by Callie Hart
“I have excellent hearing!” my father yells from the kitchen. “You are so screwed.”
I flinch, screwing my eyes shut. “He’s basically going to be unbearable all night,” I admit. “Just don’t pay any attention and you’ll be fine.”
“Hey, Alex? Any idea what cyanide tastes like?” Dad hollers.
Alex glares over my shoulder. “Is he serious?”
I try not to laugh, but I give in in the end. If I don’t laugh, I’m only going to end up crying. “If he asks, it’s probably better to tell him you slept on the couch when I came over the other night. Just…act natural.”
“No one in the history of being told to act natural has ever acted natural,” Alex fires back. He does step into the house, though, essentially sealing his fate. He wraps his arms around me, stealing a kiss. I’m flushed and a little breathless when he releases me, holding a finger to my lips, pretending to shush me.
I pretend to bite that finger in return. “I’m glad Jackie let you bring Ben.”
“Yeah. Well. She’s actually been okay with me recently. I know. Shocker. Still insisted on coming to pick him up from here, but I’ve got him until eight-thirty.”
“And after that?”
Alex shrugs. “I’m yours to torture as you see fit.”
My pulse quickens as I look up into his eyes, bracing myself for what I want to say next. He can’t have had any idea, but I do have something planned for after dinner, and it really is going to be torture. I’m panicking, my anxiety through the roof, my—
Alex cups his hands around my face, frowning deeply. “Hey. Hey, what is it? What’s wrong?”
He’s so damn attuned to me. I’m pretty sure my expression is still under control, but he can tell I’m freaking the fuck out. “I—I want to talk to them. About…what happened at Leon’s party. Tonight.”
Alex’s eyes round out. “Oh.”
“And…” Jesus Christ, this is hard. “I was wondering…”
“You want me to stay with you. You want me to be there,” he says quietly.
“Yes. I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask. It’s definitely not going to be fun, but—”
He cuts me off with his mouth. The kiss is light and gentle, designed to reassure and calm. Pulling me to him, he presses me up against him, and suddenly I’m safe in the circle of his arms. Sweeping a piece of hair back behind my ear, he rests his forehead against mine, his eyes fierce and firm. “Silver, you don’t need to ask. I will always be wherever you need me to be. I will sit right beside you. I will hold your hand. I will carry you out of here and steal you away if that’s what you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
I’ve made it through so much recently without crying. The days I spent sitting in a chair next to Alex’s hospital bed, not sleeping, not eating, hoping and praying every second that he was going to be okay, were the worst days of my life, but I was determined to be there every time he opened his eyes. I was strong for him because he needed me. Now, it’s me who needs him once again, and boy is he showing up. “I love you, Argento. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. Just you wait and see.”
And I do believe him. I trust him. I know that he’s right. He’s always right because he’s Alessandro Moretti…and despite everything, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, he managed to accomplish something that I told him couldn’t be done.
The Rebel of Raleigh High managed to pull down the moon…and now nothing is impossible.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR…
Dearest Reader,
Thank you so much for reading The Rebel of Raleigh High. Some pretty tough subject matter was covered within the pages of this book, and I know it might have been hard for some of you to read. I apologize for that. I tried my best to handle such sensitive topics with care and compassion, and I truly hope that came through in the story.
This isn’t a story about violence and hatred, though. It’s a story about strength and resilience, and at the end of the day I really have to hope that that shone through in the words.
Silver and Alex’s story is far from over. The Rebel of Raleigh High started out as a standalone story, but as I neared the end of the book it became very apparent that they weren’t done telling their tale. In light of this, there will be a further book coming out (fingers crossed) in late June.
If you’re interested in finding out what Alex and Monty have planned for Jacob Weaving, and if you want to know what happens with Ben, then keep an eye out for the cover reveal and title announcement that will be coming soon on facebook and other social media platforms. I promise I won’t keep you waiting long.
Once more, thank you for reading this book. It was a labor of love to write, and I adored these characters and connected with them on such a base level. Their struggle and their plight to overcome resonated with me as I wrote, and it’s my sincere hope that it spoke to you in some way, too.
All my love,
Callie x
P.S. Keep on turning the pages for a VERY special surprise!
Surprise!
Yes, that’s right! Coming in late August, Zeth Mayfair will be getting an entirely new book, and this chapter in his journey is going to blow some minds!
Want a little taste? Who am I to refuse…
Enjoy!
PROLOGUE
The acrid tang of Gasoline bites at the back of my nose. Tonight, death lingers on the cold mid-winter Seattle air. Somewhere, across the snow-laden winter city, a woman is dying in a pool of her own blood. She’s alone, her fingers half-curled around a crucifix, her dark hair spun out around her head like a sheet of rumpled black silk. The light in her eyes is fading, the pulse fluttering in the hollow of her throat gradually slowing. Her cheeks, normally flushed with all the brightness and enthusiasm of youth, are leeching of color, turning waxy and sallow.
