by Tillie Cole
I left Tank in church, left the clubhouse and walked to the woods. The minute I had the cover of the trees, I let my fist fly into the nearest one. My knuckles ripped open, but I didn’t stop. I hit it again, seeing Adelita’s face, Beau’s face, and the faces of all my fucking Hangmen brothers when I’d told them about Lita. I punched it and punched it until I was out of breath and blood dripped from my hand.
A twig snapped. I swung around, ready to smash in the face of whoever was here. Whoever had a death wish. Hush stood watching me, his arms folded across his chest. My balled fists relaxed. If it had been anyone else . . .
“What do you want?” I said, voice fucking rasped.
“You okay?”
I stared at Hush, at his ice-blue eyes staring me down. My mixed-race brother standing near a tree, the branch hanging low near his neck, made me think of all the fucking faceless men I’d seen swinging from nooses. The work of my old brotherhood, done to anyone who wasn’t white, who was a Klan deserter or who was an enemy to the cause.
“You didn’t tell him.” I was talking about Styx. Hush had kept my secret.
Hush raised his eyebrow. “No.” He stepped closer. Lighting up a smoke, he offered one to me. I took one and lit up, taking a long drag. “Wasn’t my story to tell,” Hush eventually said. My stomach untwisted. “Who you’re fucking ain’t my business.”
Who I’m fucking? I thought. She’s my fucking fiancée! I almost snapped. But I held it back. No one knew that. No one but me and her. Christ. At times I didn’t even know if it was still true. If she still had the scrap of a makeshift ring I’d given her. If she still even wanted me.
“We’re gonna be taking her cousin,” Hush said. I took drag after drag of my smoke, hoping the nicotine would stop the pulling feeling in my stomach. The damn rope that was coiling around my organs, tearing them apart. “Your old lady gonna forgive you for that?”
Truth was, I didn’t fucking know. But she’d already forgiven me for worse . . .
Hush flicked his smoke to the ground, standing on it to put it out. With one last silent look, he walked back toward the clubhouse. The minute he was out of sight, I slumped to the ground. Back against the tree that was now stained with my blood, I closed my eyes and let the sun that was slicing through the trees warm my face.
I thought of Adelita sitting, waiting for her cousin to marry. Having her not show. Panicking when she realized she’d been taken by the Hangmen, Valdez, or whoever the fuck else her old man had pissed off. I blew out a breath. I didn’t fucking know what to do. I didn’t know how to be in this club with all this shit hanging over me. The woman who owned my heart, now the enemy. I had to protect her, but I had to protect my club too. And then there was my brother, my fucking little brother . . .
Needing something to think of that wasn’t this shit, I let the sun heat my face and thought back to Adelita. To the days when she made me lose my mind. The days when she started knocking down walls I thought would never be destroyed . . . especially by someone like her . . .
I sipped at my water. I needed whiskey like I was a damn alcoholic, but I hadn’t touched liquor since we’d arrived here a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t trust anyone here. Not fucking one of them. I was keeping my head straight, my eyes clear.
I glanced up at the sun. It was hot as fuck. And another day had come when my old man had kept me out of whatever he was planning with Quintana. Another fucking day where I had to sit around and count down the days when we got to go back to our Texan lands.
Beau: How is it?
Me: Shitty. How’s back home?
Beau: Same old same. Landry taking care of business. Be good to get you back.
Beau kept checking in while I was here. He didn’t trust Quintana; that was obvious. I’d give anything to be home. Instead I was here. In this hell.
Looking at the jokes that were Quintana’s guards, I barely heard the click of a door opening to my left. I froze when Adelita walked through, holding a book, dressed in a short see-through robe of some sort, showing off her tight body. Her black hair hung down her back in loose curls. Her eyes were covered with massive black sunglasses. She came toward me, her red high heels clicking on the path. I’d sat around the ridiculous-sized pool this morning hoping the bitch wouldn’t find me to drag me around with her. I was fucking done with being around her. Her husky voice grated on my nerves. I was twenty-seven. She was quite a bit younger than me. I’d guess late teens or early twenties. But somehow had every fucker here wrapped around her finger. She clearly thought she could do the same with me too.
