BE MY HERO (Forbidden Men #3)

Prologue-1

Prologue

Meet Pick Ryan

As Harvey and I crouched behind the lilac bushes in front of the old decaying house, a stiff breeze burst upon us, stirring a batch of dead leaves around my knees and freezing the f**k out of my arms.

I had decided coats were overrated after last week. I’d asked Vern, my newest foster dad, if he’d buy me a jacket since the weather had turned cold and I’d outgrown last year’s winter coat. He’d told me he’d consider it—if I sucked his d**k.

So being a human icicle wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to me.

“Jesus, Pick.” Shivering beside me, Harvey wrapped my last year’s coat tighter around him—since it actually fit him—and burrowed deeper into its warmth. “Did you feel that? She must know we’re out here. She’s already casting some kind of voodoo s**t spell on us. Let’s bounce already.”

“It’s called wind, you moron.” I smacked him lightly on the back of the head. “I seriously doubt she can make the wind blow. And we’re not leaving until it’s done.”

“Bet she can. She’s a witch. She can do anything. Just look at what she did to Tristy.”

My teeth clenched. What had happened to Tristy was exactly why I wasn’t budging until my mission was accomplished. I wasn’t leaving this place until the witch had paid for what she’d done.

Spurred on by the fresh wave of rage Harvey had instilled in me, I tightened my grip on the brick I was holding and darted out from behind the bushes. Spotty clumps of dead brown grass made the ground uneven, but even that didn’t deter my step. Sprinting for all I was worth, I reached the huge bay window of Madam LeFrey’s home and wound back my arm.

She’d get the message I’d tied around the brick. Leave Tristy Mahone alone. And she had better abide. Tristy had been through enough already.

Tristy and I hadn’t lived in the same foster home for over a year, not since I’d called the social worker on my last foster family and told them what was happening to her. But we still kept in touch, and I looked out for her. So when Harvey had told me why she was in the hospital, I felt as if I’d failed her. I never should’ve let her visit Madam LeFrey, who never gave anyone a cheerful fortune reading. I should’ve prevented it somehow.

But what was done was done, and I had to placate myself with paybacks. The shatter of breaking glass told me my avengement was complete.

“Oh, shit.” Harvey’s voice carried from the bushes. “You did it. You really did it.”

Shit, I really had. I’d never been the perfect choirboy type, but this was my first stint at vandalism. I thought I’d feel satisfied. Vindicated. But Tristy was still in the hospital with her wrists taped together. And I was still a low-life deadbeat who’d never amount to anything. Madam LeFrey would no doubt continue to freak kids out by giving them doomed fortune readings.

I stood there like a complete dumbass just staring at the cracks spider-webbing through the parts of the glass that were still intact. But now I was more pissed off than before because breaking a window had accomplished absolutely nothing.

Madam LeFrey’s porch light sprang on, jolting me out of my rigor mortis. As the ancient paint-chipped front door creaked open, Harvey screamed for me. Anxiety spurted through my veins in a panicked mess; I needed to reach him. Protect him.

I scrambled toward him, but to get there, I had to pass by the front porch where the witch was rushing from the house, toting—holy f**k—a shotgun that looked bigger than she was.

I skidded to a stop so fast the wet dead leaves under my shoes gave way, and I slid down, landing hard on my ass. I caught myself with one hand; my fingers dug into the muddy cold earth before I found enough purchase to push myself back up.

While I was busy wiping out, Madam LeFrey was equally busy wracking a shell into the chamber. The distinct sound of a loading gun echoed through my ears until that was all I heard. Springing upright, I stumbled away before I’d regained my footing. If I could just make it to the corner of her house, I was sure I could get out of her view long enough to find a nice dark shadow to escape into and be able to evade the mad old woman.

But I never made it to the corner.

I stepped on something solid that made a metallic click before it gave way and sucked my foot down. Sharp, knife-like teeth bit into my ankle and trapped me. I shouted out as I collapsed. The cold, wet earth enveloped me, and I curled into a fetal ball, clutching my shin. Waves of agony screamed up my leg while the ankle trap held me prisoner.

“Pick!”

Panicked and scared, Harvey’s voice shot another dose of fear into me. I’d let him follow me here tonight. If anything happened to him, it’d be on me. I glanced past the witch inching toward me, the barrel of her gun aimed between my eyes, and saw him hesitating at the edges of the bushes, wavering as if he didn’t want to leave me behind but didn’t want to stick around either.

“Go,” I choked out, waving him away.

The kid didn’t hesitate. He spun around and took off.

With him out of harm’s way, I finally looked up at my captor, ready to face my fate. She had to be the ugliest woman I’d ever seen. Her frizzled gray hair stood out in a crisp silhouette with the lights from her porch shining in around her, making her look as if she’d stuck her finger in an outlet and the electrical shock had split out every end in a different direction.

The loose moo-moo she wore only emphasized how wide and stoop-shouldered she was. And her moles looked like pieces of fruit wobbling around in a JELL-O mold. I caught sight of them dotting her second chin as she stepped close enough for me to make out her wrinkled, snarled-tooth sneer.

Blood left a coppery tang in my mouth. I must’ve bitten my tongue or lip. But my pain receptors fired too strongly in my ankle for me to feel discomfort anywhere else.