It’s within my power to save this woman.
It’s possible to stem the flow of her vital life force before it evacuates her body beyond the point of no return.
I’m the only person who can bring her back from the brink.
But I don’t.
I turn my back on the steaming, surging, churning city, and I face the mountain at my back instead. I’ve been standing still for so long that the leather of my jacket crackles with ice as I twist around and look up into the looming darkness.
Not too long ago, a house stood on the side of this mountain. A woman lived there. A doctor. I somehow came to find myself there, too, pulled out of the filth and the muck of my own miserable existence and allowed to exist within her orbit, a miracle I never envisioned for myself. We had a life together there, within that house. A strange, off-kilter, chaotic kind of life, but also peaceful. Also, wonderful.
We created a life there.
Not just a routine, or a home.
An actual life.
Ten fingers.
Ten toes.
Intense, fierce brown eyes, and wild, dark curls.
A tiny body, bursting with so much potential and promise.
All of it gone now.
All of it shade, and dust, and ashes, and smoke…
Yes, on the other side of the city, with shards of ice forming within the narrow canals of my veins and the marrow of my bones gripped by frost, I ignore the pleas of my conscience and I allow a woman to die.
She deserves her fearful, sour, undignified death.
She deserves so much worse.
My hand closes around the gun in my pocket, the metal lamenting as my grip tightens around the handle; it’s as if the weeping steel knows what comes next. As if it somehow senses all of the pain and destruction I am about to cause with its sleek, cool, heavy form in my grasp.
It can’t know, though. How can it? It’s just a gun. It’s enough that I know what will happen over the next few hours, and days, and weeks.
Men will die.
Mothers will lose their sons.
Children will be orphaned.
Even more blood will flow, until the snowdrift
No matter the cold. The whole world will burn before I’m through with it.
There will be no rest.
There will be no hesitation.
There will be no mercy.
For the black-hearted few who took that most precious from me…I am the apocalypse. I am the darkness. I am the night.
I am the storm that will not be weathered.
CHAPTER ONE
ZETH
Once upon a time…
That’s how all good fairytales start. A princess lies asleep for a hundred years, awaiting the kiss of her one true love to waken her from her slumber. A beautiful young woman is cruelly oppressed by her evil step mother, only to be rescued by a fairy godmother and a magical glass slipper. A child visits her ailing grandmother, bringing her food and drink, only to discover an interloper masquerading as an old woman in her bed.
This story is far removed from those tales of whimsy. For starters, there’s no magic here. None of what follows hereafter is make-believe. Good does not always win out. The righteous do not always overcome. The vile and the wicked are not always punished.
Will there be a happy ending? Who knows? Our rough accounting of what happened in Seattle this winter has only just begun and not yet reached its climax. But one thing’s for certain: this story will deliver everything and nothing, depending on your heart’s desire.
Let’s start it off right, and in a true and proper fashion.
Once upon a time…
…there was a murderer named Zeth Mayfair.
******
All organized crime syndicates possess a figurehead. All gangs, mobs, and families are led by one power hungry, vicious tyrant who calls the shots and makes the decisions. And at that man’s side stands another. A right hand. A tool, both blunt implement and finely-honed weapon, carrying out their boss’ every violent wish and savage desire. I was that man, that tool and that weapon. I killed, I stole, I kidnapped, I broke bones, and I did not give a fuck about the consequences.
Many people would be ashamed of a past like mine, but sometimes I like to look back on those days with an abstract kind of fondness. Yes, it was a life of chaos. Did my lifestyle see me injured and hurt? Sure, every now and then. Was I in danger of losing my liberty and my freedom? Of course. Fuck, I did end up in jail once, though ironically not for a crime of my own doing (prison royally sucked. I wouldn’t recommend it). But that kind of a life has its benefits. You keep your fucking mouth shut. You do what you’re told, and you don’t ask questions.
Simple.
Easy.
No worrying. No making the hard decisions for yourself. Everything is black and white. Yes and no. A list of tasks that must be completed in order, and at the end of it all a hefty payday lands in your lap.
But then…I met her: a woman with hair the color of molten chocolate, honey, cinnamon and gold, and eyes as dark and incomprehensible as a bottomless pit. Some people might say Sloane Romera, resident at St. Peter’s of Mercy Hospital, saved my life. Others might say she ruined it. I suppose it all depends on your perspective. Either way, I fell for her, against my better judgement, knowing everything would change and nothing would ever be the same again. The man who had pulled my strings for so long no longer controlled me. The murdering ended.
And then, all of a sudden, out of fucking nowhere, I was a father.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
My breath catches in my throat.
He’s not breathing. He’s not fucking breathing. Leaping to my feet, I close the space between the chair I was sitting in by the window and the small crib on the other side of the room, my heart a pulsing, thumping lump of meat trying to climb its way up my throat.
