Verboten: An Inferno World Novella

by A. A. Davies

  “And she’ll be leaving us soon.” Laney sighed and picked up one of the empty glasses I’d set out. “Shell? Be a dear and get this old lady a drink.”

  Shell huffed, her gaze flicking to mine, and I could only imagine what she was thinking. Laney was the only person who wouldn’t stand for Shell’s bullshit. The legs on her chair scraped against the wooden decking and she snatched the glass out of Laney’s hand.

  Dad moved back to the grill, leaving just the three of us around the table. “Thank god she’s gone,” Laney whispered as she leaned closer to me. “Now tell me, birthday girl, what did you get?”

  “Erm…” I shuffled on my seat and swallowed. I’d never been big on presents, but it didn’t mean I didn’t want any, especially from my dad. “I got twenty dollars. I’m going to put it toward my books for college.” It was the sensible thing to do, because that was what I was—sensible. I didn’t take risks.

  “And from your dad?”

  “That…” I lowered my voice as Shell’s heels clacked against the ground. “It was from him.”

  Laney’s brow lifted and she tutted just as Shell placed the glass in front of her.

  “There,” Shell said and moved back to her seat. “So, Jacob.” Shell turned her full attention to Uncle Jacob, but he was too busy looking down at his cell to take any notice, though I doubt he wasn’t aware of her. Who wouldn’t be with her boobs practically slipping out of her plunged dress? “How’d you get the cut?”

  Dad placed another plate of meat in the middle of the table and sat next to me, dishing up pieces to everyone, and all the while, Uncle Jacob ignored Shell.

  “It looks sore.” Shell lifted her hand, her fingertips centimeters away from his eye, and I couldn’t help my immediate reaction. My hands clenched into fists, my back straightened, and I had to grit my teeth so that I didn’t say anything.

  Uncle Jacob’s hand whipped out, his fingers wrapping around her wrist, and I held my breath. He hadn’t looked up from his cell, and all at the same time, Dad and Laney were talking about… I had no idea what they were talking about.

  “Don’t ever touch me,” he warned, his deep voice low. His gaze snapped up, first meeting mine and then Shell’s. “Ever.”

  “I…” Shell’s eyes widened, and I dipped my head down, trying my best to hide the grin that was breaking free. “Sorry.”

  I didn’t look up at them again, instead, I did what I always did. I kept my head down, ate my food, and when everyone was finished, started to clear the table. There was no point waiting for anyone else to do it because it just wouldn’t happen.

  On my last trip to the kitchen, I decided to get a head start on washing the dishes. I was elbow deep in a sink full of suds when the air around me changed. The electricity thrummed through me, charging every molecule, telling me who had just entered the room.

  “Beth.” I paused and stared down at my hands plunged into the water, both scared and excited to turn around. “I got you a present.”

  I spun around, apparently not caring that the water was splashing everywhere and soaking through my peach T-shirt. “You...did?”

  Uncle Jacob didn’t make a move, he just stood there on the other side of the island, staring directly into my eyes as he replied, “Yeah. Figured you’d need something more up-to-date than the hand-me-down you have.”

  I frowned, having no idea what he was talking about. “The...huh?”

  He pulled out a small wrapped box, placed it on the counter opposite me, and turned around. “Happy birthday, Beth.” He left the kitchen as I stared at the box, and moments later, the roar of a motorcycle rang out, telling me that he’d left.

  I dried my hands, grabbed the package, and darted for the stairs, not caring that I was in the middle of cleaning everything up. I needed to see what he’d gotten me, and I’d only just made it into my bedroom and slammed the door behind me when I ripped it open.

  My eyes widened and a gasp left my parted lips. How the hell? The picture on the small box showed me the latest iPhone, but he couldn’t have...he did. He’d bought me the latest cell on the market and made out like it was nothing.

  I grabbed the power cord and pulled the cell out, plugging it in, but the screen already had life to it, and right there, my first ever message was from Uncle Jacob.

