by Bea Paige
Stopping for a moment, he grips my arm, pulling me up sharp. “You know you really did fuck the Breakers up, Penelope.”
“Don’t talk to me about fucking the Breakers up,” I snap, biting my tongue to prevent me from saying something that’s going to get me killed.
“They were never quite the same after you dumped them. I didn’t realise quite how special you were to them until that night,” he continues.
“I didn’t want to hurt them.”
“But you did.”
“I had no choice,” I grind out, not wanting to have this conversation with him of all people.
He waves his hand in the air, dismissing my remark as we traverse through the tables once more. “They were always so reluctant to really let their true nature out when they were friends with you, but the moment you screwed them over they didn’t hold back. They show no mercy to our enemies, and I have you to thank for that. Without you as their conscience they were set free.”
“Set free?” I scoff, wanting to hurt him with words brimming on my tongue, but knowing it would be a pointless exercise. Jeb has no conscience. He doesn’t give a shit. Nothing I could say would make him feel any guilt and anything I do will only give him ammunition to hurt me further. So, I hold my tongue.
“Anyway, I decided that they deserved a little RNR for all the work they’ve done for me over the years. When I heard Grim was throwing one of her infamous parties, I figured it’d be a good way to let them know just how much I appreciate them.”
“Well, aren’t you the perfect boss. Illegal fighting and live porno, just what the doctor ordered,” I grind out under my breath.
Jeb laughs so loudly that he draws the attention of the gangsters sitting at the table closest to us. They’re wearing white skull masks that cover only half their faces. One of them looks at me, his gaze travelling lazily up from my feet to my chest, then stopping on Jeb’s tight grip on my arm. His gaze flicks up and he smiles at me. All his teeth are gold. Every single one.
Ignoring his salacious gaze, I snatch my arm out of Jeb’s hold and stride towards our table on the other side of the warehouse. He catches up with me, grasping my arm once more. “I have big, big plans for you, Penelope, and I’m willing to overlook your sassy mouth tonight. But test me, and I’ll make this so much worse for you.”
“I want to go home,” I reply, firmly. My chest is heaving with anger and that acidic trickle of fear I always feel around Jeb. The debt I owe is a ball and chain that imprisons me, something that I won’t ever be able to escape until it’s paid off in full. The problem is, I still don’t know the price.
“Home? You’re not going anywhere tonight, Penelope. You, sweetheart, are going to put on the best show of your life,” Jeb explains with an evil smile.
“My best show?”
“That’s right, pretty girl. The leader of the Skins can’t come to a party like this and not partake now, can he? What would everyone think, hmm? Besides, Zayn is my blood, and I owe him a gift. Tonight that gift is you.”
My head snaps around to meet Jeb’s gaze. “No, please,” I whisper, backing away from him as realisation dawns.
“Zayn jumped at the chance to have you. Perhaps he’ll fuck you out of his system for good. We’ll just have to see.”
“That bastard!” I seethe.
That apology in the limo was because he knew what was going to happen here tonight. He fucking knew and he thought that would be enough to absolve him from his guilt.
Fuck him.
How could he agree to this? Are the rest of the Breakers here so they can fucking watch? Is this some twisted, fucked up punishment to get back at me?
“I must say, I’m mighty curious about how this will all pan out. I never gave my permission for the others to enjoy you. Perhaps I’ll let them all have a go at fucking your sweet pussy tonight.”
“Fuck you,” I bite out, my voice cracking and my stupid, stupid heart shattering with the threat. Stepping away from Jeb, I ready myself to run. He tuts, wagging his finger and shaking his head, loving every second.
“Don’t even think about running from me.”
But I don’t listen, I do run.
Kicking off my ridiculous heels, I sprint through the crowded space, shoving people out of the way and careening past people fucking like animals. My body thunders with adrenaline that pours inside my veins and blurs my vision. Tears prick at my eyes as the full weight of what’s about to happen crashes over me.
But I’m not fast enough. No one gets away from Jeb. No one.
He moves with lightning speed and before I know it, my arms are pinned behind my back roughly as he brushes his lips against my ear.