Bitch was sorely mistaken.
The empty bottle of water crackled. I hadn’t realized my fists had clenched around it, cracking the plastic, until the noise echoed around the pool. And I didn’t realize my eyes had never left Adelita until she lifted her sunglasses and smiled at me. “Enjoying the view, Señor Ayers?”
My lip curled as she waited for my response. “Don’t flatter yourself.” I turned my head, trying to ignore her. I had no idea why the fuck she even wanted to be around me. No, that wasn’t true—I’d guessed pretty quickly. She knew I didn’t like her. And she was just trying to piss me off.
And, despite myself, it was working.
Seeing her move in my peripheral, I turned, only to see her shedding her robe, revealing a red bikini underneath. If it could be called a fucking bikini. Adelita sat down beside me, on the lounger right next to mine.
I could smell that fucking perfume again. “I know what you’re doing,” I said, seeing that asswipe Vincente eyeing me from across the pool.
“Yes?” she said. “Care to enlighten me? To make me aware of my master plan?”
I turned my head to find her amused dark eyes already on me. “Yeah,” I hissed. “You’re trying to piss me off. Have been since your daddy told you to watch the Nazi.” Her nose flared, even though she kept her face expressionless.
There. There was the fucking tell that she was hating this shit as much as I was. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Vincente moved out of sight to take a call. Taking advantage of her distraction, I leaned in and snarled, “You don’t do anything for me. So you can stop acting like I’d ever find you appealing. I won’t ever stick my cock in your pussy.”
Adelita swallowed, as always trying to fight back her anger, but this time she couldn’t. Her brown eyes flared, and I saw the fucking fire ignite. I saw it before it happened. Adelita tried to take advantage of my closeness and struck out with her hand. Just before her palm sliced my cheek, I caught her wrist and yanked her toward me. With my nose almost touching hers, I said, “Nice try, princess.”
“Get off me,” Adelita hissed, trying to pull her hand back. I squeezed it tighter.
“I can’t wait for my father to be done and to be back on American soil. Out of this fucking place.” I moved so close to her that I could feel her warm breath flow over my face. She smelled of mint and the coconut from her hair and the sunscreen that was slick and shining on her tight body. Her tongue ran over her red lips. That lipstick. That motherfucking lipstick she always wore was pissing me the hell off more with every day that passed.
“Release me,” Adelita said, calmly. Too calmly. I knew it was bullshit. I could see the hate for me in her eyes, could feel her wrist shaking in my hand.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” I warned. Our foreheads were practically touching. I needed her to get the message. To get the fucking message that having her beside me every day was no longer gonna work. I wanted her gone. Her brown eyes and long hair and long lashes out of my motherfucking life. “You’ll stop speaking to me. You’ll leave the fucking room if I’m in it, and you won’t even look my way. I’m the White Prince of the fucking Ku Klux Klan, the institution that’s gonna save America. From the freeloaders and the impurists and—”
Suddenly, Adelita smashed her lips to mine. I froze, still holding her wrist tightly in my hand. I tasted mint, and when Adelita pushed her tongue inside my mouth it was sweet and addi
ctive and—
Adelita pulled back, wrenching her hand from my wrist only to slice it across my face. My head snapped to the side, the sting from her palm the gasoline to the fire I already had blazing inside. Slowly, I turned my head until I met her seething eyes. “You, Tanner Ayers, do not appeal to me.” My chest rose and fell with my rapid breaths. Adelita leaned forward, and a piece of hair fell over face. It made her look different, normal. She never looked anything but perfect. A perfectly put together princess whose daddy kept her locked away in his ivory tower built on blow.
