by Aly Martinez
“Ah, yes. Those evil books are notorious for that. Real downer, huh?”
“Total. How’d your test go?”
“Ninety-seven.” I brushed invisible dirt off my shoulder.
She laughed. “Hey, nice job!”
“Thanks. I got approximately the same minutes in sleep last night, but whatever. I can sleep when we get our mansion in the sky.”
“Oh, that reminds me. When we get the new house, I want to paint stars on the ceiling.”
My heart skipped a beat. “I can get you some stars to stick up there for now if you want. Or you can take a few of your dad’s off my ceiling.”
“Nah, those are yours. I want to paint them myself. One in. One out.”
Pride soared in my veins. “Yeah. Of course. Any chance you’ll let me help?”
“Depends. You gonna let me get a milkshake with dinner?”
My smile stretched as I narrowed my eyes on her in the rearview. “You seriously going to blackmail me like that?”
She giggled. “This is what happens when you deny a child sugar for years at a time. They turn to a life of crime.”
Jesus, she was a smartass. Definitely her father’s child.
My phone started ringing when I turned into the parking lot of our favorite burger place. “Fine. Chocolate or vanilla?”
“Have we met?” she smarted.
“Once or twice. But I keep hoping to convert you into a chocolate lover.”
“I wouldn’t hold your breath.”
I stuck my tongue out at her as I got into the drive-thru line and lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
It was Brittany, and the panic in her voice hit me like a Mack truck. “Dante’s here.”
The hairs on my arms stood on end. It was funny how two words could cause such a visceral reaction, but that was all it took with me. Two words and the core of my soul shivered.
“I’m on the way.” I dropped the phone in my lap without so much as hanging up first.
“Hey!” River complained when I wheeled out of line. “What about my milkshake?”
“Dante’s at the building,” I rushed out, my heart going to war with my ribs.
I mentally played out that morning in my head, reviewing my every move. I’d put my textbook away. My money was hidden. That week’s deposits were ready to go. River was with me. And all the girls had been accounted for. He hadn’t been by in a while, but we were always prepared.
God, I hoped we were prepared.
I glanced back at River and tears were already falling from her eyes as she silently peered out the window.
“It’s going to be fine. I’m sure he’s just dropping off a new girl,” I lied. “But when we get back, I want you to go straight upstairs and lock yourself in your room. You know the drill.”
She nodded without looking at me.
“Hey, baby, look at me. It’s going to be okay. He has no reason to take you this time.” I’d only gotten her back the night before. Manuel had had her for over a week that time. My blood turned to sludge when I thought of him taking her again. “It’s going to be fine,” I repeated for both of our sakes. “I swear.”
“Truth?” Not even her whisper could hide the shake of her voice.
I flicked my gaze to the mirror. I didn’t want to lie to her. I didn’t even want to tell her it was a lie. I wanted it to be the truth with every fiber of my being. So much so that I didn’t hesitate when I replied, “Truth. I won’t let him take you.”
It took us about five more minutes to get home. As soon as we pulled up, I saw a congregation of women huddled around the stairs and peering up. My heart stopped when ten pairs of terrified eyes flashed my way before I got the car in park. The sound of River’s door slamming came at the same time I cut the engine. I scrambled out after her, watching her brown ponytail sway as she ran toward the steps.
“Cora!”
“Cora!”
“Cora!”
I put a hand up to silence them while scanning the group for one I trusted. “Angela,” I called. “Go up with her. Lock the door.”
She peeled out of the group, taking the steps two at a time to catch up to River.
I turned my attention on Brittany. “Where is he?”
Her already pale face flashed ghostly. “He’s with Lexy.”
My pulse spiked as fear rocked me back a step. “Shit,” I breathed, taking off up the stairs at a dead sprint.
I’d just moved her up to the third floor. She hadn’t been there long, but she already wanted out. The girls up there all loved her. More often than not, I’d find them sitting around, waxing poetic about what they wanted to do with their lives. It gave me hope of one day helping them make it a reality. Lexy wanted to get into journalism. She had big dreams of becoming an investigative reporter for one of the major cable networks. Her whole face would light up like a sunrise when she’d talk about it.
But I had to get her out of there first.
When I hit the third floor, I found Angela trying to coax River into our apartment. But she was frozen in the middle of the breezeway, her mouth hanging open, while staring at Lexy’s ajar door.
And then I understood why.
“Get off me!” Lexy screamed from inside.
“Shut the fuck up,” Dante growled.
There were several loud crashes followed by another scream that echoed around the breezeway, slicing me to the bone with every reverberation.
My mind went to work trying to figure out any possible way in which I could stop this. I could have charged in there, dragging him off her. Dante loved to hit me. Hell, it probably would have been a treat for him.
But with one glance at River, I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do for Lexy.
He would have taken her. He would have beaten me senseless and then he would have taken her again back to Manuel. And God only knew for how long this time.
I was trapped. Caught between allowing a good woman to be raped and abused and losing my daughter to the very same man.
My whole body trembled, and my mind swirled, frantically trying to come up with a solution.
