L.J. Shen
Copyright © 2018 by L.J. Shen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales or events is entirely coincidental.
BANE
Cover Designer: Letitia Hasser, RBA Designs.
Interior Formatting: Stacey Blake, Champagne Book Design
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Synopsis
Playlist
Dedication
Preface
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
Keep in touch with L.J. Shen
Books By LJ Shen
Acknowledgements
Preview of The Ruthless Gentleman by Louise Bay
Preview of Midnight Blue
Prologue
Chapter One
Bane
Naked surfer. Habitual pothead. A con, a liar, a thief and a fraud.
Last I heard, he was extorting the rich and screwing their wives for a living.
Which is why I’m more than a little surprised to find him at my threshold, looking for my friendship, my services, and most puzzling of all—looking humbled.
Thing is, I’m on a boycott. Literally—I cut boys from my life. Permanently.
Problem is, Bane is not a boy, he is all man, and I’m falling, crashing, drowning in his sweet, perfect lies.
Jesse Carter
Hot as hell, cold as ice.
I wasn’t aware of her existence until a fat, juicy deal landed in my lap.
She’s a part of it, a little plaything to kill some time.
She is collateral, a means to an end, and a side-bonus for striking a deal with her oil tycoon stepdad.
More than anything, Jesse Carter is a tough nut to crack.
Little does she know, I have the f****** teeth for it.
“Can You Feel My Heart”—Bring Me the Horizon
“If You Can’t Hang”—Sleeping with Sirens
“Time to Dance”—Panic! At the Disco
“Roadgame”—Kravinsky
“Iris”—Goo Goo Dolls
“Bite My Tongue”—Meet Me at Six
“My Own Summer”—Deftones
“Famous Last Words”—My Chemical Romance
“Hideaway”—Kyko
Spoiler: the princess saves herself in this fairytale.
For Tijuana Turner and Amy Halter
It is said that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake is beautiful and hypnotizing in its own unique silhouette. They symbolize purity.
But every snowflake that’s lucky enough to settle on the ground is destined to be blemished by dirt. Snowflakes teach us the lesson that if you live long enough, you will eventually get soiled.
But even your stains won’t tarnish your beauty.
Then.
A LIAR.
A con.
A godless thief.
My reputation was a big wave that I rode, one that swallowed everyone around me, drowning every attempt to fuck with what’s mine.
I’d been known as a stoner, but power was my real drug of choice. Money meant nothing. It was tangible, and therefore easy to lose. See, to me, people were a game. One I’d always known how to win.
Move the rooks around.
Change the queen when necessary.
Guard the king at all fucking times.
I was never distracted, never deterred, and never jealous.
So, imagine my surprise when I found myself being all three at once.
It was a siren with coal black hair who robbed me of riding the biggest wave I’d seen that summer. Of my precious attention. Of my goddamn breath.
She glided from the ocean to the beach like nightfall.
I crouched down, straddling my surfboard, gawking.
Edie and Beck stopped beside me, floating on their boards in my periphery.
“This one’s taken by Emery Wallace,” Edie had warned. Thief.
“This one’s the hottest masterpiece in town.” Beck had chuckled. Con.
“More importantly, she only dates rich bastards.” Liar.
I had all the ingredients to pull her in.
Her body was a patch of fresh snow. White, fair, like the sun shone through her, never quite soaking in. Her skin defied nature, her ass defied my sanity, but it was the words on her back that made my logic rebel.
It wasn’t her curves or the way she swayed her hips like a dangling, poisonous apple that warranted my reaction to her.
It was that tattoo I had noticed when she swam close to me earlier, the words trickling down the nape of her neck and back in a straight arrow.
My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You
Pushkin.
I only knew one person who went gaga over the Russian poet, and, like the famous Alexander, he was currently six feet under.
My friends began to paddle back to shore. I couldn’t move. It felt like my balls were ten tons heavy. I didn’t believe in love at first sight. Lust, maybe, but even that wasn’t the word I was looking for. No. This girl fucking intrigued me.
“What’s her name?” I snatched Beck’s ankle, yanking him back to me. Edie stopped pedaling and looked back, her gaze ping-ponging between us.
“Doesn’t matter, bro.”
“What’s. Her. Name?” I repeated through a locked jaw.
“Dude, she’s, like, way young.”
“I will not repeat myself a third time.”
Beck’s throat bobbed with a swallow. He knew damn well that I didn’t mess around. If she was legal—it was on.
“Jesse Carter.”
Jesse Carter was going to be mine before she even knew me.
Before I even knew her.
Before her life turned upside down and her fate rewrote itself with her blood.
So here was the truth that even my lying ass wouldn’t admit later on in our story—I wanted her before.
Before she became business.