  UJ: This is my number in case you ever need me.

  In case I need him.

  BETH

  I stood next to my bedroom window, staring out into the darkened street. Only half of the streetlights were switched on thanks to the money-saving scheme of the local mayor, which meant I couldn’t see anything outside Laney’s house. Her bedroom light was switched off, so I could only assume that she’d had an early night.

  My foot tapped on the floor, my body full of energy at the prospect of what I’d found out. Having a cell that I could get decent internet connection on had me curious, not just about what apps I could download, but also about Uncle Jacob.

  It’d been two weeks since my birthday, and I’d messaged him to say thank you but hadn’t received a reply. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t message back, but it made me all the more curious.

  Anytime he’d come over, he always had a fresh cut and a bright purple bruise on his face. I’d never thought much about it, but now I wanted to know how he got them. Where did he live? What did he do for work?

  Dad never talked about him, only to let me know when he was coming over, and that was usually at Christmas and on my birthday, but the other three hundred and sixty-three days of the year, he was a ghost, almost as if he wasn’t even real.

  But he was real. He was part of this family that I felt so detached from.

  Google was a wonderful tool, and it told me all I needed to know. Uncle Jacob fought. Not professionally for belts, but he seemed to have created a name for himself on the lower circuits. My eyes had soaked in every piece of information, the main one being where he trained.

  It wasn’t like I was going to turn up out of the blue and surprise him, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t accidentally run into him. Or maybe I could see about joining the gym? I looked down at my semi-flat stomach. I didn’t hate the way I looked, in fact, I kind of loved my hourglass shape: wide hips and big boobs, boobs that were a nightmare to contain and caused endless backache.

  My heart sped up as I lifted my head and glanced out of the window one last time. There was always something that drew me to this space every night. I didn’t know what I was searching for, but my legs carried me here as soon as the sky darkened, and I never seemed to be able to move until I felt...safe.

  Tonight wasn’t any different apart from the small red light that shone from outside Laney’s house. I’d seen it a couple of times, but never put my finger on what it was, but this night it hit me like a freight train.

  It was a cigarette.

  I gasped and stumbled back a step. Was someone out there watching me? Was I standing here giving them the unedited view of myself and my bedroom? Could they even see inside my room? I only had my small bedside lamp on, but it gave a soft glow and lit up half of my face.

  My hand clutched at my chest as my breaths sawed in and out of my body. Why the hell did I like the fact that someone was watching me?

  The small red light tumbled to the ground and went out, but I didn’t take my eyes off the area. I watched with rapt attention and a fascination that I never realized I had. Any small movement would give me hope, and finally a shadow went under the streetlight two houses down from Laney’s house.

  The figure halted, their face directed at my window, and my eyes widened.

  Eyes stared back at me. Eyes I was familiar with. Eyes that captured every ounce of my attention. Eyes that shouldn’t have made my pulse race.

  He’d come here twice in the matter of a couple of weeks, only this time, he wasn’t meant to be seen. Or did he want me to see him? I had no idea what was going on, but all I knew was that I couldn’t look away from him.

  Seconds ticked by at a snail�
��s pace, and when he eventually spun around and shifted back into the darkness, I finally drew in a much-needed breath.

  He’d come to watch me.

  Uncle Jacob had been standing there this whole time.

  Why the hell did that thrill me so much?

  Chapter Three

  JACOB

  She saw me.

  It was all I could think about for days.

  She’d stared right at me, and I couldn’t tell if she was scared or excited. I wanted her to be excited, but I also wanted her to be scared. Men like me didn’t do good things. We took what we wanted and didn’t give a damn about the consequences.

  I swung my fist at the bag another time, gritting my teeth from the way the tape bit into the skin between my fingers. Wade hadn’t been here when I arrived at five this morning, and even though he’d opened up a couple of hours later, I hadn’t bothered to get him to re-tape my hands. I was in the zone, both physically and in my head. The problem was that I needed to get out of my head.

