by Sophie Stern
Dark Favors
Sophie Stern
Published by Sophie Stern, 2020.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
DARK FAVORS
First edition. July 14, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 Sophie Stern.
Written by Sophie Stern.
Also by Sophie Stern
Alien Chaos
Destroyed
Guarded
Saved
Alien Chaos: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance Bundle
Anchored
Starboard
Battleship
All Aboard
Abandon Ship
Below Deck
Crossing the Line
Anchored: Books 1-3
Anchored: Books 4-6
Club Kitten Dancers
Move
Pose
Climb
Dragon Enchanted
Hidden Mage
Dragon Isle
My Lord and Dragon
The Dragon Fighter
A Dragon's Bite
Lost to the Dragon
Beware of Dragons
Cowboy Dragon
Dark Heart of the Dragon
Once Upon a Dragon
Catching the Dragon
Dragon Isle (Collection: Books 1-3)
Dragon Isle (Collection: Books 4-6)
Dragon Isle (Collection: Books 7-9)
Good Boys and Millionaires
Good Boys and Millionaires 1
Good Boys and Millionaires 2
Honeypot Babies
The Polar Bear's Baby
The Jaguar's Baby
The Tiger's Baby
Honeypot Darlings
The Bear's Virgin Darling
The Bear's Virgin Mate
The Bear's Virgin Bride
Office Gentlemen
Ben From Accounting
Polar Bears of the Air Force
Staff Sergeant Polar Bear
Master Sergeant Polar Bear
Airman Polar Bear
Senior Airman Polar Bear
Red
Red: Into the Dark
Red: Through the Dark
Red: Beyond the Dark
Shifters at Law
Wolf Case
Bearly Legal
Tiger Clause
Sergeant Bear
Dragon Law
The Fablestone Clan
Dragon's Oath
Dragon's Breath
Dragon's Darling
Dragon's Whisper
Dragon's Magic
The Hidden Planet
Vanquished
Outlaw
Conquered
The Wolfe City Pack
The Wolf's Darling
The Wolf's Mate
The Wolf's Bride
Standalone
Saucy Devil
Billionaire on Top
Jurassic Submissive
The Editor
Alien Beast
Snow White and the Wolves
Kissing the Billionaire
Wild
Alien Dragon
The Royal Her
Be My Tiger
Alien Monster
The Paralegal
Roses in the Dark
Honeypot Babies Omnibus Edition
Honeypot Darlings: Omnibus Edition
Red: The Complete Trilogy
First Shift
The Swan's Mate
Eternity: A Vampire Romance
The Feisty Librarian
Polar Bears of the Air Force
Wild Goose Chase
Star Princess
The Virgin and the Lumberjacks
Resting Bear Face
Shifters at Law
Seized by the Dragon
The Fablestone Clan: A Paranormal Dragon-Shifter Romance Collection
Star Kissed
Club Kitten Omnibus
Okami
Dark Favors
Contents
Dark Favors
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Author
Books
Dark Favors
Sophie Stern
COPYRIGHT © 2020 BY Sophie Stern
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.
Fall in love with chaos, with darkness, with desire.
Fall in love with the men who want everything - and who will stop at
nothing to claim what is theirs.
Paige
I’ve never stood out from the crowd. I’ve always done exactly what I needed to survive, and that’s worked well for me...until now. When my landlord “accidentally” gives me almost three hundred dollars, I have to make a choice: do I repay him, or do I keep the money and run? The choice is far too simple, but when I get to his office, he presents me with an even harder choice, and it’s not one I’m sure that I’m ready for.
Locke
The most beautiful girl in Ruby City doesn’t know how perfect she is, but I do. I didn’t give her the change accidentally. I gave her money to see what she’d do. It was a test, and she passed, and now we’re entwined in a way nobody could have predicted. Paige is beautiful, sassy, and sexy as hell, and I can’t keep my hands off of her.
I promise her I’ll tell her the information she’s been searching for. After all, I know who her long-lost father is, but it’s going to cost her.
Everything.
Prologue
She looked at the little girl sitting on the front stoop with her crooked braids and her happy smile, and Elizabeth frowned. This wasn’t the life she’d wanted for her daughter. Paige was much too good to grow up in a place like this. She always had been. She was a sweet girl who deserved to have an incredible life. Elizabeth wanted more for her than just being another trailer park kid, but they had to be careful. They had to be safe. Most of all, they couldn’t draw any attention to themselves.
