Fawn: A Dark Mafia Shifter Romance (Blackfang Barons Book 1)

by Elaina Jadin

I think about the woman dancing, her body ready to be broken. To match what I sense is inside of her. But more than that, the trade will give her a chance to get away from Bryan. I don’t even know her, but whether I’d accepted the trade or not, I’d already decided I would see to it that her ties to that asshole are permanently severed.

  Closing my eyes, I picture her in my mind, allowing myself a single moment to dwell on the vision of her dancing. The way she moved so fluidly, like a sultry ballerina, poised and graceful, even as she shed her clothes and tempted me with the curves of her slender body.

  When I don’t offer details on the trade, Kade takes another approach. “You must think it’s a good deal to let that scumbag keep breathing, much less give him another dime.”

  “Actually, I think it’s a terrible deal, and I’m going to regret not ripping his throat out and being done with it,” I tell Kade with a sigh. “But fuck it, I went with it in the moment. We’ll be receiving a guest tomorrow evening. Someone who will be staying with us for a while, to work off Bryan’s debt.”

  “Okay.” He simply nods, accepting the turn of events without further questions as he steers the car up the highway on-ramp.

  I stare silently out the windshield at the red glow of the tail lights from the vehicles ahead of us, but my mind is still replaying images of her. The way she caught my eyes, begging for my attention. The challenge I saw in her gaze. And the intoxicating scent of her pheromones, even from across the club.

  I pull out my phone, needing more information. For starters, her real name. And everything else about her, even the stuff she hopes no one knows.

  “You ready to deal with Sampson?” Kade asks as I finish sending a text message.

  A low growl builds in my chest. Fucking Sampson and his merry band of assholes.

  Fox shifters. They always think they’re so damned clever, especially the Redtails of East River. They’ve been slowly encroaching on our territory this year, and now they’ve intercepted a shipment of weapons that was meant for us.

  That shit’s going to end tonight.

  I force the thoughts of Prudence from my mind. The night is young and the fight ahead of us needs all my focus. There’s a reason I’m the alpha leader of the Blackfang Barons. When blood needs to be shed, I don’t depend on my grunt soldiers to take care of it. Whether by bullet or claw, I’m ready to make a point tonight in person.

  Which means I can’t let myself become distracted by the promise of a woman, no matter how eager I am to test her boundaries and find out exactly where her breaking point is. I wonder how pretty her face will look as I drive her to the edge, over and over. She’ll earn every penny of the money owed to us, to the Barons.

  My phone vibrates with a confirmation text from my contact on the police force. I’ll have a full background report on her tomorrow morning. Excellent.

  Settled for the moment, I reach behind me to the back seat and pull the slim black case onto my lap. Flipping it open, I assess the two forty-caliber handguns lying inside and check the extra magazines. Good to go.

  Then I pull out the modified shoulder holsters. Kade will be wearing a matching set. They’re specially designed to stay tethered to us even if we shift. Not that we can use the pistols while in wolf form, but we damn sure don’t want to chance our enemies getting their hands on them.

  As I pull the holsters on, my blood simmers and heat builds in my muscles at the promise of mayhem and bloodshed. I load a magazine into one of the pistols with a satisfying click. “Time for a fox hunt.”

  5

  Jemma

  While picking up after Bryan, I ask myself why I’m still with him. But I know the answer. It’s the same one as it was a year ago. It’s better than being homeless. Some people are strong enough to survive out there. I doubt I’d last a week.

  I remind myself of that as I fill up a trash bag with the empty beer cans that litter the coffee table. I don’t know why I bother, since tomorrow he’ll cover the table again. I skipped a few days of picking up once, and he hardly noticed. He just knocks the empties on the floor to make room for fresh ones.

  Bryan claims to work too much to have time to clean, nevermind that he hasn’t actually told me what he does. The money was decent for a while, though, and combined with my earnings from the club, we’ve been able to keep my aunt’s apartment. I try not to think about how much she’d disapprove of him, of how we live. She’d always kept this place spotless before she died.

