my lips say the words aloud. “You and Oscar are going to run an errand of your own.” He reaches out to take my hand, pressing something into my palm. I’m overwhelmed with the feeling of burning, certain that every place his fingers touched must be blistered beyond recognition. When I look down though, everything is as it should be, but for a single key. “Don’t say I never did anything nice for you, princess.” He leans forward, cupping the back of my head and pressing a scalding kiss to my lips before he stands back up.
“You and I have an errand to run?” I ask, looking askance at Oscar and doing my best not to curl my lip. Callum rises from his chair, leaning down to whisper against my ear before he goes.
“Good luck,” he says with a small chuckle, disappearing into the house with Vic.
“And then there were two,” I say, saluting Oscar with the joint the way Cal did to Vic. He stares at me with a wrinkled nose and a deep frown, like one might stare at a pile of dog shit. “What is this key for?”
“Well,” he says, reclining back in the chair and letting his long body stretch out like a cat’s. That’s what it is, what he reminds me of. A fucking housecat, one who’s well-fed but kills for fun, one with sharp claws and glistening canines. The thing is, for his threats to be effective, I’d have to be a mouse. Maybe, once upon a time, when the Havoc Boys chased me through the woods, I was one. Not anymore. “Despite the fact that you’ve barged into a smoothly running operation and thrown it entirely off its rails, Victor wants to continue with your list. I suggested we step back from it and deal with more pertinent matters, but apparently your cunt is made of glitter and rainbows.”
I smirk at him, taking another drag on the joint.
“Curious about it?” I quip, raising an eyebrow, but Oscar just smiles at me like a shark who’s scented blood.
“Not particularly. I’d rather eat razor blades. What are you doing here anyway, Bernadette?”
“Seeking vengeance, finding justice,” I reply with a smooth smile, wondering how I’d have felt if Havoc really had come back at me with some bullshit price. They can’t have known how deeply the thorn of want had embedded itself in my heart, how desperately I wanted to be one of them.
On the inside, underneath all of my ramblings about revenge for Pen and safety for Heather, am I just as selfish as the rest of the world?
“Boring,” Oscar replies, standing up from the chair and loosening his tie. “And here I was actually starting to wonder if you were more interesting than that.” He pauses next to me, leans down, and captures the joint between two inked fingers. “Now, let’s go find your foster brother, shall we?” He flicks the joint into the ashtray and then disappears inside, leaving me to stare down at the smoking ruins with wide eyes.
My foster brother, Eric Kushner. Name number six on my list.
Well, fuck.
Eric Kushner lives in a builder’s grade McMansion on a quiet street. His is, surprisingly, the prettiest house on the cul-de-sac. It's a three-story white colonial with a red door and spiral-cut boxwoods that frame the large porch. He's even added to the charming ambiance of his all-American house by putting a bulb with a flickering flame in his outdoor light, making it look like a gas lantern.
When I first saw it, at age eleven, I was impressed.
It looked like such a nice place. When I walked in and smelled the lemon and sugar scent from the freshly baked cookies, I thought it smelled like a nice place, too. My foster father, a man named Todd Kushner, seemed like a nice guy, too. He was relatively young, only sixteen years older than his eldest son, and an investment banker to boot.
The Kushner Family was my first experience with the foster care system, and it was everything I'd dreamed it would be. I'd fantasized about what life would be like when I escaped my mother, when I finally had a real home with people who loved me, who wouldn't hit me, who'd buy me pretty dresses and fancy toys.
For about two weeks, the Kushners were everything I'd dreamed they could be. At first, I was disappointed that there was no mother figure here for me and Pen and Heather. But Eric and Todd, they