“Consider this the first down payment of your debt, pretty girl.”
The story continues in
Lyrical
Academy of Stardom #2
Coming Soon
Author Note
So, what did you think? I hope you’ve recovered from the cliffy and don’t hate me too much! If you enjoyed the book, please do consider leaving a review.
Book two of the trilogy, Lyrical, is well underway and will be with you just as soon as I can wrangle these characters! I’m working night and day to get this book out to you, but please be patient with me. I promise it will be worth the wait. This is a trilogy and will end with Breakers.
As always, thank you for continuing on this journey with me and my characters. Most days I’m still awed that people actually want to read what I write. So, to you, dear reader, I am indebted.
To be certain that you keep up to date with all my new releases and author news, please do come and join my Facebook group, Queen Bea’s Hive, where I’m most active or join my newsletter here.
Once again, thanks for sticking with me. Here’s to plenty more stories to come.
Love, Bea xoxo
If you enjoyed this book, then you might like my completed trilogy, Academy of Misfits.
Read on for an excerpt from Delinquent (book one of the trilogy)
Delinquent Excerpt
books2read.com/AcademyMisfits1
Prologue
Alicia Loi Chen which loosely means Great Noble Thunder… or some such crap like that.
That’s me. That’s my name. Pretty fucking great, yeah? At least my mum thought so given the amount of times she tried to convince me it was.
In her more lucid moments over the years, when she wasn’t messed up on some drug or other, she’d loved to weave magical tales about far away countries filled with dragons and other mythical creatures. For a long time, she had me convinced that she’d been a concubine to the Emperor of China, and I was their lovechild spirited off to England for safekeeping, my name chosen because I was born to some great Chinese dynasty.
Of course, I realised pretty soon that she was full of shit.
My empty stomach, threadbare clothes and dirty, flea-ridden flat we called home had proven that. Our true story, the one she tried to hide from, has only ever been a tale of woe… and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
Born on December 26, 1998 during one of the worst hurricanes to hit the UK for years, my fucked-up, drugged-up, heroin addict mother actually named me after the storm that raged beyond the single glazed windows of our shitty rundown council flat in Hackney. Her wails of pain from pushing me out of her ravaged, undernourished body matched those of the hurricane that wound its way through the feeble mould-ridden walls of our home. Tracy Carter, mum’s best friend and my surrogate mum growing up, had cradled my head as I slipped into the world wailing, my lungs bursting with rage at being born, my tiny little body already addicted to heroin. An angry baby junky, courtesy of my messed-up junky mum. Born with thunder inside me, thunder rolling outside, my name was fitting back then, I suppose. Except now I’ve shredded that name like a dirty threadbare jumper. I don’t live a fairy tale life and I’m not some emperor’s daughter, real or imagined.
I’m just Asia. A name I chose for myself, not because of my heritage. And cer
tainly not because of my mother’s addiction for the opium produced in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia that finally killed her on my fourteenth birthday.
Nope.
I’m called Asia because the chip on my shoulder is as large as a fucking continent, and with good reason. I started my life fighting to live, and I’ve spent every day since doing the same damn thing… Fighting to survive.
Every. Fucking. Day.
I live in a permanent state of fight or flight, except I’m not a bird and I never run. I’ve got claws as sharp as the best of them, and a left hook to match. Truth is, this state of living is as unhealthy as the addiction I was born with. I’ve bounced from one foster home to another, interspersed with a few months in my mum’s care when she’d ‘got herself clean’, only to fall back into bad habits the second shit got hard. Heroin is a dirty drug that strips a human of their ability to function let alone bring up a kid. My mum was the worst kind of addict; weak, selfish, and unable to fight for her children, herself even. I’ve pretty much brought myself up, and along the way have tried to get my younger brothers through this screwed up life we live. I’ve had to grow up fast.
