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Chapter 1
I can see the glint of the cold steel in the streetlights as the figure approaches. My father tells me to stay in my seat and steps from our SUV. No words are exchanged, and all I can process is a bang and a flash of fire as my father crumples to the ground. I’m left alone as the assailant retreats. A scream erupts from me.
“Ryleigh, wake the hell up.”
My eyes shoot open and I’m staring up at my roommate of the past four years, Sadie Fulbright. She has her hand on my shoulder, and I can see the look of concern on her face.
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“You haven’t had these this bad since your freshman year.”
I sit up and wipe the sweat from my face with the collar of my t-shirt.
“I know. I don’t know why they came back.”
Sadie went back to her bed and plopped down, “Probably because of stress. You have a lot going on. We have a lot going on.”
She was right, we did. In a few days, we will graduate from Columbia University with degrees in business administration. We’d recently secured a small apartment in Chelsea and put the deposit down. It was all coming down at the same time. I had interviewed and was hired for a position in public relations.
Sadie would be working in the same building but for a marketing company. Our lives were changing. No more late nights staying up studying to maintain our B+ averages.
My mother and stepfather wanted me to come back home to Hudson Brook in Northern Westchester to live for a couple of years. I said no. Both my brothers moved out of the house when they graduated. I wanted to follow suit.
My mother had been married to Anders Stewart for almost fourteen years. She started dating him a year after my father was murdered. I was, in a few words, fucked up after I saw him get shot. My six-year-old brain couldn’t process what I’d seen, especially when I huddled near his bloody body on the deserted street. A car finally came by and stopped to call the police. It didn’t matter, it was too late. My father was dead the minute the bullet entered his heart.
I didn’t talk for almost eight months after the incident, and when I did, it was in the form of a scream. I went to therapy and was out of school for almost a year until I could deal with the trauma. I had nightmares for a while and was okay unless the stress was too much for me to handle. My subconscious usually manifested that stress by dragging up the most horrible memories of my life.
The first couple of weeks I lived with Sadie, I thought she would tell me she wanted to move out. The first night it happened, she freaked out and ran to get the RA. By the second week, she was used to my nocturnal disruptions. I calmed and rarely had them until I was stressed again.
“Why do you want to live with me?”
Sadie tucked her blonde behind her ears and fixed her smoke gray eyes on me.
“Because I love you. I don’t want to live with anyone else and I need a roommate. I can’t afford the rent in Manhattan. If we don’t room together, I have to move back home.”
I laughed because Sadie had younger brothers who were triplets. They were sixteen and drove her nuts.
“This should stop once we get settled. Graduation will be over soon enough,” I said.
“Will your entire family be there?”
“My parents will, but Finley has some meeting with a venture capitalist and Matthew is not sure he can get out of work.”
“Seriously? He freaking lives in the city. His boss can’t give him a stinking couple of hours off?”
“He has a new job. His boss is an ass.”
“Fucking traders. Greedy bastards is what they are.”
“He’s making good money.”
“He doesn’t need it.”
It was true. Matt, Finley and I all had trust funds. My father started them when we were babies. When he died, we gained control of them on our twenty first birthdays. I could afford to live in a better apartment, but Sadie couldn’t. She was proud and I didn’t want to damage her pride by telling her I would pay seventy five percent of the rent. She wouldn’t allow it and I didn’t bother to ask.
“No, he doesn’t but he wants to save it for his retirement.”
Sadie snorted. “He’s all of twenty-four. Why the hell does he need to worry about retirement now?”
