Chapter 1
“November is getting off to a less-than-stellar start for one of metal’s favorite bad boys. We’re told wehaven’t seen the worst of the videosyet, but according to a source close to Nikan Monture, guitarist for explosiveband Preload, Nikan isn’t worried, as the footage is old.”
Nik glared at the TV and the peppy entertainment-show anchor. “How about you make the story about me being hacked? About someone stealing my personal property?” he muttered as he started the coffee brewing and the kettle boiling. It was too fucking early in the morning to deal with this shit. He needed his lemon drink for his throat and some coffee to kick-start the rest of him before he coulddeal with the fallout. Three women had already been in touch asking whatactions he’d be taking. The videos were from his private collection, all filmed with absolute full consent, the most recent one having been added three yearsago. He’d grown up and moved on, but had stupidly forgotten to hit DELETE.
“And ladies, for the record, having seen a handful of the videos, we’d say Preload’s hits are not the only huge thing in Monture’s life.”
Nik groaned as he ran his hand through his hair and tugged on the ends. He knew how big his dick was and, given the number of women who’d seen it, it wasn’t a secret that he was well endowed—but, fuck, did the world need to hear about itover breakfast?
He looked down at his phone and realized it was actually closer to lunch. Not thatthe time of day made any difference. He grabbed a lemon from the silver dish onthe counter and began to slice it.
“Either way, between Preload’s upcoming North American tour and the leaked videos, I’m sure we’re going to see much more of Monture in the coming weeks.”
He reached for the remote and turned the TV off before he could do something stupid—like rip it off the ugly kitchen wall on which it had been hung just yesterday and smash it on the ugly linoleum floor. At least none of the gossip networks knew where he was for now, hidden away in the fixer-upper Cabbagetown house he’d bought four doors down from Elliott, a fellow Preload guitarist, andaround the corner from the group home in which all of them had grown up.
The rest of the band, the men he called brothers, had his back, though they were as frustrated about the leak as he was. Dred, Preload’s lead singer, had texted tosay reporters were still hanging around his driveway, waiting to see if Nik surfaced there. And Lennon and Jordan had gotten into a scuffle the previous day with the paparazzi on their way into Elliott’s place, which housed their recording studio.
Unable to join in on working on new material with them even though he was only four doors away, he’d attempted to work here, but the results lay in crumpled ballson the kitchen island. Nothing had come together; everything had sounded jarring. His block was getting worse, but he could never share with the band the reason behind it. How on earth could he tell them he didn’t really love metal or the music they played? He didn’t hate it, but it didn’t strike the same chord in him as it did the rest of them.
When they’d first started playing instruments together in the group home, metal had been all Jordan had wanted to play. It seemed to be the only reason he had for leaving the attic in which he otherwise hid. And it had been a way for Dred to channel his anger. As the eldest, who had always felt a familial sense of responsibility for them all, Nik had wanted them to be happy. He’d made it his mission to give them what they’d needed to survive. So he’d done what he did best. Faked it. For fifteen fucking years. For the sake of keeping his family together.
Angrily, he threw some lemon slices into the mug, then gripped the counter. Goddamn,those videos. . . . No, those moments had been his only windows of escape. They weren’t for the world to see.
Barefoot and wearing only a pair of jeans, Nik poured boiling water into a mug and added some honey. It was his routine every morning, some self-care for his vocal chords. Even though he only sang backup to Dred’s scorching vocals, his throat still took a beating. November and the Canadian leg of their world tour wouldbe here soon enough, but first he had to survive today and deal with the record label’s cyber-security team, who were helping him find the source of the leak. Perhapshe should just stay inside and help the contractors he’d hired continue demolishing the upper level of his home.
