~Part One~
A Serial Novella
By
Alexia Purdy
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The Fall of Sky
(Part One)
Copyright © 2013, 2014 Alexia Purdy
All rights reserved
Published by
Lyrical Lit. Publishing
Cover Design by Melancholy Muse Designs
Photography Dreamstime.com
www.alexiapurdybooks.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
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I always screw things up.
Not once, not twice, but multiple times…every time. Especially with love.
This time around, his name is Jonas, and I think I’ve met my match.
Traveling across the country, sisters Liv and Audrey Westing dream of rock stardom. When they attract the eyes of two power Cartel brothers with the right music connections, nothing can get in their way. But the brothers have secrets—secrets to die for…
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
THIS IS PART ONE OF FOUR.
ALL PARTS ARE NOW AVAILABLE!
Chapter One
Liv
FUCKING SPLINTERS! I HATED them, and now, they stuck into my flesh as I sprung over an old, rotting wooden fence and landed hard on the balls of my feet, sending pins and needles shooting up my legs. I didn’t have time to pull the slivers out. I had to keep going or he would catch up, and that would be the end of the line for me. It would all be over. All the crap that I’d been working toward for half a year would be for nothing—nothing but ashes in the wind. If I didn’t lose my pursuer, I would be in a heap of trouble, more than I already had in my hot little hands.
Which brought me to the reason I was running away from the damn bastard in the first place; it wasn’t that he didn’t deserve the wreck of the wrath I’d left behind me. If anyone deserved to get their digs torched to the ground, it was Ruben. No one would ever make me, Liv Westing, do their bidding ever again. Never. And no one would ever hurt me or my sister Audrey ever again— that, I promised myself with every living atom of my being.
I spotted our rusted, ancient station wagon down the street as I emerged from behind an old one story stucco, two bedroom shack which matched the entire block in its tired crumbling state. The poor construction was evident throughout the neighborhood and left it looking like the epitome of ghetto America, forgotten and left to the rats, human and rodent alike. I could feel eyeballs peeking from behind the dirt stained windows and stares from people sitting in their dollar store plastic lawn chairs with their paint-spotted jeans as they pointed toward me racing down the cracked asphalt of the decaying urban street. They didn’t concern me one bit. All of them were what I swore I would never become. For this, I ran. I would run from this kind of life, trapped in a rotting suburbia, until I collapsed, if I had to.
My muscles burned, and my chest felt like it was swelling up into an asthmatic fit, but I kept on. The station wagon was getting closer and closer, and I prayed Audrey had the engine already running. Relieved to spot the vapor puffing from the tailpipe, dirtying the air behind the car, I huffed in a deeper breath and booked it. Audrey was waiting and would slam the gas to get the hell out of Dodge, if needed. Thank God. I waved her down madly, gripping the wrapped canvas bag I had tucked under my left arm. I couldn’t glance behind me. I just couldn’t let myself realize the dread I could feel crawling inside if I saw Ruben closing in on me, right on my heels. Nope, couldn’t turn around now.
“Open the door!” I hollered toward Audrey, hoping she could hear me over the obnoxious humming of the engine of our vehicle. It may have been old, and it may have been worn out like an old shoe and sputter coughed like the best of the old clunkers, but it had been our home many times over and held our entire world within its belly. Now, it would be our rescuer once more, our knight in shiny armor of metal and rust.
Audrey leaned over and opened the door, giving it a good heave to send the heavy door swinging outward just in time for me to lunge inside, grip the door with my free hand, and yank it with all my strength to pull it shut.
“Go, go, go!”
The screech of tires and the smell of rubber permeated the air as the station wagon lurched forward, the belts screaming in protest but catching enough to send us on our way. My heart was racing, but I finally let myself chance a peek behind us. I could now actually hope that we had, maybe, just maybe, gotten away by the skin of our teeth.
Ruben was hollering, cursing and throwing the bat he had in his hand toward the car. He was too far behind us to catch up, and it hit with a gentle thump on the street before it went rolling away into the muck lined gutter. He was furious, his face an unhealthy scarlet, while he was drenched with sweat dripping down his light blue button up shirt from the chase he’d given.
