Rachel was glad to escape her father's dinner party and stow away in the car as their driver came around and opened the door for the man himself. Every campaign season, her father went on a spree of parties, charity functions, and business visits to his closest supporters, and it spun her to and fro like the last leaf in fall clinging to a dying tree. They had months before the election, but it would be her father's second and last term, so he was going hard for the win.

For these functions, Rachel was just a pawn, and she wasn't sure her father had ever loved her as anything else. At each gathering, she was taken to the salon, dressed up, and presented as a face for her father's functional family-man guise. They had far from a working family. With her mother's passing many years prior, Rachel had lost much of her ability to interact with her father, and their relationship had turned as bitter as his eyes were now. Across from her in the limo, he alternated between flipping through papers detailing proposals and typing away plans to his staff on his phone.

As the mayor, he got tons of publicity, and so did she. Or at least she had, once upon a time. They used to follow her, but her gang had made quick work of that. One reporter ended up with smashed equipment and another with slit tires on their car. After the last one crawled away with a broken bone, the others were made sufficiently fearful of pursuing her. On very rare occasions, one tried and horribly regretted it, but those attempts were few and far between now.

Exhausted and bored, she slid out of her sweaty overcoat and set it to the side as she met her father's dark eyes. Rachel had inherited none of her genes from the man–not her looks nor her personality. Her father was imposing, wide of shoulder but slim of form, just big enough to look in charge but small enough to appear friendly to his supporters. His eyes were bitter dark chocolate and his hair matching, though only from hair-dye. The man had started to grey some time ago.

"You were out with those ruffians again, I hear." Her father broke the stale silence, and she flicked her gaze out the window in defiance. Her father had heard nothing, only assumed, but he knew it was true.

"They're my friends, Dad." Rachel leaned on her black leather armrest as her father partook of the minbar. It was normal for him to unwind while she was trapped and forced to watch him lose to intoxication.

"Why can't you act more mature?"

Rachel fumed silently. The man was built and bred to win arguments, and he never cared how flawed his logic was nor how skewed the facts. Like he was one to speak of being mature Half the functions she went to, she was stuffed in some party dress that squeezed her ass tighter than if someone were grabbing it. In her father's head, he wanted her to lure in some of his contributors' sons with her wiles so they would favor him.

What god damn wiles?

All the shared private classes with them, charity functions she was forced to intermingle in, and expensive clothes her father could dress her like a doll in did not change her into the sort of girl who could woo people. In clothes that were the current style, fashionable, but still revealing in all the most subtle ways, it wasn't just the young sons of her father's backers that were looking at her.

It was the filthy eyes of the backer's themselves crawling down her collarbone to peek at her chest, or making not so swift glances to examine her legs and butt hugged by designer pants. Setting her up to be ogled by men three times her age was not mature on her father's part, but he expected refinement from her?

It was disgusting.

"You know I have your future all mapped out for you. All you have to do is walk the path, Rachel. Stop throwing it away for those hoodlums. They'll end up in jail or dead before their twenties on the street, and I don't want you to share that fate."

The feigned concern didn't fool her, and her anger peaked. "They aren't hoodlums. I don't want your future. I don't want to be your pawn! I want to live my life!" Rachel started pissed and ended yelling, but they always fought when locked in together.

Her father tapped his knuckle on the glass window between them and the driver, and the car came to an abrupt halt that threw her forward. The driver came around and opened her door, and she looked to her father for meaning.

"Get out," her father said with a cold emotionless edge. "If you want your life without me, you ingrate, you can walk home."

Rachel didn't move, but a snap of her father's fingers had their driver yanking her by the arm out of the car. She near face planted on the sidewalk as she tripped on the curb in her heels, and the chauffer didn't even glance back as he closed the door and got back in. Before they took off, her father rolled down the window to look down on her as she sat on the side of the road.

"If you want to be on your own, then go ahead. See how far you get without me, but when you come crawling back, you better have an apology on those ungrateful lips."

Thunder crashed in the sky above her as the car sped off, and she shakily pulled herself back to her feet. The sleeve on her right arm had taken most of the scuffs from being tossed onto concrete, and she was unstable as she tried to right herself. The heels weren't too high with only an inch, square heel, but they weren't made for running.

Rachel found the area deserted, which was probably why her father had felt safe kicking her out. No prying eyes to shame him here. It was likely a broken-down section on the border of the mob properties that no one had bothered to maintain. It was also a detour from the direct route home, which meant her father had planned for this if she didn't bow to his rule. There was no way she could walk home from this far as well.

Leaning against an advertisement sign that had been posted likely a century ago, she clenched her hands into fists. The first drops of rain trickled down over her, speckling her clothes, and she shook in anger and something she didn't often feel–defeat. While they fought often like rabid wolves over a kill, her father had never kicked her out on her own before.