When he’d first started looking for a new place, he’d looked at premium condos, all glass-and-chrome modern. All finished to luxurious specs. They were placeswhere he imagined himself living the bachelor life of parties and regularvisitors, with enough space too, for him to babysit Petal, Dred’s daughter, or their new baby that was on the way, or have Daniel, Elliott’s stepson, come hangout. On paper, the penthouse of the Tip Top Lofts or one over in Bloor WestVillage at the top of the South Kingsway had been exactly what he’d beenlooking for—perfectly laid out for entertaining and able to allow him theanonymity he craved when he wasn’t on stage. But within minutes of entering them with his realtor, he’d immediately known they weren’t right. None of them felt like home. Nowhere ever really had. The home he’d shared with the rest ofthe band was the closest he’d ever gotten to that feeling. So he’d cancelled the rest of the viewings, gone to the Starbucks at the intersection of Jane and Runnymede, and written out a list of what was important: Cabbagetown, where he’d grown up, a place he’d be relieved to return to after months on the road. Proximity to the men he thought of as family. And finally, a place he could work on with his own hands, make his mark on, and set down roots in. His forever home, even if he was the only one in it. A place he could retrofit with the layout he’d planned years ago with the woman he’d intended to spend therest of his life with.
Until he’d blown his and Jenny’s forever.
He left the first-floor apartment and jogged up the stairs to the second floor,trying to ignore the faded yellow wallpaper.
Underneath the dirt and debris of a house that had stood empty for a year, it was easy to see that it had once been an incredible single-family home. The worn newel on the wooden post at the top of the stairs was evidence of just how many people had made their way up and down the staircase that ran through the middle of the house. It sucked that someone who had seen a business opportunity in the late eighties had ripped the building apart, turning it into six apartments. But even so, it had remained a place for families. One of the doorframes in apartment three had pencil marks showing the heights of a growing child, and the tenants in one of the ground-floor apartments had installed a small swingset in the backyard. Families had lived here, had grown here, had been happy here.Unlike his own, which had been decimated by the early death of his father and the murder of his mother.
He shivered at the memory of all the blood. Thinking about it—and the pain he had experienced—always made him feel sick to his stomach.
He pushed his thoughts aside as he opened the door to apartment four, bracing himself for the stale smell that always hit him when he entered. It wasn’t nasty,more like the damp smell that books took on when they’d been hidden in an attictoo long. Bland walls that had yellowed over time contrasted with original dark-wood floors that had been scratched and scuffed by furniture andfootsteps. A large pile of left-behind furniture was stacked by the door, ready for the Salvation Army. Lennon would be heading over soon to help him carry it all to the ground floor. Then they were going to rip out the kitchen.
One day soon, the apartments would be returned to a single-family home he could beproud of.
Hecaught sight of his reflection in the large mirror resting against the wall. Everything about his appearance looked the same as it had yesterday and the daybefore that. Yet his reflection was becoming less familiar somehow with eachpassing day. Nothing about him had changed. He was the eldest. The guitarist.The reliable backup vocalist. The patriarch. His days of being the wild child,the one trying to escape reality through hedonism, were over. Because no matterwhat he tried, there were still days when none of it felt enough. When nothing filled the growing pit in his stomach.
He felt Jenny’s absence more now than ever. He peered out of the room into the hallway and could imagine her bounding up the stairs toward him. She’d be smiling at him the way she used to, radiating with everything that was good,and caring, and sexy as hell—all just for him. They would have a bedroom of their own, and the kind of bathroom Jenny always used to dream about. One with candles, and bubbles, and no time limit because there wasn’t a queue of other kids waiting to use it like there always had been in their respective group homes.
But that was never going to happen. He couldn’t fix what he’d done the way he could fix up this house. Even after all this time, the pain of his stupidity hadn’t diminished. He knew deep down that a love like the one he’d felt for her, found with her, only came along once in a lifetime. But he’d lost his chance—he’d lost her. And clearly she didn’t want to be found. Nobody knew where Jenny was. And heaven knew he’d looked.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he took it out.