Before the truth caged her in.
Before the secrets gushed out.
I never did get to surf that day.
My surfboard broke.
Should have known it was an omen.
My heart was going to be next in line.
And for a small chick, she did one hell of a fucking job obliterating it.
Then.
The moon was full that night.
It was chuckle-worthy, if not completely tacky. What a freaking cliché, right? A pregnant, fat, ghostly-white m
oon sparkling in triumph, shining over the night that carved my destiny, my identity, my stomach, with deep, gleaming gashes.
I stared at it, so still and tranquil. Beautiful things were often so useless.
Don’t just hang there. Call the cops. Call an ambulance. Save me.
I wondered if I was going to die. If so, how long would it take Pam to notice my absence? How long before Darren would assure her I’d always been troubled? ‘Thweet,’ he’d console with his lisp, ‘But troubled.’ How long before she’d agree with him? How long before the Kit Kat on Dad’s tombstone melted under the punishing sun?
“What a shame. Such a good kid,” they’d mourn. Nothing like a dead teenager to make the entire community come together. Especially in the town of Todos Santos, where tragedies only happened in the newspapers and CNN. Oh, yes. This would give them something to talk about. A forbidden and delicious tale about the fall from grace of the current It Girl.
Realization trickled into me like a leaking faucet. Emery, Henry, and Nolan wouldn’t even get a slap on the wrist. Community service? In my dreams. The public embarrassment in the form of scowls and cancelled invitations to the country club’s events next year was reserved for me. I was the outsider. The mortal idiot who mixed with the blue-blooded royals of Todos Santos.
They’d get away with it, I knew. They’d go to college and attend parties. They would graduate and throw their stupid hats in the stupid air. They’d get married, and have babies, and reunions, and take annual skiing trips with their friends. And they’d live. God, they’d live. It was maddening to think that their heritage and money would buy their way out of justice. Because whether anyone bothered to scrape me off the road with or without a pulse tonight, I knew that I was dead. Dead in all the places that mattered.
For a passing moment, I was still the old Jesse. I tried to look at the flip side of things. The weather was nice for February. Not too hot, not too cold. Whatever desert heat clung onto my flesh was diluted by the chill of the asphalt underneath me. A lot of victims bounced back. I could go to college abroad. Darren was an expert at throwing money at problems and making them go away. I could reinvent myself. Forget it ever happened. Didn’t they use hypnosis to suppress things like that? I could ask Mayra, the shrink my parents had sent me to ever since I’d started having nightmares. Science was limitless. Case in point: my forty-year-old mom looked twenty-three thanks to Botox.
Little stones dug at my bare back. My pink lacy bra and panties were lying torn somewhere beside me, and even though my groin was numb, I felt something slithering down my thigh. Blood? Semen? Didn’t really matter at this point.
Steadfast, I blinked back at the constellation, hung high in the inky sky like a chandelier, sneering at my heartbreakingly mortal existence.
I needed to try to get up. Call for help. Save myself. But the prospect of trying to move and failing was far more paralyzing than the pain. My legs felt frozen, my hipbones crushed.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Often, I’d see my dad on the other side, like his face was permanently inked to my eyelids. That’s where he lived now. In my dreams. More vivid than the woman he’d left behind. Pam always faded to the sidelines of my story, more occupied with writing her own plot.
The sirens got closer. Louder. My heart scurried to my stomach, curling like a battered puppy.
A few more minutes, and you’ll become a piece of gossip. A cautionary tale.
The old Jesse would cry. She would scream and tell the police everything. Act normal, given the abnormal circumstances. The old Jesse would declare vengeance and do the right thing. The feminist thing. She wouldn’t let them get away with it.
The old Jesse would feel.
The ambulance sputtered at the curb, close enough for the heat to roll off the tires and the scalded rubber to stick to my nostrils. Somehow, knowing they’d called for help was even more infuriating than being left for dead, like they knew they were untouchable even after doing this to me. A stretcher opened beside me. I recited the last words I heard before they’d left me in the alleyway, a lone tear free-falling down my cheek.
My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You
“And what a meeting it was, whore. You gave a good fight.” Nolan kicked my ribs.
I’d inked this sentence thinking Emery was the man I’d been waiting for. Now the back of my neck burned. I wanted to tear the flesh off my neck and dump it right next to my ruined clothes.
With agonizing effort, I moved my left arm to cover my chest, my right arm dragging across my bare stomach, hiding what they’d carved onto my torso like I was a Halloween pumpkin. They’d made me watch as they did it. Held my jaw in their clean, smooth hands, my neck bending unnaturally to accommodate the awkward position. A punishment for my discreditable sin.
The word shone like a neon billboard on my skin for the whole world to see, and to judge, and to laugh, the letters bleeding red into my pink designer skirt.
