Member-only story
Harlequin Heat
Another Kindle Vella attempt gone awry
All Abby Gallows brought with her was a suitcase when she left the apartment she had shared with her stepfather since her mother’s death two years ago. The drunken man had been in a stupor when she left, and she said good riddance to the burned stovetop with its crusted remnants as well as the single-bulb light she had in her bedroom. Gone away would be her tearful observations of the cracks on the ceiling or the water damage left over from previous tenants.
Today was a time for new beginnings.
She clutched her suitcase by its handle and tried not to let her tears betray her as she stood at the bus stop down the road. She ducked her head, dark hair spilling around her shoulders, and took a shuddering breath that trembled through her form.
In her pocket was a business card — a playing card, really, showing a mad jester holding a scepter as if it were a wand. It was the Joker playing card she knew well from her stepfather’s poker nights with his buddies when they had played at having a makeshift gambling den.
It had been passed to her through a friend named Nico who had insisted that she was better than a cashier job at the grocery store. “You’d love the Harlequin,” he said, and it took everything she had in her not to laugh right at him. Harlequin, to…