Now that I’m sixteen going on twenty-six, I’ve taken life by the proverbial balls and I’m deciding how to live it. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t tempted to pick up a needle and shoot up just to get away from my crappy existence for a few short moments. But I refuse to be a junky like my mum. I refuse. She’d forced that on me as a newborn but I sure as fuck won’t make the same mistakes she made. I’m grateful that I don’t remember those long months being weaned off the drug, no more than a pitiful howling creature full of pain and anger.
Years later, Tracy had told me that I screamed blue bloody murder those first few months of my life. My tiny little fists bunched up, ready to hit anyone who got too close. That was the first time my mum tried to give up heroin. She’d seen how I’d fought from the second I was born, and she did the same. Alongside me she got clean and for three years my mum managed to steer clear of the drug.
But it didn’t last.
The day after my third birthday mum left me in the care of Tracy with one goal in mind, to get well and truly off her face. She didn’t return for a month. When she did, she was unrecognisable.
That was the first time I was taken into care.
But unlike her, I will not allow myself to be weak. I won’t give in to the lingering need that still plagues me even though I don’t remember the feeling of being an addict, a state that was forced onto me without any choice or say in the matter.
Growing up hasn’t been easy, I can assure you.
These days the only source of joy in an endless line of disappointment and disillusion is my art, because not only is Asia my name now, it’s also my tag. You can see it spray painted in bright colours across the whole of Hackney. A piece of me brightening the stark and dirty streets of this inner-city London borough where I live.
But like everything else in my life, that too has been taken away from me because some asshats deem it a crime to make something ugly into something beautiful.
Truth be known, there’s never going to be a happily ever after for me. I was born during a storm after all, and we all know that storms only ever leave devastation in their wake.
Chapter One
“This is a fucking joke,” I mumble, just loud enough for my arsehole of a lawyer to hear.
“Can it, Chen. Sit up, take note and don’t say a damn thing,” my lawyer hisses at me.
Sitting here now in the magistrates’ court with my lawyer, who I’m pretty sure is ready to hang me so he can get back home to his two point five kids and perfect middle class wife, I wait for the verdict.
A clock ticks loudly, the sound of a pen tapping against the table and the constant low hum of my blood pulsing in my ears makes it impossible to concentrate.
“Sit up, Alicia, pay attention,” my lawyer snaps, repeating the demand under his breath once more.
I huff, feigning boredom and make a point at staring at a spot just beyond the ancient judge as he waffles on about my ‘crimes’ and my poor choices in life like his shit don’t stink. Dickhead.
Well he, like all the other adults I’ve ever come across in life, can go fuck themselves. I was doing the shopkeeper a favour by brightening his ugly back wall with my graffiti art. I’m pretty sure he gets way more customers now because of it anyway. He should be thanking me. Instead, here I am waiting on this fat balding twat of a judge to make a decision about my life, just like all the other bastards I’ve had to endure these past sixteen years. I wish I was turning eighteen this year instead of next, maybe then I could claw back some of the control I crave. As it is, I’ve got to wait another fifteen months until that happens. I’m just another kid who’s the property of the state right now.
“Breaking and entering, criminal damage, graffitiing, possession of marijuana, anti-social behaviour. The list goes on and on, Alicia…” the judge drones on. His words mingle with the memory of all the other disappointed tirades I’ve had to listen to over the years from social workers, teachers, lawyers, and the endless list of control freaks that seem to want to plague my life with rules and fucking restrictions.
It's not like I need reminding of my petty crimes. I know what I’ve done and frankly, I’d do it again given half the chance. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t even break into the store really, given Mr Patel stupidly left the back entrance open. And yeah, so I smoked some weed. What teenager doesn’t these days? I’m betting this arsehole next to me drinks himself into a coma most nights on some thousand-pound bottle of brandy to blot out some shit or other that he wants to forget. So, what’s the difference? I smoke a little weed, big deal. At least I don’t shoot up to get a kick.
“You’re on a dangerous path, young lady, one that will lead to a life of crime and imprisonment if you continue on as you are. Do you want that for yourself?” the judge asks me, his bushy eyebrows like great big caterpillars kissing as he frowns. Talk about condescending. I shrug and look away to avoid further eye-contact, making a non-committal sound.
