Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,1

out on me, my hand thrust through the surface and balmy air washed over my palm.

With a snarl of determination, I kicked harder, clawing the dirt away from me until I managed to push my head free of it and I sucked down a shuddering breath of relief.

I coughed and heaved as I pressed my cheek against the cool earth, still half buried beneath it and suddenly lacking in all energy as I just fought to calm my thrashing heart.

The dim, pale blue light of dawn fell through the trees which surrounded me and I slowly cracked my eyes open as I tried to get my bearings. The sound of gulls calling out to one another and the tang of salt in the air told me I was near the sea and I groaned as I tried to figure out how I’d ended up here.

But it was no good. The last thing I remembered was Shawn’s hands wrapped around my throat as he tried to kill me in his club. Then darkness. It had been night then…how many hours had it been? How long had I been underground? How close had I just come to actually dying?

I rasped out another groan as the pain in my neck drew all of my attention for a moment and the pounding in my skull had me praying for oblivion again.

With a curse that didn’t even sound like it was me speaking, thanks to the damage that asshole had done to my vocal cords, I dug my fingers into the ground in front of me and dragged the rest of my body up out of the dirt. It took way longer than I would have liked and I couldn’t help but think that I must look like some kind of undead asshole right about now. Or I would have if anyone was here to see me. But as I appeared to be slap bang in the middle of fucking nowhere, I guessed there wasn’t much chance of that.

When I finally managed to drag my feet free of the shallow grave my boyfriend had gifted me, I fell down onto my knees before collapsing to the ground and rolling over so that I could look up at the canopy of trees above me and lay there panting as tears pricked the backs of my eyes. But I wouldn’t let them fall. I’d cried my last tears a long damn time ago and I’d sworn never to let anyone get close enough to hurt me like that again ever since.

The Harlequin boys had broken my heart once and I had no intention of ever giving it out to anyone again.

The dirty, brown material I’d been buried in was still tangled around my legs and I tugged it off of me as I stood, clutching it in my fist as I looked down at it, wondering if I’d ever meant anything at all to the man who had killed me so casually.

I turned the torn piece of sack in my fist, frowning as I spotted a logo stamped across it, hidden within the mud that stained it.

Pappa Brown’s Russet Potatoes.

He’d buried me in a shallow grave wrapped in a fucking potato sack. Anger flooded through my flesh unlike anything I’d ever known at the fucking callous disregard that asshole had held me in. The feeling was quickly followed by disgust for the fact that I’d ever let that vile excuse for a man lay his hands on my body. But you didn’t say no to Shawn Mackenzie, everyone knew that. I could have just run when he set his sights on me, but I’d foolishly believed that being his girl would offer me some level of protection in these fucked up games I ran in, where men played at being kings and everyone died with a knife in their back in the end.

My mouth was so dry that my tongue felt swollen and the headache was making me dizzy as well as nauseous. I was coated in damn mud, my blue crop top and ripped jeans clearly ruined and my once white sneakers now very much brown. A quick swipe of my hand over my long, brunette hair told me that it was no better.

I swallowed against the lump in my throat and looked around for some sign of where I needed to go to get out of here, but there were just trees everywhere. The ground sloped down to my right though so that seemed like