Mud and withered leaves clung to me as I panted on the ground in front of her, glaring up with all the defiant bravado I could muster.

Shuffling closer, she pressed the end of the barrel against the center of my forehead firmly enough that it’d no doubt leave a ring-shaped indention for days—if I survived that long.

Knowing this was probably it, I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, my nostrils flaring because I couldn’t stop breathing so hard.

I was going to die. Right here. Right now.

But at least it’d be quick. I probably wouldn’t feel a thing. I hoped I wouldn’t feel a thing.

The sad part was a sense of relief flooded me. The pathetic excuse that was my life was finally over. I didn’t care that I’d die a virgin or that Harvey, who was a year younger than I was at thirteen, had already bagged a girl before I had. After being chained and forced to watch Tristy get raped so often, I was kind of turned off to the whole subject of s*x, anyway. Using my hand and sneaking peaks at nudey pictures in magazines suited me just fine.

There were other things I had wanted to try before dying, though. Driving. Getting a tattoo. Growing old enough to finally move out on my own. Or maybe finding a good family to adopt me.

Okay, damn. My life must really be flashing before my eyes, because I hadn’t thought up the whole maybe-someone-will-adopt-me-and-love-me dream since I was nine. It was lame and useless to want such a thing.

“Did you throw a brick through my window?” Madam LeFrey asked, her voice thick and guttural, and nearly impossible to understand. She nudged the barrel harder against me as if she thought she didn’t already have my undivided attention.

“Yes,” I gritted out from between my clenched teeth. “Did you tell Tristy Mahone no one would ever love her, and she’d die a miserable death, young and alone?”

The old bat’s shoulders twitched in what I assumed was her version of a shrug. “Like I know the name of some silly girl who came to me for her fortune.”

“So you give that reading to everyone who comes to you?” What a complete b***h.

“I say what I see. No more. No less. If your friend got a bad reading, then your friend’s a bad girl. She doesn’t care for anyone.”

“Doesn’t care for anyone?” I repeated incredulously. Anger caused me to shove the gun out of my face so I could give her the full intensity of my glare. “Yeah, she didn’t care so much that she went home after what you said and tried to kill herself. She cut her wrists open and almost bled out before someone found her. If she didn’t care about anyone or anything, do you really think she would’ve taken your words to heart like that?”

The witch made a gurgling sound in the back of her throat as if she wasn’t surprised to learn what Tristy had done, as if she felt no accountability or sympathy at all for Tristy’s near-death.

“You almost killed her, you f*****g bat!” I swiped out again like the wounded animal I was, hurt and cornered, fighting back for my life.

Instead of shooting me as she probably should’ve done in return, Madam LeFrey scurried a couple steps away until she was well out of my reach. At the same moment I realized her feet were bare, I also realized tears were matted to my cheeks.

A strange surge of surrealism passed over me, making my head light and woozy. A barefoot woman was about to kill me, and I was bawling like a baby. That was just so f****d up.

My vision blurred. I blinked as Madam LeFrey c****d her head to the side, studying me intently.

“You love this girl?” she asked.

I rested my cheek in the mud and fisted my hand around a clump of grass. The pain was beginning to make my stomach revolt and my thinking dull. But I tried to come up with an answer to her question because, hell, I don’t know why. Maybe she’d put me out of my misery if I replied.

Did I love Tristy? God, no. Most of the time I didn’t even like her. We’d survived through hell together, though, and you didn’t just turn your back on a fellow hell survivor. They became a part of who you were and left you bound to always keeping watch over them.

“She’s under my protection,” I managed to answer, my words slurring for some strange reason. I had no clue if the pain was whacking me out, or if Madam LeFrey was pulling some voodoo crap on me, but I sure as f**k did not like being this vulnerable in front of her.

When ice-cold, gnarled fingers touched my pulse, I jerked under the pressure but couldn’t seem to pull away. Turning my face, I opened my lashes and looked up at her. Pale, watery blue eyes held me captive as she peered straight inside me.

“Your friend doesn’t care enough, no,” she said. “But you...you care too much.”

A hollow laugh escaped me. Here I was, ready and willing to die, and she was calling me caring. Yeah right, not giving a s**t sounded real compassionate.

I had no clue what had happened to her gun, but it was nowhere in sight. If I had spotted it in that second, I might’ve grabbed it from her and pulled the trigger myself. But there was only me and her now. Her freaky pale blue orbs saw everything and more, making me shiver and wish she’d just put me down already.

“Please,” I begged, my words slurring in the cold breeze.

“You’ve had a hard life but possess a pure soul,” she said, ignoring me as I begged for death. “Hope drips from you like water in a leaky bucket. If it dries up, you’ll turn hard and brittle. Like your friend.” Her fingers shifted toward my eyes. I squeezed them shut right before she pressed both her thumbs into each of my sockets.

“What the f**k?” Was she going to pluck my eyeballs out? That sounded like it’d hurt. And I just wanted everything to stop hurting.

I grabbed her wrists to pull her off. “Let go.” But as soon as my fingers latched around loose skin draped over frail bone, something happened and I couldn’t move. My fingers locked into place around her, and I couldn’t retreat, couldn’t attack.