“You want this life for yourself?” he accuses, trying to get a reaction.
Folding my arms across my chest, I shift in my seat, refusing to engage.
Yep, that’s exactly what I want, arsehole. In fact, being a criminal was the first job of choice on my list of things I wanted to be when I grew up. Actually, being a princess was top of that stupid list my mother had made me write. All because of her crazy stories and my need to please her. I’d have done anything to stop her from picking up a needle and shooting up.
“There’s nothing you’d like to say?” he persists.
“No.” I manage to bite out.
Both he and my lawyer make a distasteful noise at my lack of understanding or care. Their opinion of me is plain for all to see. I’m just another one of those kids who’s a drain on the system. Drug-addict mother, absent father, benefit generation, uneducated, lazy, foolhardy. I’m the shit on their shoe. I’m worthless. Yeah, I get it.
“This is your last chance,” the judge says, and I’m not sure whether he’s now referring to my opportunity to speak or my proverbial last chance in life.
My lawyer, Fitzpatrick, or something equally as fucking posh, nudges me in the side. “Alicia, now’s the time to get your point across. Don’t mess this up.”
I turn to face him, sucking on my lip ring and giving him my best ‘I don’t give a fuck’ stare. I clear my throat, finally making eye-contact with the judge.
“Fuck you,” I murmur.
Fitzpatrick stiffens. I can feel the annoyance and judgement rolling off him, battering against me as I resolutely ignore his incredulous look. Once he gets over the shock, I’m betting he’s going to love telling his perfect family about the messed-up kid who gave the judge a big fat “fuck you.” I know what he thinks when he looks at me; I’m the warning to his children. I’m the horror story of a life gone tits-up. You smoke weed, you’ll end up l
ike her. You wear those clothes; you’re asking to be treated a certain way. You live on a council estate; you’re bound to grow up a junky or a fucking criminal. I see it in his eyes, in the eyes of all the adults who make a snap judgement about the person I am based on the way I look.
Fuckwads.
“That’s all you have to say?” the judge responds.
But instead of slapping my arse with another punishment, he just sighs heavily as though he’s just as jaded with the world as I am. I watch as he clasps his hands together and regards me for a long time before speaking.
“Your crime holds a minimum sentence of eighteen months in juvenile prison, but both your social worker and lawyer have petitioned for a lesser sentence. For some reason they seem to think you’re salvageable. Despite your appearance and lack of any remorse for your actions, I’m going to believe them.”
I snort, folding my arms across my chest ignoring the pounding beat of my heart and the anger bubbling inside, the hurricane of rage I was born with is never very far away. I know for a fact my lawyer doesn’t give a crap about me, and my social worker? Ha! Don’t make me laugh. That bitch will be glad to see the back of me. I’m pretty sure she’d rather see me locked up; my case file neatly filed away in some cabinet in her office never to be looked at again.
“You come to my court dressed like that,” he says wrinkling his nose at my ripped jeans, Doc Martens and see through mesh top.
“At least I wore a bra,” I snarl under my breath, glancing at Fitzpatrick whose jaw tightens in anger.
“You’ve not even bothered to make an effort to present yourself in a suitable manor…” the judge continues, his words lost behind a growing haze of rage that I can’t seem to dampen right now.
What the fuck has my appearance got to do with it? I have blue hair, a nose stud, lip ring and tattoos and that immediately makes me a leper to society, does it? All these thoughts make acid of my blood as he blithers on, but I don’t show how I feel. On the outside I’m cold, disinterested, maintaining a sense of aloofness. It’s my ‘don’t give a shit’ attitude that I’ve perfected over the years. Besides, I’m not really worried about me, I can take a stint in juvie. At least I’ll get a place to sleep every night and food in my belly. I’m told they even have video games. Sounds like heaven to me. The only thing I don’t like about a prison sentence is that I worry for my little brothers and how they’ll survive without my visits. They might be living in a different foster care home than me (not that I stay in my own very often), but I still get to visit them regularly. Eighteen months in prison is a long time to go without seeing them both. That thought makes my mouth go dry and my hands turn clammy.