“You fucking whore,” Dante seethed.
“No!” Lexy cried.
I lifted a shaking hand to my mouth while tears scraped the back of my eyes like rusty razor blades.
“Cora,” Angela pleaded.
I shook my head repeatedly. “Get River inside.”
“No,” River argued. “We have to help her.”
Another scream.
Another grunt.
Another piece of me being stripped away.
My head throbbed with sharp, piercing pain—more than likely my conscience making its presence known. “I can’t. He’ll take you if I get involved. I can’t let them do that again. I can’t fix this, baby. I just can’t.”
Another scream.
Another grunt.
Another knife to my heart.
Like a coward, I came unglued and marched to the door to my apartment. I snagged River’s hand, dragging her after me, and barked at Angela, “Go tell everyone to get in their apartments and lock the door. I don’t want to see anyone outside until I let you know the coast is clear.”
Regretfully, she glanced back at Lexy’s door. She wanted to help as much as I did, but no one in that building could afford to go toe-to-toe with a Guerrero.
“This is so fucked up,” she whispered before taking off.
Another scream.
Another grunt.
Another blistering wave of guilt.
“Give me your key,” I ordered at River when I realized I’d left mine in the car.
She quickly dug it out of her pocket and slapped it onto my palm. Honing my focus on stilling the shake in my hands, I went to work on the locks.
Another scream.
Another grunt.
And then I died. Or at least, I thought I was going to.
“Dante,” River called, but she wasn’t behind me anymore.
I spun arou
nd and found her pushing Lexy’s door open. “River!” I whisper-yelled, lunging toward her, but it was too late.
“Get the fuck out of here, kid!” Dante boomed.
She didn’t move, but I watched in horror as she dipped low, picking something up off the floor before shoving it into her back pocket. Then she said, “Manuel’s looking for you. He’s been trying to call you. Apparently, something’s going down on the South Side. He wants you to meet him at home as soon as possible.”
“What the fuck?” Dante rumbled, but I heard his heavy footsteps. “Where the hell is my phone?”
In River’s pocket.
Shit. I was going to kill that kid.
With labored breaths and a marathon pulse, I clambered across the hall and put my back flush to the brick beside the door. Out of sight but close enough to grab her if I needed to.
“Yeah, don’t ask me,” she replied in a bored tone. “He didn’t give me any details. But he sounded mad.”
“Son of a bitch,” he grumbled.
I flinched when he tripped over the threshold, almost knocking River over, before stumbling down the stairs. He was high, no doubt. I could only pray he’d wrap himself around a tree before discovering that River had lied to him.
After tiptoeing to the railing, I peeked over and found him folding into his car. I refused air to my lungs until he kicked up a spray of gravel and dust while tearing out onto the road.
I raced back into Lexy’s apartment. She was sitting on the floor, her back propped against the wall, her brown eyes wild and distant, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.
“It’s okay. He’s gone,” my brave, stupid nine-year-old said, squatting beside her.
Her apartment looked like hell. Everything from the couch cushions to the end tables were strewn across the room. Her shirt was torn and her bra was crooked, barely covering her breasts, but I blew out a long sigh of relief when I saw she was still wearing her shorts.
At least there was that.
I kneeled beside her.
She jumped when I touched her arm.
“Relax. It’s just me,” I assured her. “Are you okay?”
She turned her frazzled gaze on me and whispered, “I got to get out of here. I gotta…I gotta go home before he comes back.” Suddenly rising to her feet, she patted her front down, doing what little she could to make her tattered shirt cover her chest. “I gotta get out of here.”
I agreed wholeheartedly. If Dante wanted her, there was no doubt that he’d be back. Unless she was gone, all River had done was prolong the inevitable.
Sidling under her arm, I took some of her weight. “Do you have somewhere you can go? Maybe someone you can call?”
“Shane,” she whispered before she burst into tears. “Oh my God. I can’t tell him about this. He’ll kill him.”
“Who’s Shane? A john?” I asked, guiding her toward the door, River following close behind us.
“My husband,” she croaked.
The air stilled along with my feet.
I cranked my head to the side. “You’re married?”
She nodded and then cleared her throat. “I need you to take me back to the hotel.”
“Wait. Is this the guy you were running from? Because I don’t want you making a hasty decision based on what just happened. We can figure something else out. Get you somewhere safe.”
“No. Shane would never… I just…” She stepped away from me. Her hands shook as she smoothed her hair down. “Listen, Cora. I need to leave for a while. But I’ll be back, okay? I won’t forget about you. I swear.”
I liked Lexy.
She was one of the easier girls in the building. She was kind and funny, always willing to help out. Her smile was infectious, and her bright-side attitude was hard not to catch.
Lexy was sweet.
And when I dropped her off at the hotel that night, I looked her straight in the eye and told her the truth. “Please don’t ever come back.”
Cora
What the hell was happening?
I’d known Penn’s wife.
She’d told him about me.
His name was Shane.
Drew wasn’t his brother.
Thomas had killed Lexy.
Penn was going to kill him.
He’d already killed Dante and Marcos.
Savannah was back.
