PROLOGUE
Sneaking around outside some abandoned warehouses in the dark was not at the top of my list of ways I wanted to spend my evening.
Maybe in the top fifty, but certainly not the top ten.
I tucked the end-sleeves of my hoodie into my hands and wrapped my arms tighter around myself. My sneakers, which were no longer white, squelched and slipped in the mud as I approached the red-brick building directly ahead.
Pulled back into a ponytail, my long, dark brown hair flicked around my round face in the cool night breeze. My only guiding lights in the darkness were my phone’s flashlight and the full moon above.
No, this was not how I had imagined spending my evening.
But after my lying, soon-to-beex-boyfriend canceled on our one-year anniversary at the last minute for a “business-related issue,” the only logical thing to do was follow him and catch him in the act.
Catch him in the act of what? I didn’t have a clue, but I sure as hell was going to find out.
Why else would he drive to a remote location thirty minutes outside of Las Vegas if he wasn’t doing some sketchy shit?
“Motherfucking, lying bastard,” I grumbled under my breath, cursing Adrian, who had walked down the dark alleyway between the two warehouses moments ago.
Before following him, I glanced down at my phone to check the time,9:42PM,when a new text came through on the screen.
Adrian:
Be ready in the morning. I have a special surprise for you.
Sweet dreams, mi princesa.
I rolled my eyes and resisted the urge to gag at the term of endearment, if you could call it that.
I was done being the polite, compliant girlfriend he was used to. I was done watching my words and actions around him in fear he wouldn’t approve or that it would trigger his temper.
I had considered myself lucky he hadn’t been physical with me, but I could tell from the last few arguments we’d had that he’d come close. And that was something I did not stand for.
My mother didn’t raise me to be someone else’s punching bag, and my dead-beat, good-for-nothing father hadn’t stayed in my life long enough to warrant a say in anything about me.
But my mom … She was the strongest person I knew and raised me to be the same, which was a fact I had forgotten in the last few years since she died.
I bet she looked down on me now, screaming for me tostand up for myself. I tilted my head up toward the night sky and focused on the full moon.
My mother had a strange affinity for the moon and used to talk about how much peace it brought her, even during the darkest points of her life just before she passed.
Now, anytime a full moon came around, I thought of her. I liked to think it was her way of letting me know she was always there. No matter how dark things got or how lost I felt, there would always be just enough light to show me the way.
In the last four years she’d been gone, I’d lost sight of her light. I’d become a shadow, floating through life and not really living. It took dealing with Adrian’s change in behavior and rising temper over the last few months to make me realize how lost I had really been without her.
But I guessed that was the thing about grief: You never really climbed out of that hole until you were ready to face the reality of living without someone.
Well, consider this me climbing out of that hole because I refused to be Adrian’s passive, good-manneredprincesaany longer.
So, instead of spending the night reading a smutty romance novel and stuffing my face with cream cheese rangoons, I was here, following Adrian down a dark alleyway between two abandoned warehouses to get the truth.
I stayed as close as possible to the warehouse wall on my right to remain hidden, trailing my hand against the rough brick.
As I got closer to the end of the alley, I heard two distinct voices arguing in the distance.
I recognized Adrian’s harsh voice immediately, but the other was not a familiar one.
Hidden in the shadows of the alleyway, I peeked aroundthe corner of the wall with a perfect view of the back property.
