One day can change your whole fucking life. Take you from beating, drinking and fucking whatever you want in your city, to just trying to blend in somewhere else.
A few months back, my old man was having issues with a business partner, so he sent me and the new kid to put an end to the issue. And the partner. I knew this sad excuse for a man and he wouldn’t be trouble. Good chance for the kid to get his feet wet and for me to show him how it was done. We wheeled up, kicked in the front door, and found the poor son of bitch passed out in his recliner, holding a half empty scotch glass. The kid looked at me with a question in his eyes and the dead he saw in mine gave him the answer. He put two bullets in sleeping beauty’s chest and then one in his skull to be sure. It was a proud moment for me. Turning to leave, we heard a clatter from the kitchen and the kid took off down the hall. No witnesses. He was learning quick.
I checked the side rooms as he made his way toward the sound. I heard fighting. He was kicking the shit out of someone.
I nodded in approval. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but that’s what I did.
When I got to the kitchen, I saw the guy’s wife and kid huddled up in the corner with new guy’s barrel staring them down. He had no question in his eyes this time, just a small smirk that crept across his mouth. I don’t know what it was about the look of terror on that broad’s face as she cradled her son in her arms, but something inside me snapped. I broke the cardinal rule of the Donnelly Clan. I broke the cardinal rule of any Boston crime gang.
I let my heart influence my thinking. For one moment, the first maybe in my entire life, I was human.
I looked at the new kid. He was going to kill this woman and child and get a hard on doing it. I cleared my throat and he turned to me, a crazy, frenzied look in his eyes. I gave him a chance. I shook my head. That was it. That’s all I gave him.
Don’t do it.
But he just gave me back that crazy grin. He wanted to kill them, and he was going to enjoy it. Something inside me broke.
I lifted my arm, pointed my gun at his face, and, well, I don’t want to say what I did next. Just know, before you judge me, that I didn’t do it because of a love of violence. I didn’t do it because I hated the new kid. I’d trained him. I liked him, even. I did it because, for the first time, I saw that someone had to do something. There’s only so much crime and violence that this world can take. Sooner or later, a man, a real man, has got to take a stand.
And just like that, I ended the only life I’d ever known. From that moment on, my days in Boston were numbered. My life was cheap. I was a target to every lowlife bounty hunter in six counties. The Donnelly Clan would see to it.
It was a stupid fucking move. That’s what you get for growing a conscience in my line of work. I had to skip town fast, and I knew it.
Luckily the wheels we took to the job had a duffle bag with a substantial debt collection sitting in the back seat. I knew I was fucking the family over as I drove off, not knowing where I was going. But like I said, they ain’t my family. Family means more than that. Family is something that touches you somewhere inside. I mean, I’ve never experienced it, I’ve never even got the faintest whiff of it, but sometimes you’re allowed to believe in a thing you’ve never seen, aren’t you?
Now, sitting here, living off that duffle bag in a haze of shit beer and the day-to-day grind, I wonder if I lost my mind that night. As it turns out, it wouldn’t be the last time some broad and a kid made me go fucking crazy. One day can change your life. That day began, the morning I met Kelly.
Chapter 2
Kelly
AT LEAST THE SUN WAS SHINING. If there’s one thing you can count on in the town of Stone Peak, Montana, it’s the beauty of nature. The view over the mountain range, the miles and miles of pine trees in the valley, the way the clouds gather around the snowy peaks, it’s enough to take a girl’s breath away. It’s enough to make you feel safe and secure in the world. It’s enough to give you a little hope.
When I was a little girl, I thought I wanted to get out of this place. I thought I was headed for the big city. I never understood the people in the town who said they’d stay there their whole lives. The same faces, the same stories, each day the exact copy of the one before. I saw the sameness of it all as a way of rocking yourself to sleep, singing you a sweet, carefree lullaby until, before you knew it, you’d slept away the best years of your life.
I didn’t want to wake up some cold morning and discover that I was just another familiar face, living out my days just like the rest of them. I thought I was headed for bigger things. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to be someone. I wanted to find my destiny.