PROLOGUE . . .

Salem

I DON’T HAVE A LOT of great memories from my childhood.

There were too many rules. Too many regulations. Too many disapproving looks from my father and not enough support or backbone from my mother.

We lived in Loveless, a tiny Texas town with an achingly accurate name. I was the minister’s daughter, and if that didn’t come with enough inherent expectations, the man who was beloved behind the pulpit but a tyrant in our home heaped them on ever higher. I was meant to be quiet, compliant, and conventional. Problem was . . . that was never me.

When I was nine, I convinced my mom to let me try out for a very exclusive dance team. I longed for something different, something that would make the day-to-day less agonizing. I was so proud, so excited when I made the team, only to have my father tell me dancing like that wasn’t permitted and no daughter of his was going to make a spectacle of herself. He wouldn’t stand for it. It was how everything in my life went, and my mom never seemed willing to take a stand and defy him, even if it meant giving her daughter something she so desperately wanted. Anything that went against my father’s wishes or was deemed inappropriate and shameful got kicked to the curb along with any sense of uniqueness and enjoyment. My parents wanted to squeeze me into a too-small box, painted white and tied with a bow of tradition. Me being me would never be good enough.

It was a situation made even worse by the fact that my younger sister was the apple of my parents’ eye. The perfect golden girl. I loved Poppy with all my heart, too. She was gentle and kind but she was also docile and obedient, ready to jump whenever my father barked an order.

I was never going to be perfect and compliant like my adorable little sister. I had no plans to end up a happy homemaker like my mother. And I sure as hell was never going to fit into the conventional mold of the traditional Mexican woman like my father so desperately wanted me to. So at nine years old, I decided that I would make my own way. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, I just had to be patient.

When the time came, I broke free. I hit the road with exactly the kind of guy my father hated. I was barely eighteen, not really grown, but I had to get out. I had to run . . . I just didn’t see any other way to survive. I fled Loveless, shaking the dust off my boots and never looking back.

I have very few regrets about the choices I made for myself back then. To this day I am a woman that stands by my decisions—good or bad. I’m independent. I’m strong-willed. I’ve made my own way in life, and have, up to this point, been extremely successful at it. There’ve been times when I stumbled. There’ve been times when I lay alone in the dark and wanted to cry. There were quiet moments that snuck up on me that reminded me my parents weren’t the only people I ran from in that tiny Texas town. But overall I tried to accept full accountability for my happiness and well-being and that was the way I liked it.

I still kept in touch with my sister, Poppy. We were close even though she had married a man I wasn’t too fond of a few years ago. She still lived in Loveless. So deep was my hatred for that place and the memories that lived there I couldn’t even bring myself to attend my sister’s nuptials, which had of course taken place under my father’s watchful eyes in his church. I liked to move around, so Poppy would come visit and get a feel for whichever big city I was calling home for the moment. Her visits had become much sparser over the years, and now I could only get in touch with her every so often for a quick chat on the phone.

At first my gypsy ways had landed me in Phoenix and then Reno, all before L.A. had called to me, which had then been quickly followed by New York. I had tried New Orleans on for size and had a blast in Austin for a few years. Most recently I had landed in Vegas, and something about the lights, the noise, the constant flow of people, the way it really felt like a transient town, had stuck. I stayed in the neon jungle for far longer than any of the other places on the list and settled in to a really profitable career that hinged on all those decisions I had made that my parents were so sure were going to doom my future.

I had a great job, a killer apartment, and I was even seeing a guy that was hovering on the edge of something closer to serious than I normally liked, when I got a call out of the blue from Phil Donovan’s son.

Phil Donovan was legendary in my world—a veritable god in the tattoo industry. He was the tattoo guy other tattoo guys wanted to be. He was the artist you wanted to say had worked on you. He was groundbreaking. He was famous. The list to apprentice under him was a hundred million miles long. Phil was a supremely talented man, and according to his son, Nash, he was sick and his odds on pulling through were slim to nonexistent. Nash had inherited Phil’s shop in the heart of downtown Denver and had also been tasked with getting a new tattoo shop up and running in the more trendy Lower Downtown—“LoDo”—part of the city. Phil had thrown my name in the hat for Nash to consider as the shop’s manager.

I had only met the older man once. It was during a convention in Vegas, and I had just wanted to meet the notoriously handsome artist. Well, Phil was indeed a gorgeous example of a rock-and-roller aging well, but he was also charming, polite, and something about his demeanor had spoken to my very wayward soul. We ended up talking for hours and hours. He offered to tattoo me, and there was no way I was going to say no. I spent the next day under his needle and ended up spilling my entire life history under his watchful purple gaze. It was like being absolved of every sin I had ever committed by a very tattooed and cool pope.

When he asked where I was from and I told him “all over,” he had just laughed. When I mentioned I grew up in a very conservative town in Texas called Loveless, I could feel something change in his demeanor. He became more intent, asked a truckload more questions, and by the time the elegant, beautiful, and very traditional Lady of Guadalupe tattoo was done on my calf, I felt like Phil knew me better than I tended to know myself.

We said good-bye and I never really thought much past that encounter other than I had a killer tattoo from Phil Donovan, which totally gave me bragging rights. Nash’s call had taken me off guard, so I was prepared to blow him off. I was sad to hear about Phil and I didn’t really want to leave Vegas. Colorado was cold and had mountains. I had zero use for either of those things. I was getting ready to hang up when Nash told me to look up the shop on the Internet. To check out the artists and their work. He told me that Phil was absolutely sure I would be interested in the job and the move once I did. I shrugged it and him off and hung up, but my curiosity was piqued, so I did indeed pull up the shop on my phone.