The child lies on his back, hands balled into tiny fists, thrown up on either side of his head. His lips are parted, his cheeks stained a rosy red, his dark eyelashes fanned out against the pale white plumpness of his cheeks. There are tiny little lions with shaggy manes on his onesie. I stare at his narrow, still chest with the intensity of fifty thousand burning suns, adrenalin making a racetrack of my circulatory system—feels like the goddamn Indie 500’s taking place beneath my ribcage—and I will his chest to move. My palms are slick with sweat; I’m gonna have a fucking heart attack. Where the hell is my cell pho—
In…
Out…
In…
Out…
I nearly fucking keel over and weep when his fingers spasm and he takes another deep, steady, even draw of breath.
Jesus fucking Christ.
God…
I swallow down the panic that just rose up and closed its fingers around my throat, shaking myself out, but my body won’t seem to comply. I’ve never known relief like this before. I thought I’d be crushed and I would die under the weight of the relief whenever I held Sloane in my arms and I knew that she was safe, but this is something else altogether. Fatherhood has wrought a dangerous change in me. The earth’s still spinning around the sun. As far as I know, the universe is still expanding at a terrifying speed, rushing outward in every direction, larger, vaster with each and every second, too immense for my mind to even comprehend.
But these scientific facts might as well be fairytales to me these days. The earth will do as it will, but I am locked within the gravitational pull of the small child sleeping peacefully in this crib. The universe can continue charging away from itself, speeding into the unknown, but my universe is shrinking by the day. Now, it seems as though my universe is comprised of the space occupied by just two human beings.
And it’s right where I belong.
ALSO BY CALLIE HART…
FREE TO READ ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!
DARK, SEXY, AND TWISTED! A BAD BOY WHO WILL CLAIM BOTH YOUR HEART AND YOUR SOUL.
Read the entire Blood & Roses Series
FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
WANT TO DISAPPEAR INTO THE DARK, SEDUCTIVE WORLD OF AN EX-PRIEST TURNED HITMAN?
Read the Dirty Nasty Freaks Series
FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
LOVE A DARK AND DANGEROUS MC STORY? NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO SLOANE’S SISTER?
Read the Dead Man’s Ink Boxset
FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
WANT AN EMOTIONAL, DARK, TWISTED STANDALONE?
Read Calico!
FREE on Kindle Unlimited
WANT A PLOT THAT WILL TAKE
YOUR BREATH AWAY?
Read Between Here and the Horizon
FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
WANT A NYC TALE OF HEARTBREAK, NEW LOVE, AND A HEALTHY DASH OF VIOLENCE?
Read Rooke
FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
KEEP READING TO MEET FIX MARCOSA…
Face of an angel. Body of a god. And a mouth so dirty he could make the devil blush…
ONE
LIBERTY FIELDS
SERA
“Ma’am, I don’t give a fuck what your GPS is telling you to do. The road’s closed. We have power lines down all over the goddamn place and water up to our necks. Now turn around go back the way you came before I have your car towed.”
The man wearing the high visibility vest, leaning in through the window of my rental, looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. His name was Officer Grunstadt, and he’d eaten curry for dinner; I knew this because he’d been blasting me with his spicy breath while I’d been arguing with him about the state of the road up ahead for the last ten minutes. The twitch in his left eye was a recent display of his frustration. The rain had fogged up his glasses, and large, fat water droplets coursed down his face as he, once again, pointed back in the direction I’d just come from. “Liberty Fields is only thirty miles away. There are two motels there and a bed and breakfast, though I think the bed and breakfast was already fully booked the last I heard. You can figure out what you want to do tomorrow, once the storm’s died down.”
“I can’t go back to Liberty Fields. I have to get to Fairhope, Alabama, in two days, or I’m going to miss my sister’s wedding.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart. Catch a flight.”
“Every flight out of Rawlins and Laramie is canceled until further notice. I need to keep driving, officer. You have to understand, I—”
“I do understand, miss. I understand perfectly well. You’re a pretty young millennial with a bad case of ‘I always get my way.’ You’re not used to being told no, and you want me to break the rules. Unfortunately, I have a twenty-one year old daughter, and I’m used to all this…” He reaches out his hand, gesturing at my face, “…nonsense,” he finishes.
Asshole. Rude, small town punk asshole. “Firstly, sir, please do not gesticulate in my general direction like I’m a piece of trash you found at the side of the road. Secondly, I am not a millennial. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m a successful business owner. The reason why I’m successful is because I’ve worked my ass off, not because I’ve pouted, sulked, or convinced anyone to break rules for me. I know the storm’s bad, but the winds are calming down, and Waze does say the road is open and clear just another mile up ahead. You have no idea what stresses I’m dealing with, or the consequences I’ll have to face if I don’t make it to this wedding on time. So just let me through the damn blockade.”
-->