Rook: Allie's War, Book One
Prologue: Mistake
"Put it down!" A voice yelled. "On the ground! Right now!"
I blinked in confusion, staring at the bottle in my hand. The jagged end of broken glass looked like something out of a cartoon, or an old gangster movie.
Blood ran down the inside of my arm, not all of it mine. My muscles locked, bunched up with adrenaline.
Someone must have called the police. The young guy in front of me didn't have his gun out, but his hand held the holster menacingly, and his uniform brought a flush of panic, starting somewhere in my lower belly.
The other fire that had burned there-irrationally bright only seconds before-abruptly sobered. Without taking so much as a breath, I dropped the broken bottle, holding up my hands in a gesture of surrender.
I've never been a tough chick. I'd never done anything remotely like this before...but I knew enough to know that my arms covered in tattoos and my punky, bleached-calico hair weren't winning me any points with the men in blue. I looked around at the swath of cleared space around the bar.
"Hands up!" the cop yelled.
"They're up!" I said.
He walked up, grabbing one of my wrists. He spun me around so I faced the bar. I felt cool metal hit my wrist as my chest thudded into the lacquered wood.
"You have any weapons?" the young policeman asked. He cuffed me, then patted me down. "Don't fucking move!" he yelled, when I turned to look at him.
"No weapons!" I was shouting I realized, scared out of my wits.
All the while, my mind churned useless facts. People got shot doing stupid shit like this. More cops got shot in domestic disputes than during any other kind of call, which likely explained why the young cop's hands shook as he cuffed me.
My eyes swept the oddly bright space until they lit on the person who had inspired all this drama, and that flame of irrational feeling ripped once more through my chest cavity, making it difficult to breathe, to think straight.
Jaden, my now ex-boyfriend, stood like a store mannequin, his eyes as wide as saucers in a pale face. He gripped the upper arm of his date, a voluptuous girl in a red vinyl dress, as if to steady himself. I looked at her, and the rage came back, intense enough to scare me. Breathing harder, I leaned against the wood, closing my eyes, trying to crush my own chest.
Feeling ripped through my center, animal-like-almost painful.
In my defense, I'd only heard about them that night, and the fact that their affair started three months earlier, while I'd been blissfully happy, thinking Jaden and I were mutually in love. According to his bass player, she'd started hanging out with them after shows, eventually winning him over with flattery, pouty lips and enormous tits.