother was paying him. I might have agreed with him if I wasn’t aware we had control of every security and traffic camera that had a view of this building. Anybody who went back and looked at that tape wouldn’t see me standing there praising the old Credit Union like a lunatic.
I yanked open the heavy door and tried to persuade Wren into saying a prayer of apology before he stepped inside. He flipped me off and pushed past me, stepping inside the dusty, low lit room. We both leapt over the empty paint can glued to the floor and made our way to the elevator that looked a million years old.
Wren pounded the elevator buttons in a secret sequence, inhaling the rest of the doughnut, only to produce two granola bars from his back pocket.
“What the hell, dude?” I slid into the elevator the second the doors had enough room for my body. I typed in my passcode before he was standing next to me. “You starving yourself?”
He shook his head, pushing orange locks off his forehead. “Sage and I were up all night last night. Forgot to eat.”
My face twisted in horror. “A brother does not need to hear you talking about his baby sister like that, Wren. Keep that shit to yourself.”
He looked at me like a dick just sprouted on my forehead as we descended. “The fuck you talking about? I was up helping her with homework. Get your head out of the gutter.”
I held my hands up in surrender. “Just checking.”
“What I do with my girlfriend is not your business. And she isn’t your real sister.” He threw that dagger into my chest right before stepping off the elevator.
I couldn’t even enjoy the enchanting feeling that came with stepping into the underworld when he was hitting me with truths like that.
Fine!
Sage wasn’t actually my sister, and Wren wasn’t actually my brother. Hell. You took one good look at us side by side and it would confirm the truth. He was a freckled ginger sprout while I looked like big, blond Jesus. We definitely weren’t biologically related, but if you forgot about DNA and all that sciencey technical shit, we were brothers.
Since he and Sage were all in love and shit, that made her my sister by default. Not like it was a hardship. That girl was amazing, and she baked like nobody’s business.
“I’m telling her you said that,” I said, stomping over to my desk and smacking the power button. I plopped down in my chair and glared at him.
Wren rolled his eyes and grabbed a cup from the corner of his desk. I knew for a fact there was two-day old Diet Coke fermenting inside that cup. My boy was addicted to that shit like it was nicotine. “You know, if Sage is your sister then wouldn’t that make Brett your brother?”
“Fuck no!” I burst out, cringing so bad my muscles ached. “He can’t be my brother, man. That takes my perving to a whole new level. A brother does not have dirty dreams about another brother’s ass.”
Wren choked on his drink, slapping his hand over his mouth to hold in the soda threatening to come from between his lips. He snickered, his face turning bright red before he was able to swallow. “You
are too much.” He chuckled, licking Diet Coke from his hand.
“Too much or just enough?”
“Too much,” he confirmed, powering up his own machine. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll expose yourself. He’s your roommate now, man.”
I had no quarrels with exposing myself in front of Brett Maddison.
“I am well aware he’s my roommate now. It's like the best kind of torture in the world.”
“Is anybody planning to work today or just sit around talking about Ace’s unreciprocated crush on Sage’s brother?” Zelda strode into the underworld looking ready to kick someone’s ass. She had a scowl forming on her purple tainted lips and chains that rattled when she walked, hanging off her belt and drooping down her leather-clad leg.
“Who the hell pissed in your Wheaties?” I asked.
She thumped my head on the way to her desk. “Just want to fuck up a bad guy tonight, Mischief. Isn’t that why we come here?”
And just like that, I set thoughts of Brett aside. Hell. I set myself aside.
Goodbye, Ace Jackson.
Hello, Mischief.
Zelda’s use of my code name served me a quick reminder as to why I was inside this secret lair in the first place. Why I’d never, in a million light years, press this one red button.
Mischief was a hacker. One of the thirteen hacktivists that made up the world-renowned organization Circuit. And that underworld that resides across Dunkin’ Donuts, and gives me a stiffy each time I look at it? It’s the lair of happiness that houses us all. The one place we are able to come together to be our true selves.