So was Catalina.
Thomas had tried to shoot her.
Penn was alive.
And I was currently on my knees in the middle of Penn’s ginormous bajillionaire bathroom, dry-heaving into his toilet.
“I’m not a bajillionaire,” he said.
Annnnd apparently I was thinking out loud. Awesome.
He was sitting, his ass on the cold floor, his legs bent, his feet on the floor, his forearms resting on his knees. Not too close. Not too far away. He was just there in the most Penn Walker way possible.
“I made your wife a prostitute,” I announced.
“She wasn’t a prostitute, Cora. She never slept with anyone.”
“This is probably the completely wrong time to tell you this, but she brought home a lot of money. Said she had some rich guy on the hook.”
He flashed me a tight smile. “Nice to meet you. I’m the rich guy.”
“You were there?” I breathed, because at this point, anything was possible.
“No. But she used to video chat with me a couple times a week from that hotel. When she had to head back at the end of the night, she’d pull out cash from the ATM. In a roundabout way, I personally paid a few of Marcos and Dante’s bills there for a while.”
God. My head hurt. It was all too much.
I sighed. “No, you didn’t. I skimmed enough money off the Guerreros to cancel it out. Though you probably paid my phone bill a time or two.”
He grinned. “I can live with that.”
“I dropped her off at the hotel that night,” I blurted when I couldn’t hold it back anymore.
His heavy, blue eyes lifted to mine. “I know.”
“Did she…tell you why?”
“I dislocated both of Dante’s shoulders and then slammed them back in socket before I choked him out and left him for the smoke and fire to finish him off.”
Holy.
Shit.
This Shane guy was scary.
But I couldn’t say that Dante didn’t deserve it.
Guilt settled like a boulder in my stomach. “I thought she was going home. Dante came looking for her the next day, but I told him she’d run away. I never considered something had actually happened to her.”
“She was coming home. She’d booked a flight for the next morning.”
“She never made it,” I whispered, emotion bubbling to the surface again.
The first time Penn had told me about his wife, I’d thought it was crazy that he blamed himself for failing her when there was so obviously nothing he could have done. But right then, I got it. Dropping her off there, I’d failed her too.
Reaching over my head, I snagged a decorative floral towel that I knew without a shadow of a doubt Penn had not bought and used it to wipe my mouth.
“I have an extra toothbrush if you want it,” he said.
Fresh breath was the least of my concerns.
Settling on my butt, I mirrored his position against the bathtub for two. My body ached like I’d been through a wash cycle, and my mind was a jumbled mess, trying to fit together all the pieces he’d been doling out over the last God only knew how long. Each time I’d thought I had a handle on it, he’d dropped another bomb at my feet.
“Is there anything else?” I asked. “You have some kids or something I need to know about?”
“No,” he promised.
“Okay, do you need a kidney and I’m the only match?”
His lips twitched. “No, Cora. All my organs are in good condition.”
“Seriously, I can’t take any more surprises. If you have anything else up your tattooed sleeves, it needs to come out
now. Are you secretly Savannah’s biological father come to save her from the clutches of her abusive adoptive parents?”
“What? No. And don’t encourage her with that. She’s been calling me daddy for weeks.”
My stomach rolled.
Apparently, he did have more surprises.
“You’ve had her for weeks?” I squeaked.
He leaned his head back against the wall. “I got to her as soon as I could. I stalked the hospital for a few days, hoping to see her get discharged. When that didn’t work, I went to Cleveland and tracked down her parents. I found her standing on the corner, trying to score some cash. Picked her up and brought her home.”
“Home,” I whispered sadly. “Right.”
He cursed under his breath. “That’s not what I meant. Obviously, her home is with you.”
At a loss for any other response, I repeated, “Right.”
“Truth or lie?”
I picked invisible lint off the towel. “No. That’s why I’m sitting here right now, lost and confused, feeling like I was transported into another person’s life. I let you lie to me for too long.”
“Okay…then truth. My body’s about to tear out of my skin over here. Any chance you’ll let me come over there and hold you?”
With sadness saturating my vision, I looked up at him. He was wearing the Penn Walker uniform: boots, tattered jeans, and a T-shirt. His scruff had grown in until it was straddling the line of becoming a beard, and the black tattoos on his arms and hands looked completely out of place in that lush bathroom. But Penn was always beautiful—rugged and unorthodox—and as though he’d cast a spell on me, even knowing what I knew now, I still craved his touch.
“I spent the last few weeks wishing you were sitting in front of me,” I confessed, pausing when my voice gave out. “And here you are, but it’s like all my dreams and all my nightmares have melded together to form the perfect mindfuck. I’d love nothing more than to dive into your arms and bury my head in the sands of comfort rather than confusion.”
Relief softened his face as he started to stand up.
“But I can’t, Shane. The man I fell in love with was nothing but a carefully constructed façade, tailored to who he needed to be to seduce me.”
“That’s not true. It was always me.”
“And who is that exactly? Please, I’m dying to know. What parts of you were my Penn with the big heart and gentle touch and what part was Lisa’s Shane out for revenge?”