  She tried teaching me her routine, but honestly, I didn’t care about learning to clean. Or anything, really. Seeing your parents being brutally murdered will do that to a girl.

  It seemed fruitless, all her endless dusting and fighting with the vacuum only to do it all over again the next day. Truth is, I hardly cared about leaving my room back then. Cleaning imaginary spots off an already shiny table seemed like an utter waste of energy.

  One of the cans is half full and I think about downing it. I hardly drink anymore, not since the memories began to break through the drunken haze. The only reason I turned to alcohol in the first place was to numb my brain enough to avoid the nightmares. Now it’s pointless. Plus, it pisses Bryan off if I drink for the hell of it, since it’s a waste of his precious beer.

  I sink onto the lumpy, faded couch and scrunch my nose at the stale yeast smell that wafts up from the fabric. He probably passed out, spilled his beer all over it, and didn’t bother to clean it up.

  The half-full trash bag drops to the floor and I scrub my face with my hands, trying to find the energy to keep going with all this shit.

  The sun is setting, the apartment growing darker. The only light on is the small bulb above the stove, but I don’t care. The shadows help me avoid facing reality—something I’m good at now. I have the night off from Lucky Devils, even though I know we need the money an extra shift would bring in.

  As I watch the last gleam of sunlight fade away and shadows fill the room, the memory of him comes back. My heart pounds and a warm flush spreads across my skin.

  He’d never been there before, that much I know. I would have noticed him. I don’t know who he is or if I’ll ever lay eyes on him again, but apparently I made an impression. The bouncer, Tony, caught me in the parking lot as I was leaving and gave me a hundred-dollar bill, saying it was from a man who didn’t give his name. But from the description I managed to pull out of Tony, I know it was him.

  I didn’t mention it to Bryan when I got home. Call it instinct or intuition, but I feel it’s better he doesn’t know. Both that someone thinks I’m worth more than a few crumpled dollars and that I have extra cash. I tossed my velvet bag on the counter for him to rifle through, then stealthily tucked the crisp hundred-dollar bill and the sketch of the man into the bottom of my tampon box.

  Knowing the money is stashed away makes something that feels a lot like hope flicker in my chest. Like maybe I can get away from Bryan one day.

  One day, I’ll leave him. Lately, it’s a promise I make to myself on a weekly basis, even though it’s nothing more than a hollow fantasy. He claims to love me, and on the good nights it’s easier to remind myself of that.

  On the bad nights, I want to run. To head out the front door and never stop running.

  But Bryan won’t ever let me go.

  As if I didn’t already know, he constantly reminds me that I have no one to run to and nowhere else to call home. That if I ever think of leaving, I’ll just wind up living on the streets with the rest of the freaks. I’m the crazy girl that has a panic attack whenever I hear a dog bark. The girl that should be loaded up on anti-psychotics, if she could afford them. The girl with no family. The one that even a year of therapy and a team of psychiatrists couldn’t fix.

  The door to our apartment opens, the streetlamp filling the room with an orange glow.

  “Why the fuck aren’t any lights on?”

  Bryan’s in a bad mood, and I stand up quickly, grabbing the trash bag from the floor. Panic makes my heart flutter, expecting him to b
itch at me for sitting down while the apartment is still covered in his mess.

  Then my twisted mind immediately jumps to the next thought—I wonder if he’ll want to fuck me tonight?

  At one point, I thought he was the most attractive man I’d ever seen. But now? His lanky form no longer fills me with lust. His clothes are wrinkled and out of style. His hair is too long, unkempt, and his face is half covered in stubble. He looks like he’s trying to be a hipster, but he’s too cheap and lazy to bother with an actual effort.

  And the idea of his hands on me when he tries to be sweet makes my stomach curdle. I don’t want his words of love and soft kisses. I know they aren’t genuine. I don’t need the charade.

  If he’s angry, though, I might get to enjoy our activity in the bedroom. When he’s mad, he’s harsher with me, sometimes even pulling my hair or squeezing his fingers around my throat.

