I must be five at most, a pale pink dress floating around my legs and I can feel my irritation. Even then at such a young age, I’m mad with the restriction the dress is giving me.
I’m laughing, freely, and being chased by someone who is also laughing along with me. My fist is tightly squeezing something and as I look down at my hand to catch a glimpse of my treasure, I’m whipped off my feet and twirled around.
I can’t breathe, I'm laughing so hard. God, to be this carefree again, it feels like magic. When my captor finally relents on the twirling, I feel their arms wrap tightly around me in a protective and loving hold. When I finally look through my messy hair I see my father staring back at me, with eyes filled with love and pride.
His brown hair swept to the side, and his green eyes matching mine. Tattoos all over his arms and peeking out under his collar.
“Sweet girl, are you stealing my treasures?”
I shake my head innocently, and my father can’t help but chuckle more.
“My sweet Luna, you truly are your father’s daughter. One day, in years to come you will be the greatest of our name. Already outsmarting me so young. I’m going to have to work hard to keep up, ey?”
I just give him the biggest smile my face can hold and hand over the treasure I stole. It’s a small broach, a peacock, with bright blue and green gems. That’s what drew me to it, it looked so pretty I just had to have it.
My father kisses me sweetly on the cheek and places me on the ground. I instantly start running again, loving the feel of the wind whipping around me. When I look back towards my father he’s no longer alone, he’s also stood with a smiling Rafe as they laugh together, whilst my mother is looking up from the seas edge with menace in her eyes.
I stop myself there, unable to deal with anymore. I have spent so long pushing memories of my father to the back of my mind, I feel drained. My hands are shaking slightly, and I feel a cold sweat taking over.
I’m too scared to remember even happy times like then, especially when I can vividly remember his death in greater detail.
My father, Bryce Steele, is a mystery to me. Remembering what seemed like such a sweet moment between father and daughter breaks my heart. What would my life be like now if he was still here? It seems I’d likely still be heading to Featherstone Academy, but I’d have been more prepared than I am right now.
I’m struggling with the fact that I’m not in control. I’m used to dominating my surroundings, and right now I don’t even have a slight grasp of them. Knowing where to place myself next, who to place my trust in, seeing the danger signs before a situation worsens.
A tapping distracts my train of thought, drawing my attention to mother. She still has her gun aimed at Rafe, and she’s tapping her fake nails against it. Like a little reminder to everyone that she’s the one with the power here.
I’ve been completely caught off guard and I think it feels worse because Rafe has been holding a lot of this information from me. I trusted him over everyone else. Peering back outside the window, I can see the beginning of dawn touch the sky. We’ve been driving for some time. Not including the four hours I was unconscious.
I let my thoughts go back to how it would have been possible for me to take jobs from Featherstone without being aware. My profile on the dark web is limited, a lot of my contracts have been done facelessly, and I vetted out the information on who contacted me. Now it seems likely they were told to contact me by Featherstone if what Veronica said was true.
The only person who ever found out, that I was aware of, was West. About two years ago, I’d broken into a CEO’s office in one of the many skyscrapers in downtown Philly specifically looking for some blueprint documents. They meant nothing to me but enough to the guy, who contacted me through my dark web setup, to pay big for the job.
As the job was in the city, I made the trip in my beat-up truck, and parked five blocks away from where I needed to be. After spending a solid twenty minutes driving round in circles, making sure I wasn’t being followed.
With all the prep I had done for the job, it was a quick in and out extraction. I mean really, for a multi-million dollar company, they should have better security measures in place.
When I got back to my truck he was there, casually sitting on the hood, watching me approach. West’s excuse for being there was because he’d seen me randomly take off from time to time, and he wanted to see what I was up to. I was so mad at him at the time, furious at him for invading my privacy. It was irrelevant to him what I was doing.
He’s four years older, so for him to hold any interest in my whereabouts confused the hell out of me. I almost thought I had another Jake on my hands, but West never tried to overstep the mark, and I never caught any lingering glances.
He promised this was my secret and I believed him.
There hadn’t been a time that I did call him, seeing as I was perfectly fine on my own, but on that drive home he kept me on loudspeaker the whole way and that’s when he named me Moon. He would never explain why, but it stuck.
I’ve never really known what West does for a living, he isn’t around all the time and occasionally he’ll train with us at Rafe’s gym, but he doesn’t work at Inked with Jake. He was a bit of