  I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. I had to stop, which was why I didn’t go and watch her through her bedroom window last night. Every fiber of my being needed to be there, but I couldn’t. I had to stop. It wasn’t right for me to stare at my niece from the darkness, whether I was making sure she was safe or not.

  It may have started out like that, but somewhere along the way, she’d changed, as had I. I’d moved here to make sure Hal hadn’t turned out like my older brother, Luke. I should have left when I knew he hadn’t, but there was something—no, someone—keeping me here.

  I may have been the baby of the family at thirty-two, but I knew just as much as my brothers did. I knew what blood ran through our veins, I knew what it meant, and I knew where I came from. I knew that only too well right now.

  “Think that bag has had enough of a beating today,” Wade grunted from behind me, but I didn’t stop my ministrations. I kept pounding my fist into the bag, needing the slices of pain in my hands. If I was feeling pain, then it meant I was still in here somewhere and not thinking about the girl—woman—I shouldn’t have been. “Fight’s in two weeks,” Wade continued, and that was what finally got me to stop.

  I pulled in a breath and stepped back, feeling sweat rolling down the middle of my back and my temple. “Yeah,” I answered him as I stepped to the side, grabbed my big bottle of water, and swallowed a mouthful. My stare connected with his and I raised a brow. “I’m ready for it.”

  “Never any doubt,” Wade said and pulled the beanie hat off his head, scraped his fingers through his thinning hair, and placed it back on. “You seem...troubled.”

  I scoffed. “Trying to be a therapist now, Wade?” I poured some water over my face and shivered as it soaked down my bare chest.

  “Well…” Wade’s eyes widened. “You just seem to be going at it extra hard today, that’s all.”

  “And, your point is?”

  “I…” He shuffled on the spot and shrugged. “I dunno.”

  Wade was a small man at five-five, but he knew his shit. I didn’t need to have someone around me who was only good for my ego, I needed someone to tell me when I was swinging too early or ducking too late, and he was that. At times he looked like he was scared of me, but I lived for that shit. If he was scared, it meant he didn’t get too close.

  I let out a long breath and decided that today, I’d give him a little something. “I couldn’t sleep last night, just…” I dipped my head back and stared at the ceiling. “Things happening, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know—” He cut himself off at the sound of jeers and turned to look at the main door. The gym wasn’t your high-class kind, it was full of sweaty men, mostly fighters, who needed somewhere to train and not be distracted. But that didn’t mean there weren’t kids in their early twenties who thought they were hot shit. They soon realized they weren’t when they got in the ring with me to spar.

  I didn’t bother looking where he was staring with wide eyes, instead, I grabbed my stuff off the floor and took a step toward the changing rooms. I’d been here for nine hours and my body was screaming at me to rest. At least tonight I’d fall asleep without any trouble after not going to Beth’s—

  What the fuck.

  My nostrils flared, and my open water bottle slipped from my fingers, splashing liquid all up my legs as it hit the floor.

  All eyes were on the same thing I was staring at, but they had no idea who she was or why she was here. Her gaze connected with mine, and her bright green eyes rendered me useless along with the big smile she flashed my way.

  “You know her?” Wade asked, his voice low.

  “Yeah, I fuckin' know her,” I fumed, and crossed the space to reach her. I didn’t say a word as I wrapped my hand around her wrist and pulled her toward the changing rooms. Cheers rang out behind us, but one sharp look from me, and they soon died down.

  My body thrummed with an energy I’d never experienced before, and it was all because I was so close to her. I’d never touched her, never gotten close enough, but my hand on her arm was causing all my nerve endings to go haywire.

  I slammed the changing room door shut behind us and let go of her arm, backing away a couple of steps to put a bench between us. The worn four-slatted wooden surface wouldn’t keep us apart if I really didn’t want it to, but the effort was there.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, the words coming out sharper than I’d meant for them to.