While she was already eighteen and could technically walk out on him, she needed to finish school. There was no hope for a life of her own as a high school dropout, which was ironically also why her father hadn't kicked her out yet. That and the election. Next June, school would end, and it would be bow to his demands as a trophy daughter or leave.

Tears lined her eyes, but she didn't want to cry. She never wanted to cry. The guys would laugh at her if they could see her now, on the side of the street in nothing but some stupid shirt that squeezed her top but at least zipped up to her neck. That and her dress pants offered no more protection than tissue paper. Her father hadn't even tossed her overcoat to her before he'd left, which meant that she had no phone or credit cards.

The rain abruptly stopped above her, and she craned her neck up to a sheet of black that she identified as an umbrella. It was of course attached to an arm, and she immediately reached for the knife she kept hidden in her shirt. By the time she followed the arm up to the huge man beside her and connected with his dark hazel eyes, she'd flipped the blade open.

Tanner didn't move, just eyed the weapon at her side. "That won't get you very far here."

This guy had slipped up to her silently despite his size, and that took practice. Last time she'd seen him, he'd called her a snide little shit, and the look in his dark eyes now certainly wasn't friendly, yet his actions said more than his look of displeasure. With his arm extended out to her and no hat, he stood completely unprotected under the downpour. Rain had already soaked his blond waves to a dim brown in the shadows. Though most of his hair was tied behind his back in a wild tangle, the water tightened any loose curls around his face.

"What do you want?" Rachel asked, folding her knife closed and tucking it back behind the underwire of her bra. It was the only pocket she had available at the moment.

"Nothing," Tanner answered, but he hadn't moved from holding the umbrella over her head.

"Okay." Rachel couldn't help the upward tilt of her lips, and Tanner mirrored it in a much fainter expression. "Best be on your way then," Rachel said, crossing her arms.

"You don't own this corner, I'm afraid. If I want to stand on it, you have no say." Tanner slid his free hand into his coat pocket, completely content with the weight of his drenched clothes. "You best be on your way."

"You're kicking me off the corner?"

"It's a dangerous corner," Tanner answered with a frown, his eyes flashing gold from a lightning strike.

"I can see that. I guess some pretty shady men linger here." Rachel let out a breath, and Tanner chuckled. When she dared to look directly at him, she found his expression much gentler than she'd expected, like he was somehow enjoying this encounter.

"I suppose that's why you're armed," Tanner asked more than said.

"I'm always armed. This whole city is the lair of the Moceris. I'd be an idiot if I weren't." The Moceris were a huge Italian crime family that ran everything in the city, and she did her best to avoid them with her little gang. The mob kept to their borders, and the unincorporated areas were littered with gangs that fought over the turf the Moceris didn't care for.

"You'd be an idiot if you were standing out in the rain on a corner in their territory."

"Fuck off," Rachel snapped, and Tanner's eyebrows jumped. "My father left me here," was all she managed to sputter out in her poorly concealed grief. She hoped that it was raining hard enough that Tanner couldn't tell she'd been crying. It's not like he'd feel obligated to help anyway. Right now, he looked like this was just shitty border control.

"Left? As in, out in the rain, alone, at night?"

The sun set early this time of year, so it wasn't super late, but it was getting dark. Rachel nodded, and Tanner's face folded in aggravation, his light eyebrows crunched down toward his nose digging heavy wrinkles between them, and his eyes faded to near black in the dim street light. Tanner screamed death as his body tensed with his rage, his shoulders raising and his neck tightening.

"Just go... do whatever you were doing," Rachel insisted before Tanner imploded. "He'll pick me up in a few hours when he thinks me sufficiently waterlogged."

Tanner stood silent next to her, all except for the sound of his hand constricting around the umbrella handle. It gave her the distinct impression of how it would feel if he gripped her neck.

"Can I take you up on your previous offer?" Tanner spoke in a slow growl that came off no better than his blatant display of hostility.

"What offer?" Rachel regretted asking as he tightened his jaw.

"To hang out some time," Tanner said so quietly that she barely heard him.

"Is this your idea of hanging out?"

"No." Tanner rubbed rain out of his eyes with his free hand. "I know a place we can break into just down the street, if you want to get out of the rain."

"I've never broken into anywhere before." Rachel chuckled, and it lessened Tanner's frown.

"It's not too hard if you pick the right place." Tanner took a step into her, and she brought her arms closer to herself. The poor man probably just wanted to share the umbrella, but there was no way for him to do that without them touching. "Come." Tanner touched the small of her back to guide her on, and the contact, though the barest touch of his fingers before he dropped them to his side, had her scooting forward faster.

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Word count: 2161