I could smell her. I could smell the coconut. It was on my fucking skin. My hands. My face and lips. I sat up when I felt my dick getting hard. Needing to hit something, needing to pour out this rage she’d made me feel, I jumped up. I swung to Adelita, tasting the mint from her mouth. “You,” I hissed. “You’ve fucking done this, you’ve—” I grabbed her shoulders and wrenched her to me. She weighed nothing, and my hold was too strong. Her chest crashed into mine. Her hand struck my face again and again, until I threw her to her down to the lounger and pinned her down by her two slim wrists. I sat between her legs and leaned down until I was all she could see. “You fucking whore. You touched me. You don’t get to do that. Your impure hands don’t get to touch—”
The sound of voices made me freeze. It wasn’t until I forced the rage aside that I realized my mouth was hovering just above Adelita’s. Her skin was flushed and her tits were pressed right against my bare chest. Big Mexican tits pushing against my solid black swastika tattoo.
“Get your Nazi hands off me.” Adelita spoke slowly and quietly. “My guards are about to come around the corner. And if they see you touching me they will shoot you.” I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t care. That I wasn’t scared by the guards who held guns and pretended they were someone in this clusterfuck of a world, but she beat me to it. “Papa wants this deal to go through. I suggest you—” she put her lips closer to my ear “—get the fuck off me, Prince Ayers.” The smell of roses sailed past my nose from the perfume on her neck.
Hearing Vincente’s voice getting louder, I rolled back off Adelita and sat down on the lounger. Vincente and three other guards re-entered the pool area seconds later. Vincente instantly looked to Adelita. He spoke to her in Spanish, and she replied. She was holding her book again, a smile on her face and lipstick righted from where it had smudged. At least most of it was.
Almost back to the perfect princess she pretended to be, but I knew she wasn’t. I saw the cracks.
As Vincente glared at me, then walked away, I leaned over and said, “Your lipstick’s smudged, princess.” I smirked as her rabid dark eyes slammed to mine. “You look like a whore.” I jumped to my feet and stormed across the poolside until I was in the guest suites. I slammed the door shut and practically ran to the shower. I squeezed my eyes shut as I let the water wash away the coconut from my skin, the mint and rose scent. Wash Adelita’s touch, her fucking impure touch, off my body . . . and her taste from my mouth. The mint and sweetness and the fucking feel of her whorish tongue sliding next to mine. The feel of her tits against my chest and her between my legs. Releasing the rage that had been building since she’d walked out to the pool . . . fuck—since I’d arrived in this piece of Mexican hell—I curled my hand into a fist and sent it sailing into the wall. Blue tile smashed and fell to the floor with my blood. I stayed there until the water above me ran cold, the hatred not fading away . . . though this time it wasn’t for Adelita. Instead it was with myself. My cock was still hard as granite. It only got harder the more I recalled her mouth on mine, her tongue, her tits . . . her motherfucking taste. So I punched the wall again. I punched and punched until I knew there were fractures in my knuckles and the skin on them was gone and nothing remained but raw flesh.
But it didn’t help. That bitch was all up in my head. A motherfucking witch, that’s what she was.
Nothing but a fucking witch.
Getting out of the shower, I sat on the bed, but the room felt like it was closing in. I needed air. Throwing on my shirt, boots and jeans, I walked out of the guest suite . . . and right into my father. Before I knew it I was slammed against the wall in the hallway. His eyes were livid. “Why am I hearing from guards that you’ve been touching the daughter? Fucking snarling in her face and slamming her on loungers?” I didn’t answer him. What was the fucking point? It was the truth. My silence riled my father more than any answer. And I braced for the punch. The many punches that started plowing into my face. I tasted blood in my mouth, felt it trickling down my chin from my lip and nose.
And I took it. I stood there and fucking took it, never striking back.
My father paused to add, “The guards are everywhere. If you fuck up this deal, you’re done. You hear me? Fucking done.” His hands wrapped around my throat—a warning. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. My father dropped his hands and righted his suit. “Now get cleaned up. You look like a fucking redneck who has been in a bar fight.” He walked off. I didn’t move from my spot against the wall. I still warred with the urge to track him down and beat his fucking face to nothing. But I wouldn’t. Like a good little son, I wouldn’t.