  Shame fills me and I’m glad the shadows hide my face. It’s bad enough I’m fucked up in the head, but in my physical desires, too? Getting off on someone rage-fucking you probably isn’t healthy. I don’t need a therapist to tell me that.

  “I honestly didn’t notice,” I tell him, not meeting his eyes. “I’ve been cleaning.”

  I focus on the coffee table again, trying to separate the cans from the fast food wrappers. At least I can sell the cans to the aluminum recycling place and squirrel the money away. It’s not much, but it’s a small sliver of hope to add to the tiny pile of funds I’ve secretly stashed away.

  “Well hurry up and finish,” he orders as he flops down on the sagging couch. “Then get me a beer. Just one. That should give you plenty of time to get ready.”

  I straighten, my stomach roiling with surprise. “Get ready? For what?”

  “Since you did so good last night, I need to take you with me,” he says, as if that explains everything.

  A seed of worry plants itself in my gut and takes root. I draw in a deep breath, trying to keep my voice even. “Take me where?”

  “It’s just business, Jemma,” he says with a huff, as though I’ve wildly inconvenienced him with my simple question. “Can you get me that goddamn beer now, or are you just going to stand there gawking at me?”

  I don’t say anything; I go to the fridge and pull out his beer. It’s the last one, and when I tell him as much, he laughs. It isn’t one filled with humor, but it isn’t bitter, either. It’s the sound of elation.

  “Don’t worry,” he tells me, a satisfied sneer on his lips, “after tonight, the beer will never run out.”

  I roll my eyes, glad that the dim lighting in the living room hides my skepticism. Bryan’s always fantasizing about get-rich-quick schemes. None of them pan out, of course, because there’s no magic money tree. Not that he ever tells me about his failures, but it’s hard to miss when suddenly we’re short on rent money and he’s sulking around the apartment with a wounded ego.

  “Why do I need to come with you?” He’s never asked me this before.

  His eyes find me in the dark, and as he stares at me, dragging his gaze down my body and back up, I realize I no longer find the move attractive. Not from him. Not for a long time now. Him looking at me like that used to mean we were going to tumble into bed together.

  But now it makes me uneasy, as if he’s assessing my value. Next thing I know, he’ll be pulling out a scale and running a tape measure around my waist to check my weight every week. Gotta make sure his investment stays in tip-top shape so she can keep shaking her ass.

  “I need my best girl on my arm,” he says, pitching his voice into the tone he used to use with me all the time back when we first met, the tone he uses to get his way.

  “Right,” I say, already moving toward the bedroom.

  I don’t even bother to point out how gross it sounds that I’m his best girl, as if he has a whole brothel full of women to take his pick from. My silent compliance is better than fighting, and going with him tonight has got to be better than cleaning this pigsty of an apartment.

  I close the bedroom door with a soft click and rest my forehead against it. It takes three breaths before I work through my animosity enough to focus on the task he’s given me.

  I have no idea what he expects of me tonight, and I can’t help but think of the cryptic phone calls and odd hours he keeps. I’m pretty sure whatever he does isn’t on the right side of legal. I know about the gritty criminal empires in the city, and I’ve heard the gruesome rumors about the powerful men who run them. Bryan is thirsty enough to want to work for them, to pull some con jobs or get entangled in some other shady scheme.

  But if me being there means our bills get paid, then I can handle it. And I know I can’t screw this up, even if I don’t know what it is. Bryan’s already in a mood, and I’m not stupid enough to push him.

  So, I pull on my favorite dress. It’s a modest length, ending an inch above the knees, but it hugs my body and gives my lithe frame the appearance of curves I don’t really have. With the right bra, I can even get a teasing amount of cleavage with the sweetheart neckline and capped sleeves.

  It was bought for cheap, like everything I own. Maybe five dollars on the bargain rack at the local thrift store. But it makes me feel good. I hardly have a reason to wear it and when I first bought it, Bryan asked me what it was for. I told him it was for going on interviews because I wanted to apply for a better job. He didn’t say anything, he just scoffed and rolled his eyes.