Not bad for an out of shape swindler. The sweat stains down the front and on the sides of the blue material made me smirk at him as he slowed down, his hands on his knees as he desperately tried to catch his breath, retching out his lunch instead. His slight potbelly was in the way, the one too many Philly-steak sandwiches he loved so much were doing a number on him right now. I laughed and turned back to the road, giggling to myself as his yells faded and his robust figure disappeared in the kicked up dust cloud swirling around behind us.
“Yeah!” I couldn’t contain my glee. Damn bastard could eat our dust.
“Did you get it?” Audrey’s voice brought me back to the car, shushing my laugh as I watched her face, steady and still. Her hazel eyes focused on the street as she slowed just enough to make the turn onto the highway. The sunset made her eyes glow, like embers flickering against the sun’s last rays. Her face hid the concern that had probably eaten at her while she had waited for me as I conned Ruben out of his money stash. It was now smoothing over with relief, though caution still etched itself across her pretty, youthful face, making her look even younger than she was.
“Yep, got the whole darn thing. Ruben’s shitting bricks now!” I let out my breath, sucking in a deep slow one, still trying to catch my breath from the sprint for my life I had just done.
She nodded. “Good.”
I was the younger one. At nineteen, I’d lived my life recklessly, yet Audrey, at twenty, was decades more mature than I was. She was the well versed one, the one that was always praised by teachers and got the good grades. Me−I was the letdown, the one that never got it right. I was okay with that though. I loved her with every fiber of my being, and I looked up to her, hoping one day my wild streak would fade down and I’d become more like her. She was the good girl. I was the bad one. We balanced each other like a yin and yang. That was the
way I liked it. I had hoped it was enough for her too, at least for now.
“Oh, I accidentally set his place on fire too,” I mumbled.
“You what?” Audrey chanced a wide-eyed glance toward me before shifting her shocked face back to the road. The wagon bounced on its worn-down shocks as we jumped over the incline onto the highway, headed toward San Diego. Arizona’s arid desert had shriveled us up, and it was high time we headed to the humidity of the west coast beaches.
“Hey, I ran into his stupid candle set up. He had them all lit up. You know how much he just loves his potpourri and incense. The place smelled like some apple pie convention. Any man who likes candles that much has got to have something wrong with him,” I snickered. Pulling the worn canvas bag onto my lap from the floor where I had dropped it. I yanked at the strings that held the opening shut. Reaching in, I plucked out one of the many thick rolls of bills, squealing from excitement. I’d hit the jackpot. Discovering the safe Ruben kept haphazardly hidden in his apartment was unsecured, he’d made it too easy to rob him blind. The lock was broken from a previous robbery, and he’d neglected to get it fixed but still kept on using the darn thing. Not too smart there, if you ask me. His loss.
“How much do you think was in there?” Audrey asked. Her knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel. I was sure she was having a small heart attack even now, being so used to my crazy antics. It wasn’t until we hit the city limits of Flagstaff that she even began to relax. However, the tension in her jaw was still there, making her grind her teeth back and forth, a habit I repeatedly reminded her not to do.
“I don’t know…looks like mostly hundreds and twenties. I think there has to be at least ten…maybe fifteen thousand here.” I smiled, stuffing the bills back into the bag and tucking it under my seat. I slipped down into the soft, worn half-leather, half-weaved canvas seat, which felt more like home to me than any other place had for a long time. It sighed under my weight as I brought my legs up onto the dashboard.
“That’s a chunk of cash you managed to snatch.” Audrey didn’t look my way, but I knew that secretly, she was happy it was a good wad of money. We needed it, badly. Life as a singing duo didn’t always pay the bills on time.
The dusty windows let the last bit of the day’s light through, sending the colors turning into orange and red. The part desert, part forest around us was sparse and filled the horizon with a vastness of endless canyon road and desert land. I loved it with every fiber of my being. Travelling was an acquired taste, and we’d done our fair share and then some of that lately.
I wouldn’t trade any minute of this away for anything else.
Chapter Two