Slut
The old Jesse would explain, and bargain, and argue.
The old Jesse would try to save face.
The old Jesse was dead.
Now.
I SUPPOSE AT THE END of the day I really didn’t give a shit.
Not about people, and not about the whole popularity contest rich people were so neck-deep in because they didn’t have the usual pain-in-the-ass problems of paying bills and functioning as responsible adults.
I was the beach bum, the stoner, the dopehead—and the drug dealer on probation. I wasn’t Mr. Popular, but people feared me enough to stay out of my way. It wasn’t a conscious choice to become a crook. My mom was not rich, and my dad was never in the picture, so I had to do what I had to do to survive in the richest town in California, and have a little more than basic cable and frozen meals for lunch.
Then there was the whole pro surfing gig I got into when I was fifteen. That cost a pretty penny, too. It was also the only thing I cared about, beyond my mom. I otherwise found myself pretty apathetic toward life. So that’s how I ended up dealing drugs early on. Pot, mainly. It was easier than you’d think. Buy burner phones at Walmart. One for suppliers. One for clients. Change them often. Never deal with people you don’t know. Never talk about your shit. Stay nice and positive. I’d paid my way through my surfing journey and high school doing it, with the exception of pickpocketing every now and then when I’d needed a new surfboard. I tended to abuse mine.
This was how I got by until the probation, anyway, but then I figured out the whole jail gig was not really for me and had to expand my business. That was around five years ago, but I never thought I’d be sitting here, in front of the most formidable dude in Todos Santos, conducting…well, business. Legitimate business, at that.
“About your nickname.” Baron Spencer, dubbed Vicious by everyone who was unfortunate enough to know him, smirked. He poured four fingers of Macallan into two glasses, staring at the golden liquid with the kind of admiration people usually reserve for their kids.
I came all the way from Todos Santos to Los Angeles to meet Spencer at his office. It made zero logistical sense. We lived ten minutes from one another. But if there was one thing I’d learned about rich assholes, it was that they liked the act. The whole enchilada. This was not a social call, so we needed to meet at his workplace, where I’d see how big his corner office was, how fuckable his secretary was, and how expensive his whiskey was.
Truth was, I couldn’t care less if we were meeting on Mars, as long as I got what I’d come here for. I crossed my ankles under his desk, my unlaced boots knocking against one another, and ignored the drink he slid across his chrome desk toward me. I preferred vodka. I also preferred not to get shitfaced before climbing on my Harley. Unlike Mr. Spencer, I didn’t have a personal driver to chauffeur me around like a legless prick. But first things first. He’d asked a question.
“My nickname?” I stroked my beard thoughtfully.
He gave me a curt don’
t-fuck-with-me nod. “Bane is awfully similar to Vicious, wouldn’t you agree?”
No, I wouldn’t, dipshit.
“Weren’t you the creator of the game Defy?” I pushed my chair off the floor, tipping it back on two legs and chewing on my cinnamon gum loudly. I should probably explain: Defy was an old school tradition at All Saints High, where students challenged other students to a fistfight. This clusterfuck was founded by the HotHoles, four kids who ruled the school like it belonged to their parents. Ironically, it sort of did. Baron Spencer’s ancestors built half the town, including the high school, and Jaime Followhill’s mom had been the principal up until six years ago.
Vicious angled his chin down, inspecting me. Dickwad had the kind of smirk that would make women moan his name even when he was on another continent. He was happily married to Emilia LeBlanc-Spencer and strictly off the market. Shame they rocked the happily-in-love vibe. Married women were a favorite flavor of mine. They never asked for more than a dirty fuck.
“Correct.”
“Well, you got the name Vicious for starting the game. I got the name Bane for killing it.” I produced a joint from my pocket. I figured Vicious smoked in his office, because his workspace bled into an open patio, and there were more ashtrays than pens on the desk. Not a job for Sherlock, apparently.
I told Spencer about the first time I was invited for a fight in my freshman year. How I hadn’t known the rules, because I’d been too busy finding creative ways to pay for my backpack and tuition to get all the ins and outs of All Saints High. How I’d broken a lunch tray on a guy’s head when he got in my face. How he’d suffered from a concussion and been saddled with the nickname SpongeBob FlatHead. How, two weeks later, he’d ambushed me outside of school, armed with six senior jocks and three baseball bats. How I’d beaten the crap out of them, too, and broken the bats for good measure. Then I told him about the trouble we’d all gotten into. The pussies whined that I’d fought too hard and hadn’t followed the rules. The name “Bane” stuck because the principal, Mrs. Followhill, accidentally pressed her elbow to the loudspeaker when she discussed my behavior with a counselor, calling me the “bane of her existence.”