  Her gaze swung left and right as she wrapped her arms around her middle, and I nearly groaned at the way the movement caused her boobs to jiggle. Fuck me. I was dying but I wasn’t sure whether I was going to heaven or hell.

  “I…” She hesitated, her soft voice small, but with one shake of her head and push back of her shoulders, she met my gaze head on again. “I wanted to come and see you.”

  “Why?” It was out of my mouth before I realized. I shouldn’t have asked, I should have kept the word inside.

  “Why did you come and see me?”

  I raised a brow. “It was your birthday.”

  “Nope.” She stepped toward me and let her arms drop. “I saw you the other night, Uncle Jacob, you were staring into my bedroom window.”

  This was where I should have denied it. I should have told her that she was mistaken, that I wouldn’t be watching my niece through her bedroom window like some insane stalker, but that wasn’t what happened. Instead, I said, “And?”

  A small gasp left her parted lips; lips that were drawing me further in by the second. It was the adrenaline of the workout, that was all. She was the only woman in the place and it was causing things to—fuck, I couldn’t even lie to myself now. I couldn’t stop from thinking about her, and I’d driven myself insane last night when I hadn’t checked on her.

  “Why?” she asked, repeating my own question. “Why were you there?”

  “Because I wanted to be, why are you here?” I didn’t have time for this. She needed to get away from me because I only had so much self-control, and with every year she got older, it slipped more and more. It was practically a thread at this second; a thread that would snap if she didn’t stop staring at me like I had all the answers.

  “I erm…” She stared around the room, her gaze landing on my bare chest, and I swear to all that was holy, her tongue darted out of her mouth and stroked over her bottom lip. “I wanted to say thank you for my birthday gift.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Yeah, well.” She huffed and rolled her eyes. “You didn’t message me back.”

  “Didn’t think I needed to.”

  She laughed, the kind of laugh that could make a sane man do stupid things. “It’s normally what you do when someone messages you...it’s polite.”

  I stared at her, really stared at her. Her light-brown hair came to her shoulders, waves making it fall around her face in a soft kind of way. Her flowy bohemian-style dress was her to a T, and mixed in with that was an arm full of bracelets and bangles. She was
effortlessly beautiful, and hot. She was so goddamn hot that it felt like I was standing at the gates of hell, waiting for my skin to burn off.

  “Noted,” I managed to grit out. “Now wait there while I get changed, I’ll take you home.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Uncle Jacob.” She blinked and smiled gently. “I got the bus so I can catch it back.”

  “What did I just tell you?” I growled, raising my brow to emphasize my point. “Wait here, Beth, and I’ll take you home.”

  I didn’t wait around for her to say anything else, instead, I spun around and stomped toward the back of the changing room. I normally would have had a shower, but the thought of being naked and not far from her would have been my undoing.

  I grabbed my bag and pulled on a T-shirt, then changed into my jeans and combat boots. It was only as I was packing my gym stuff away that I realized she’d have to get on my bike. A bike no woman had ever been on the back of, never mind the girl who had filled my head daily since I rolled into town and saw her face.

  Fuck. What the hell was I thinking?

  A knock on the changing room door had my back straightening. There weren’t any locks on them on account of only men ever coming here, but all it’d take is one of them to come in and—

  I curled my hand around my bag and ambled back into the main section, acting as if her being in my space wasn’t affecting me. My arm automatically reached for her and my fingers settled around her wrist like they’d always meant to be there.

  Beth squeaked at the contact as I swung the door open and revealed Wade’s face.

  “Jacob,” he started, but I didn’t have time to talk to him. I needed to get Beth as far away from me as possible. “Don’t forget the fight in two weeks.”

  “I know,” I grunted out, coming to the end of the hallway. All eyes were focused on us, but I paid no attention to them. I led Beth out of the gym and onto the street, feeling like I could finally breathe now that we were out in the open where everyone could see us. There was safety being around other people.