  Still, even if he doesn’t appreciate it, I know others do—I’ve felt other men’s eyes on me when I wear this dress. The looks I get are of a different caliber than the stares I receive on stage. Their eyes don’t say ‘take me in the back room and grind on me.’ In this dress they say, ‘Daaamn, girl… I’m gonna treat you to a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant before I take that pretty dress off.’

  I slip on my black ballet flats and sweep a brush through my hair before pinning it back into a French twist. I dig out the small cosmetic case with the few luxury items I splurged on last year during an after-Christmas sale and put a light dusting of the expensive makeup on my face. I never use it for my shifts at the club, but I need the extra confidence boost tonight.

  The last step is putting on the one piece of nice jewelry I own. It’s a pendant necklace, a small emerald surrounded by real diamonds. It’s the only piece of my mother I have left. It was her favorite necklace, given to her by my dad for their ten-year anniversary.

  After I clasp it around my neck, I finger the small emerald pendant and admire how it lays against my skin, accentuating both the hollow of my throat and the neckline of the dress.

  It looks almost as beautiful on me as it did on my mom. The sting of unshed tears burns at my eyes and nose. God, how much I miss her. And my dad, too. I need to go visit their gravesites, I haven’t been there in almost a year.

  Bryan bangs on the door, startling me out of my thoughts. I quickly sniff several times and blink back the moisture welling in my eyes, gently dabbing them with a tissue to avoid smearing my fancy makeup.

  I grab my jacket and open the door, presenting myself to him. “Is this good?”

  “It’s fine,” he says, but he’s already walking away. Not even so much as an appreciative glance. “We need to hurry. You’re making us late.”

  I’m really tempted to grab an empty beer bottle from the side table and throw it at his head, but his reaction wouldn’t be worth the brief satisfaction.

  Instead, I follow him silently into the night, locking the door behind us, and by the time I get to his small twenty-year-old car, he’s already cranked the ignition the three times it takes to get it started. It sputters to life and beneath the uneven noise of the rattling engine, there’s a small whine coming from under the hood.

  “Sounds like it needs a new timing belt,” I tell Bryan as I get into the car and buckle up.

  If I had the tools, I could change it myself. In fact, this rusting junk heap could keep me busy for days. If someone had taken a car in this shape to the garage m
y dad worked at, he’d have to told them to save their money and sell it for scrap.

  Bryan snorts at my comment. “Yeah, it doesn’t matter. After tonight I’m getting a new car.”

  “The job’s that big?” I ask in surprise.

  We’ve never had that kind of money. Not even close. I give him an excited smile, hoping that he’ll tell me more about where we’re headed and the role I need to play.

  “Yeah, but don’t worry about it, just do everything I say and I’ll be sitting pretty.”

  “Okay,” I say, even though it’s definitely not okay.

  I want to know where he’s taking me, why he’s taking me there, and exactly what the fuck I’m expected to do tonight. But Bryan’s clearly not feeling generous enough to clue me in and if I press the issue, it’ll inevitably lead to a fight.

  6

  Jemma

  It’s nearly ten o’clock by the time we pull up to a building on the other side of the city. It’s only five stories tall, but all the windows are dark, and the street lights are flickering on and off, making it look imposing.

  It’s an unseasonably warm fall night, with the temperature still in the sixties, but I shiver all the same as I get out of the car. There’s something ominous about the building, something that fills me with trepidation. The last time the hair stood up on my neck like this… the last time I felt foreboding twisting in my stomach this much…

  I have to swallow three times before I can speak. “Are we going inside or meeting someone out here?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch something moving, and I swear I see the shadow of a massive dog slip into the alley. My stomach leaps into my throat and I step closer to Bryan, even though I doubt he’d be able to hold his own against a rabid squirrel, much less a feral city dog.

  “Yeah, inside. Just stay quiet and remember to do what I say.”

  He sounds comfortable enough, as though this is just another night of work for him and he visits this place all the time, so I nod, chewing on my lips. I decide I must be imagining things, that my mind is playing tricks on me, but I still follow close behind him as he walks up the three wide steps to the main doors.