“What do you want for dinner, pumpkin?” Elizabeth asked, stroking Paige’s hair. Her braids were frizzy and a little bit wild. Elizabeth had never been particularly good at styling hair, but she did her best. She wanted her daughter to look good at school. She might get made fun of for being poor, but she wasn’t going to be teased for having ratty hair or dirty clothes. Elizabeth would make sure of that. If she had to go without things that she wanted or needed to make sure that Paige had a good shot at living a great life, then that was fine with Elizabeth.
“Hot dogs!” Paige said excitedly.
Then, a question.
“Hot dogs?”
There were still three in the pack in the fridge. They were out of buns, but there was a half-loaf of white bread Elizabeth had gotten a few days ago from a church food pantry. They could use the bread to make buns, and Paige was kind enough not to notice the difference. If she did, she never said an
ything to her mom.
“Of course,” she said. “Hot dogs. Then we’ll do your homework, okay?”
“I did it on the bus,” Paige said. She pointed to her backpack and smiled. She was always trying to get her schoolwork done early so she would have extra time to play with the kids in the trailer park. It was a smaller park with only six trailers total, and every single one of the lots had kids who lived there. It was a paradise for Paige, and Elizabeth wanted to let her have as much fun as she could.
She was too young to be worried about other things, like paying bills or not having enough money.
“Good girl,” Elizabeth said. She took her daughter’s hand and led her inside so they could start boiling the hot dogs. Paige sat at the counter and chatted happily while Elizabeth made the food. She tried to listen to what her daughter was saying, but the truth was that she was worried. She’d gotten fired from the gas station. Kelsie said she’d been stealing, which was a lie. The manager hadn’t cared. He’d known Kelsie longer than he’d known Elizabeth, and in the manager’s mind, that gave her an edge. He’d fired Elizabeth without a chance to speak her piece or to explain herself, and now Elizabeth had to make a choice.
How the hell was she going to pay her rent? She had two weeks until it was due. She had two weeks to find a way to keep a roof over their heads. She would do whatever it took to keep Paige safe, happy, and warm. Her daughter was the light of her life, and it was during moments like this Elizabeth wished Paige’s father was someone else: someone who didn’t live the life that he did.
Having an illegitimate child, no matter how sweet, wouldn’t bode well for the guy, and Elizabeth knew that her only shot at keeping Paige safe was keeping her away, by keeping her hidden.
But maybe that had been a mistake. They’d been hiding for years, and he hadn’t found them. He hadn’t come after them. She’d followed his life in the news, and she’d known that he was doing quite well for himself. Elizabeth and Paige, on the other hand, were not doing so well.
Maybe it was time for Elizabeth to make a choice, albeit a hard one. She knew that if she came forward and accused him of being Paige’s dad, the story would be buried before it ever saw the light of day. No one would believe it. Nobody would care. If she went to him directly, though, he would kill her. That wasn’t even a question. He’d made that perfectly clear when she’d told him she was pregnant.
She had to do something else, though. She had to do something slimy, something that made her skin crawl. She had to make a threat. If she could reveal that Paige not only was alive, but was old enough to start asking questions, she could force the father to make a choice. He could send them money. It didn’t have to be a lot: only enough to keep them alive. It would be insurance, she thought, to make sure that she didn’t reveal his secret. More importantly, it would ensure that Paige was taken care of no matter what was happening with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth hatched her plan for blackmail, and although she knew it was a disgusting sort of thing to do, she didn’t know what other options she had. She had hoped, for awhile, that Paige’s dad would make the right choice, but when she’d told him about the baby, he had tried to kill her, so she’d run away, and she’d never looked back.
Elizabeth had spent years protecting her daughter. She pretended that Paige’s father was just some loser, some guy who had run off, and she hoped that one day she could tell her daughter the truth.
About everything.
Chapter 1
Paige
Twenty Years Later
IT WASN’T NOT MUCH to look at.
The house.
It was ordinary. Plain. Much too common for the likes of Locke, but that didn’t matter. It never mattered to him. It never had. If he wanted something, he took it. Maybe he bought it or maybe he stole it. I didn’t know. I never asked him that sort of thing. I just signed the lease and wrote the checks, and that was it.
The house...there was always something weird about it, something strange. It was always the type of place that begged to be fixed up. It should have been painted a bright, vibrant blue, but it was beige. That always struck me as strange.
Then again, a lot of things did.
There were little inconsistencies in the way the home was designed. It was big, but the interior was simple: not fancy. The flooring was new, but the faucets were worn and aged. The appliances all worked perfectly, but none of them matched. It was a strange sort of house in a strange sort of place. I tried not to worry about it too much. Instead, I put that sort of thought on the back burner, and then went to class. By the time I finally got home from work each night, it was dark. It was too dark to see the boring beige color of the rental. It was too dark to see much of anything.
That was my life.
Day in and day out.
