Prologue

FLAMES

ELEVEN YEARS AGO

The wind howled from both sides accompanied by the gushing torrent that hit us without mercy.

I held onto the hope that two years of working in Sam’s docks had toughened me to be a good enough sailor. The rope sinking in my palms, I tugged on it trying my best to hold the mast up. The waves hit our little dinghy harder and harder till I was the one heaving a silent Mary that we somehow made it out alive.

“Come on! Work with me! Fucking work with me!” I hollered wiping the dark hair that had stuck to my face faster than barnacles on a shipwrecked boat.

We’d barely moved past the tide and if there was one thing Michael Tonelli was good at, was catching strays. Especially strays that tried eloping with his daughter.

“We are stuck, aren’t we?”

I jerked my gaze to the girl cocooned at the farthest end of the boat. She was right and I hated it.

We were stuck.

We were in the middle of a storm. Sitting ducks was what we were. Her father without a doubt had already sent speed boats and whatever shit he owned after us.

Holding onto the rope that had reddened my palm, I inched closer to her.

Our love was not going to end in a storm not while I still drew breath in my fucking lungs. I was going to fight. For her. For us.

Her porcelain skin paler than that of a ghost, her red hair damp from the salty waves and the downpour, I placed my finger on her chin.

“We are gonna make it”

I was determined to do so.

Her shoulders rattling, she placed her delicate hands on my shoulders and her touch cooled my nerves like a fucking balm. She was the only girl in that little hell of an island who affected me like this.

Her touch. I craved it like a junkie on molly.

Her smile. So, fucking radiant it made my shitty life worthwhile.

Everything about her was perfect and she was mine. That was why we were here trying to defy the odds. Trying to escape her lunatic of a father who was hell bound on marrying her off.

“No…I-I can’t go any further. Let’s turn back. We’ll talk to him; we’ll make him see reason”

Michael Tonelli wasn’t a man who saw reason. Not in this lifetime, he wasn’t.

“You are giving up? You want to marry another man, huh? Is that what you want? I-I’m I not good enough Elise?’

I struck a nerve because she pulled away from me eyeing me like she couldn’t believe those words came out of my mouth.

Maybe it was the storm or the fucking fact that Sam had lent me this piece of garbage to escape the island. Otherwise, I was pissed and Elise suggesting something as absurd as heading back pierced me harder than I thought it would.

“You do not get to say that! I left my sister for you! I left everything I knew for you! Because I love you. Because I’m so in love with you that the thought that I can’t be with you hurts. It hurts right here”, she jabbed a finger against her chest and shame clawed at my sides, “have you thought about what we’ll do once we get to the other side? I’m sixteen you are nineteen, it—it doesn’t get any more complicated than that—”

“Elise- “

“Andro…let’s go back—”

“You should listen to her, boy!”

The mocking sound of Tonelli’s voice threatened from afar off. Cocking both our heads to the side, we saw it. Tonelli’s V-shaped hull towered before out little boat, it’s running lights flicking over us like a pair of deer caught in headlights.

“There’s two ways this could go. You bring my daughter back to me; I spare your sorry excuse of a life. You try anything stupid and I guarantee you my men will shoot you where you stand. Don’t be stupid”

Three men stood by the railing heavily armed to the teeth. Michael Tonelli stood at the center of it all like the god he thought he was. Elise stood up holding onto my arm in a silly attempt of trying to tell me to give in to her dad’s demands.

I was stupid. Like I was my entire life.

I wasn’t going back.

And I was certainly not letting the girl I loved with every being in my body, go.

“You are bluffing”, I countered, “the way I see it you won’t tell your goons to shoot. Not unless you want to see your daughter dead”

His face exploded into a smile before his goons laughed along with him. Their laughs mockingly erupted a dreadful feeling in the pits of my stomach.

“You underestimate me, boy. I have another daughter, remember? If you can’t make a mule drink water, find another mule”

“Dad?”

This time around it was Elise who raised her voice to the man hiding on top of his little boat.

“You were always one for drama, Elise. You want to be with a riff raff after everything I’ve sacrificed for you!”

“Dad I’m sorry but I-I love him. He makes me happy. Please if you could just-“

“Let you go?... gladly. You’ve made your choice and I believe it’s time I made mine. I love you, Elise”

The minute those words left his mouth, shots rang in the air quacking more fiercely than the storm. Elise’s body went limp against mine as she fell back.

“No. Hey, hey don’t—don’t do this”

“You a…ar..are hurt”, she struggled to say coughing more blood than I’d ever seen in my entire life,

My arm and leg stung but they didn’t sting like the gruesome sight in front of me. Color was draining from her cheeks fast, blood gushed from her chest and the water entering our boat mixed with the blood making everything around us red.

“Hang on”

I could barely feel anything as the emotions barreled inside my body.

“A-andro…p-please…listen. Go. Go. Y-you have to live. For us”

“I can’t. Not-without you”

“You will. You-“

Gone.

She was gone and I lost all the will I had of trying to stay alive. I watched the men who’d sprayed bullets on our boat reload their guns.

Like a fucking martyr, I welcomed death because the only person keeping me alive was six feet under.

Two shots.

Everything went black.