X
Shit. It was from Albi, a twelve-year-old living in the group home in which he’d grown up, a home the band supported because of their love for Ellen, the woman who had raised them in it and still ran it now. X meant a kid was in a difficult situation from which he couldn’t get himself out. X meant a kid needed help.
Everytime Nik saw X on his phone, relief raced through him that he’d read an article about a way to help kids extricate themselves from danger and proposed using it with the kids to Ellen.
Nik dialed Albi’s number and focused on the script they’d agreed on just in case someone was listening in. Someone who had the power to hurt Albi if theythought for one moment they were being set up.
“Hello.”His voice was shaky, unusual for the cocky street kid.
“Albi, it’s Nik. There’s a problem at the home, and I have to come get you. Where are you?”
“On Bremner in front of the Jays stadium, by gate five.”
Nik placed his cup on the window sill and ran back down the stairs to apartment one, into which he’d moved while he was renovating. “I’m on my way, kid. Ten minutes, fifteen max.” Nik hung up the phone and resisted the urge to reassure Albi that everything was okay, that he’d be there soon, that he needed to stay strong and not do whatever it was he felt uncomfortable about. But doing so would give too much away if someone else was listening in on Albi’s call.
It was the first time Albi had used the emergency X. Other kids at the home had used it and had tried to reassure Albi it was okay to do the same, especially when Albi had been returned to the home in a shitload of trouble by the police after being caught shoplifting in the Eaton Centre.
Nik pulled a T-shirt over his head while simultaneously shoving his feet into his sneakers. He grabbed an elastic and tied his long black hair back, then added a baseball hat and shades as he walked to the door and pulled on his long black hair back, then added a baseball hat and shades as he walked to the door andpulled on his jacket. He patted his pockets. Keys, wallet, phone. He set thealarm, locked up the house, and jogged down the steps to his car.
He might not have a family of his own, but he’d always be able to help these kids.
And as the engine of his all-black Jaguar F-Type roared to life, he knew it had tobe enough.
* * *
The fuel light flashed on Jenny McKade’s decade-old car just as she pulled off thehighway.
Thank God.
The last thing she had time for was an emergency breakdown on the 401, a highwayshe hated more than life itself. Nothing good had ever come from being onHighway 401. She remembered the day her father had bundled them into the backof the car when she was seven, the trunk filled with what he’d called their post-apocalyptic survival kit. Jenny remembered not being allowed to bring her doll, Kayla, or her favorite Dr. Seuss books because they’d needed the space for “supplies.” As they’d driven north from their simple home in the Beaches, Jenny’s hopes of ever being reunited with her precious toys and things decreased with every mile they crawled up the Don Valley Parkway. But it wasn’t until they’d hit the 401 that her father had begun to ramble even more than usual. Something about doing it all wrong at that siege in Waco, a comment she hadn’t understood until she was much older after asking Pauline, the lady who ran the care home in which she’d been placed, what her father had meant. All she knew back then was that her father had gotten them to chant the words “We will overcome” until they had seen signs for the Toronto Zoo. For a moment,she’d thought it had all been a ruse, convincing herself that they weren’t leaving her friends and her school and her dolls behind and instead were goingto the zoo as a surprise for her birthday, which was just six days away.
But they’d driven past the zoo and kept going until they’d reached a neglected farmhouse on a large lot. When they’d stepped out of their car, people outside the farmhouse had greeted her father like a conquering hero, calling him the prophetand shouting about how the Earth would be returned to the blessed. “The comet will save us all,” they’d chanted, which even to her young ears had sounded delusional.
Jenny returned her focus to the road. Technically it was her day off, but everything she’d done so far today was work related. Not that she minded. She’d always figured you were winning at life if you could do a job you loved and that society valued enough to pay you for doing it. Attending the networking breakfast for group-home leaders,during which several speakers had talked about professional development commitments, had been a no-brainer. Given its proximity to the Superstore onWeston Road, which thankfully had a gas station close by, she could tick a few more things off her list—gas, groceries for the group home, and some supplies for herself.