I did the same thing every single day, but it never really bothered me because I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. It was a good life, I thought. It was normal, ordinary. It was the type of life most people only ever dreamed about. I was going to college, after all. I was making something of myself. I was doing something good, something incredible. I was doing something just for me.
And I was going to show everyone.
Everyone.
I might have been some no-good punk from the trailer park, but that was the past and my future looked bright. I was going to be a teacher. Better yet, I was going to make a difference. I was going to help change lives. I was going to help change the whole damn world.
That’s what I was going to do.
“Are you going to ring me up or what?” The cranky, shrill voice of a customer brought me out of my daydream. For a minute, I forgot I was at work. Sure, it might be a Sunday night, but that didn’t mean anything. People still needed their groceries for the week.
“Oh, sorry about that,” I mumbled, trying not to make eye contact with the bubblegum-chewing lady in the checkout lane.
“You should pay better attention, you know,” she said, still chewing her gum even louder. Her lips smacked. I could feel her eyes boring into me, but I didn’t look up at her. I couldn’t. Embarrassment washed over me in a wave I couldn’t shake. I didn’t want her to know I was bothered by this interaction, that she was making me feel humiliated. After all, I was a 27-year-old cashier. It didn’t matter that I was going to college. This lady didn’t care about that. She just thought about me as a loser.
For a brief second, I felt like the kid in the trailer park again. That kid had big dreams, yeah, but not much else. That kid was always teased and made fun of. No matter how hard that kid’s mom tried, everyone knew who she was, what she was. They knew she was poor, and that was all people ever really cared about.
Silently, I bagged the woman’s purchase. It wasn’t much. She got a pre-packaged sandwich, a six-pack of root beer, and some chips.
“Anything else?” I asked her.
Meaning cigarettes or stamps.
“Not unless you’ve got lotto tickets back there,” she said.
“Sorry,” I shook my head.
“Whatever,” she swiped her card, input her PIN, and grabbed her stuff. She left without looking back, and I didn’t speak up to wish her a good afternoon.
I should have handled it differently, I shook my head.
“Rough day?” This time, the person in my lane’s voice was nicer. Kinder. Deeper. Also, it was familiar. I looked up sharply, surprised to see the man I couldn’t stop thinking about. I was renting a house from him – albeit a weird house –and I owed him just about everything in my life. He was the one responsible for giving me a shot. I was a college-dropout who was trying for a second chance at finishing school, and I had no credit and no hope. He’d taken a big chance with me, and I wasn’t going to let him down.
“Locke,” I breathed. His blue eyes pierced into my own.
Had he seen that entire interaction?
Did he notice me daydreaming at work?
“Mr. Locke to you,” he said politely, but firmly. I knew he
meant it, too.
“Right, I’m sorry,” I instantly corrected myself. “Mr. Locke. I...um...good afternoon.”
My landlord watched quietly as I began scanning his items. Unlike Lady Bubblegum, he had an entire week’s worth of groceries. Either that or he was throwing one hell of a rager. I glanced up at him from time to time as I scanned each item. He was wearing a suit, like always. I didn’t know what his regular job was, but it was something that made him wear suits all of the time. Always. I’d never seen him not looking great.
Silently, I berated myself for not taking the time to put on makeup that morning. I’d been in class all day and then come straight to work. I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to make myself look fancy for a job like this. Not that Mr. Locke would ever notice a girl like me. Maybe I didn’t even want him to. It might be better to be invisible, I thought. A guy like Mr. Locke...well, he could chew your heart up and spit it right out if you weren’t careful.
As I filled each bag, I moved it over to place in his cart. He didn’t offer to help me. It was strange, but it didn’t bother me. I liked the idea of being helpful for Mr. Locke. There was something about him that made me want to please him.
I finished scanning his last item and totaled his purchase.
“$235.06,” I told him, reading the number. I expected him to scan his credit card, but instead, he handed me cash. I looked at it for a second and then up at him, blinking. Who carried cash anymore? And why so much?
“Keep the change,” he said, and then he was gone. There was no one else in line behind him, and I quickly counted the money to make sure he hadn’t shorted me.
He hadn’t.
He’d overpaid me by almost three hundred dollars.
“What the hell?” I whispered, staring at the cash. Maybe he meant to give me less. Maybe he thought he’d given me $240.00, which is what I originally thought he’d given me. An extra five bucks was nothing to a guy like that, but it was a lot to me. Five bucks was a coffee date. Five bucks was a cheap movie from the Wal-Mart bins. I sighed and counted the change, shoving it into my pocket. I didn’t dare leave it in the register. Patty would just keep it. Either that or she’d accuse me of stealing from someone.