I caught movement from across the hall, and my stomach dropped when I saw Adelita. Her pale face told me she’d seen it all. I wanted to tell her to fuck off. To leave me the hell alone when she came toward me. Her brown eyes searched over me—the cuts and blood—then she handed me a tissue.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I glared. I fucking glared at the bitch. But then I saw something shift in her eyes. It wasn’t pity. She wasn’t gloating.
It looked like understanding.
Adelita started walking away. I looked out of the window nearby. At the darkening sky. “You ever feel like your life isn’t your own?”
In my peripheral, I saw Adelita turn. When I met her eyes, the tears in them made my heart fucking stop. “Yes,” she whispered, that whisper slicing right through my fucking chest. “I know exactly how that feels.”
I stared at her. She stared at me. Bumps started breaking out along my skin, and I turned away. I forced myself off the wall and stormed back into the room. I slammed the door, then stood against the wood.
I ignored the pounding of my heart.
I pushed her tears out of my mind.
I refused to move until I had.
The sun came up, “I know exactly how that feels” still running through my mind, her tissue still in my hand.
Chapter Four
Adelita
Two years ago . . .
The air in the car was so thick I found it hard to breathe.
I was too aware of Tanner. Too attuned to every move he was making. Before seeing him last night, hate toward him governed my every thought. My every movement. Yesterday’s confrontation played on a loop in my mind. Him hovering above me. The taste of him in my mouth: tobacco and smoke. But seeing his father attack him last night in the hallway . . . seeing Tanner standing there, refusing to fight back, had done something to that hate. It had dulled it somehow. Started twisting it into something that felt like sympathy.
Sympathy for the Nazi prince.
But it clearly had done nothing to dilute Tanner’s hatred for me. From the minute I had seen him this morning, more contempt than usual seemed to radiate off him toward me. His eyes were glacial as they met mine. His body was more rigid when he was close to where I stood. And his lips were tighter, like he was fighting back wicked words he wanted to throw my way.
And now I was trapped in this car with him, thanks to my father . . .
“Take Tanner with you tomorrow, Adela. Show him the people we provide for, who have jobs because of us. The local people who make us who we are.” My heart beat a staccato rhythm as my father and William Ayers nodded to one another like it was a good idea. The factory workers. I was to meet with the factory workers tomorrow, and the children in the village’s school.
I didn’t look at Tanne
r, even though he was right across from me. I hadn’t looked at him once since our presence had been requested at dinner. We’d been left alone for most of the weeks they’d been here. It was pure bad luck that tonight, after what had happened beside the pool and then in the hallway, had been the night my papa wanted us all together. Everyone was simply ignoring the state of Tanner’s face. Like he wasn’t sat with a bruised and wounded face and bandaged hands. It seemed Papa and Governor Ayers’s deal was almost complete, so there was no need to acknowledge anything that would put the deal in jeopardy.
But they’d be back. And they’d be back soon. The deal was going to take a lot longer to hash out.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Tanner spoke first. “I think it’s time I sat in with you, Father. I want in on the meetings. I should be. Enough of leaving me out.”
Governor Ayers’s jaw clenched at Tanner’s request. I was surprised Tanner was being so confrontational, especially since his bust lip and nose were only a couple of hours old. “Nonsense,” he said curtly. “The deal is almost done.” He glared at Tanner for a few awkward seconds, as if he was giving his son a warning with his eyes. “Go with Adelita tomorrow. See the workers.” I could tell by his tone that it wasn’t a request.
Tanner’s eyes dropped from his father to the chicken on his plate, but anger seeped from his taut muscles . . . muscles that, only hours ago, had kept me trapped beneath him.
“Then it’s settled,” Papa said. “Tanner will accompany you tomorrow before he and his father leave. It will be good for you to see the people our businesses help, Tanner. It will show you why we do what we do.”
The sound of a car horn broke me from the memory of last night. My hand was gripping my thigh so hard that I knew there would be a bruise underneath my purple dress.