Running a group home had been her only objective when she’d finally graduated from highschool, and now it was a reality. It had been heartbreaking to leave the group home for which she’d been the assistant manager in Ottawa, where she’d lived for the last eight years, but as much as Ottawa had been good to her, it had never quite felt like home the way Toronto had. She’d missed it so much that when the home had been forced to make cuts, she’d volunteered, partly to save her coworkers from losing their jobs, but also so that she could relocate with a little severance money in her pocket. When she’d moved back four weeks ago, shehadn’t had a job waiting for her, so she’d been thrilled when one of her former coworkers told her that a group home with a very special place in Jenny’s heart was looking for somebody temporarily. She’d jumped at the chance to act as a substitute for Ellen, the current head of the home. Jenny knew her well fromher own past and had been crushed to see the always-active Ellen with her legin a cast. Ellen had brushed aside Jenny’s concern, joking that she’d always thought an angry parent would be her demise rather than the misplaced laundry basket she’d tripped over. With her broken leg, she would need considerable recovery time after her surgeries, leaving the city no choice but to find a stand-in for her.
This would be Jenny’s chance to prove that she could run a home. Do it right, impress her bosses, and the city might even find her a house manager role in another home when her temporary contract ended.
She turned into the grocery store’s underground parking lot and pulled into anempty space. She killed the engine and looked over at her the mail sitting onthe passenger seat that she’d collected on her way out of the apartment thatmorning. She recognized her father’s handwriting on the envelope at the top ofthe stack.
Better get it over with.
Before indecision could take over again, she ripped open the envelope her lawyer had forwarded, an envelope that been sent to his office from the secure unit inwhich her father was currently imprisoned.
Dear Starburst,
God, she hated that name. She hated any reference atall to the night sky. The cult had based all their actions on the patterns ofstars. Their collective suicide attempt had even been focused around the appearance of a new comet.
I used to think that the time it takes the Earth to orbit around the Sun was an impossible concept for a human to grasp. The precision of it—the extra six hours, forty-five minutes, and forty-eight seconds that everyone forgets to add when they say 365 days—seemed so abstract. But after having witnessed this phenomenon nearly seventeen times since I lastsaw you, I now think of each rotation only as a painful reminder of the timeand distance between us.
While I myself have been very aware of it for sometime, it has been decided by the court that I am now well enough to serve the rest of my sentence with the general prison population. I am aware, too, that an apology to you is long overdue, one I would like to make in person.
Even the courts and judges of Ontario now realize Ia m not the man I once was, and I desperately need the opportunity to convince you of this, too.
If I could make the trip to see you, I would do it in a heartbeat. But as I can’t, please would you reconsider your decision and please, please, come and see me?
Dad
Jenny balled up the paper and threw it into the footwell of the car. Damn him. He had no right. Not when he’d been the one to mix the poison with the apple juice to make it more palatable to the children of the compound, leaving six of them dead. Not when he’d been the one to give the commencement speech before all his followers were to die, explaining how the comet would save them all and that death was the only way to shed their physical skins and enter the next world. Not when he’d told them that God would know who failed him if they didn’t drink the poison in the order her father told them to. Not when he’d made her mom go first to show their joint commitment to their cause. Goddamn him.
Jenny shivered and stepped out of her car. A crisp coolness danced in the early November air, so she quickly fastened the buttons of her light jacket. It was her favorite time of year and she refused to let it be ruined by a stupid letter from her father. Growing up in care, this season had some how felt tainted. Thanksgiving had felt forced, Halloween had been a logistical disaster masked by cheap costumes, and Christmas—though it had been the best effort the home could provide—rarely had been touched by the magic she’d imagined existed in a real home.
Excerpt from Nikan Rebuilt copyright © 2017 by Scarlett Cole