Pretty Little Savage (Sick Boys #1) - Lucy Smoke Page 0,1

I pull the trigger?

Right now, I feel like it’d be all too easy to blow not just his but each of their fucking brains out—because if it wasn’t for the other two, I might never have met Dean Carter in the first place. My finger finds the trigger in question and smooths over it, but I don’t press down. Instead, I lower the weapon, and after a moment, I put the gun back in the glove compartment, close it, and snap my seatbelt back into place.

No, I’m not going to kill them. I’ve got better things planned for them. More torturous things. What I am going to do, however, is go back. Not to Eastpoint, but to the place where it all began. There have been far too many people in my life who seem to think they have power over me and it all starts there.

First the past. Then the present. Only then can I finally face the fucking future.

Rules to live by. To look forward, I have to go back. Just once. Just this once. I put my foot back on the gas and this time, when I floor it, I know exactly where I’m going.

Those boys—those sick, twisted, disgusting, perverted assholes—think they can sweep into my life and drag me through the carnage of hell. What they don’t yet realize, though, is that I was born there and I know exactly how to not only survive, but to fucking rise.

1

Dean

16 years old…

Money is the ultimate weapon. Money and power. What many people don’t know is that all wealth is stained in blood. True power doesn't come without corruption. People fight, bleed, and die for money and power. No matter who you are or where you come from, it is the one undeniable factor of the future and what it holds. Because money is power and power is blood. And I want both.

Warm red liquid drips from my right nostril as I pant, my chest rising and falling. My father stands to the side, his cold eyes watching. Always fucking watching and waiting—either for me to prove myself his failure or his heir. There is only one choice. I refuse to be the first, so I must be the second.

Taking the other man's neck in my grip, my muscles contract in my biceps as I smash his face into the concrete ground. Once, twice, three times until he coughs out a groan beneath my grasp, the pain he must be feeling making the noise a broken imitation of what should be a long and labored sound. Only when it hits my ears do I release him and take a step back. I don't flinch when he coughs again and this time, blood spews from between his lips, landing on the top of my brand new shoes. White splattered with blood. That seems to be the symbol of my family—of all the families of Eastpoint.

Off to the side, Braxton and Abel stand alongside their fathers, their faces expressionless. They, too, will face their trials soon. This one, though, is mine. I’ve known the gruesome requirement and the expectations of me as the future leader of the Eastpoint heirs since I was a child. I will not fail and I will not falter.

A tooth lands next to my foot as the man on the ground hacks and moans, his pain a visceral thing that I can practically taste. A part of me wonders if I should like it as much as I do. Another part of me doesn’t really give a shit.

"Dean." That single word from my father tells me that it’s time. Time to stop playing with my prey. Time to end this. Reaching down, I lift the man by the front of his already torn shirt. If it's odd to anyone in the vicinity that a sixteen year old can be so much bigger or stronger than a grown ass man, no one—least of all the man himself—makes notice of it.

"You know what we want," I state. "All you have to do to stop this is give it to us."

The man shakes his head. "I don't—"

Never let him deny. The first thing my father taught me when dealing with traitors. Get their confession and then kill them. No chances to lie. No chances to grasp onto the sliver of their lives we owned and tear it back. Show nothing but complete lack of mercy. I slam my fist into his face and feel the breaking of cartilage against