Running from hell isnʼt easy. Especially when thereʼs someone dragging you back down into it.
Belligerent, brash and always in shades of black, Freya is hardly a lady. Hidden away by her father, sheʼs lived a normal life despite being born into the...
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5 Years Later
SWEAT DRIPS DOWN my back from the New York summer heat. Any other day, I would hose myself down outside, but today, I can’t risk being seen. It’s my sister’s engagement party today.
I should be sitting next to her, holding her hand and telling her that her makeup looks perfect. Instead, I’m hidden away in the opposite corner of the house. In the garage. Fixing up a car. I leave the garage door slightly open, so I don’t boil alive.
Papa wanted to send me away to one of his safe houses along the East Coast. After much reluctance, I’m castigated to the garage instead, and told by my lovely Mama to “stay far away from the engagement or so help me God.”
That seems to be her favourite phrase.
It was supposed to be a storage room, but after I realised how much I actually enjoyed fixing up cars – and how much it distracted me from Ana’s stupid lessons on Surviving the Costas 101 – Papa redid the place and gifted it to me for my eighteenth birthday. Along with a brand new Birkin. But the garage means more to me. It’s my sanctuary on most days. On most days, I love the smell of car grease—the leather and fresh wax.
But as much as I love the garage, I wanted to be there for Ana today. I wanted to be the soft, loving younger sister instead of the wild one always causing trouble.
She is giving her life away, after all.
Being married away to the Costa family like some brood mare. And thanks to her Russian blood, she’ll always be cast as an outsider, never truly accepted as part of the Cosa Nostra. Just existing to bear children with the Costa name.
I’m not angry anymore. We all knew the day would come. Ana’s twenty-three. We held them off for two years. They wanted her when he was twenty-one — my age, now.
I scoff to myself, annoyance brimming as I wash the engine of the ’89 Corniche. Metallica roars through my earphones while I slave away. It’s a gargantuan, messy task — washing out engines, and you can’t really do it with most of the newer models nowadays. I lower my head, trying to get a closer look the engine, when I feel someone’s gaze lingering on me.
A tall figure stands at the entrance of the garage. He ducks his head under the partially open garage door. With light brown curls and soft brown eyes, he smiles softly at me as he gazes at the state of my clothes. Mine is stained with oil and grime, while he’s wearing the cleanest plain white shirt paired with black shorts.
I pull out my earphones slowly, eyes wide. “Ben?”
He passes me a genial look. “Thought you’d be back here.”
I’ve known Benjamin since high school. He used to help me out with some homework and skate with me for hours in the rink. I hardly brought over friends, considering the nature of my family’s business, but Ben came around a handful of times, mostly because I snuck out to the rink and needed a ride back. I made sure Papa never saw him, afraid of what would’ve happened to him.
