by Box Set
I lay down my cards, thankful for the reprieve, and shove the chips in front of Lucero, hoping he’ll just take care of it and call us even.
“I think your new employee is a card shark,” Simba says.
I can’t even smile. For some reason, all I want to do is run straight to Galeno.
After Lucero settles the poker business, we follow Galeno back out front and wait for the SUV. Once we’re inside, Lucero hands a wad of bills over the seat, but I refuse to touch them, and push his arm forward. “It’s interest on your loan.”
Galeno however, grabs the wad and counts it. “You took them for seven hundred and sixty dollars?”
I sink lower into the seat.
“Minus the two I lent her,” Lucero says.
I hadn’t even paid attention to how much the chips were worth.
“I guess you can buy your own shoes, then,” Galeno says, but I’m the only one who doesn’t get a laugh out of it.
I clench my teeth and stare out the side window, hoping we can just move on, but Lucero braces his arm against the passenger seat and twists around.
“It’s pocket change to them,” he tells me as if that’s what the problem is.
Okay, so partly it is, but his assurances don’t remedy my sweaty palms or the prickle worsening between my eyes.
“Where’d you learn to play poker like that?” Lucero asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumble.
Galeno’s hand creeps over and touches my leg, but I jerk away. The touch I’d yearned for only a short while ago now threatened to push me over the edge.
“I still have another meeting,” he says.
“Tell me it doesn’t involve gambling.”
———
Our next stop is a warehouse near a shipping yard. Lucero parks along the curb near the entrance. “Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asks me.
“Yeah,” I tug my coat closed. “I’m good.”
“This won’t take long,” he says.
A man in a garish white suit steps out of the front of the warehouse and greets Galeno. Then, he glances over to Lucero and me. “Increasing your security detail, should I be worried?”
Galeno doesn’t answer, but that’s nothing surprising. We follow the man inside, up an iron staircase to a lone door. As we enter the room, I fall to the back of the line. Lucero and I stop just inside the door, while Galeno and the other man continue to the other side of the office.
In here, Galeno’s body changes. The man offers him a chair, but Galeno brushes aside everything on one corner of the desk and takes a seat there. His elbow rests on his knee as he opens his coat, pulls out a cigar and lights it.
The other man grumbles something I can’t hear. He doesn’t seem too appreciative of the intrusion.
“I told Hector he must’ve been mistaken about your last report…”
The late afternoon sun shines through the blinds illuminating a large statue in the corner of the room. When I let my eyes wander toward it, I make out a large, four foot tall, carved owl.
I ball my hands at my sides as another memory slices its way out.
I remember standing in a room similar to this, my father standing next to me, holding my hand. Not my hand, my wrist, his fingers digging in.
My toes curl inside the boots as I try to hold myself together.
Galeno slams his hand on the desk and the memories explode.
Don’t fuck up, I tell myself.
Lucero holds his place, so I do the same.
The man sighs and drops into his chair. He fears Galeno even if he didn’t like being bossed around by him.
Lucero tenses for a beat when Galeno turns his back to the man and stalks back toward us. Galeno straightens his jacket as Lucero opens the door, stepping out first, then Galeno and I follow. Galeno takes the lead again, descending the stairs at a pace that makes me even more thankful for the shot, and out the front.
———
Lucero stops the SUV at the next intersection and glares up at the rearview mirror. “What was that?”
“What?” Both Galeno and I say at the same time.
Lucero’s neck twists and Galeno follows his gaze to me. “What’d I miss.”
“Something was up in Tristan’s office.”
I hoped he hadn’t noticed. I rub my palms against the knees of my jeans. “It just reminded me of somewhere my father took me,” I say quickly.
“For what?” Galeno asks.
“I don’t remember that much. Just a feeling. Uneasy. This weird tension. I don’t know.”
14
As soon as we got back to Galeno’s house, I retreated to my room. I told him I was tired and that my back was sore, but now, I’ve been staring up at the ceiling for over an hour.
I’ve always moved on from one life to the next, just like switching out disks on a DVD player. One act to the next. As if nothing before existed. But now, I’m stuck at the center of the intersection of all those lives in some kind of cosmic implosion. It’s not just in my mind. I’ve hit the end of my leash and the universe won’t let me run any farther.
And Galeno.
Why am I so lost in him?
He makes it hard to think. No. He makes it hard to forget. No one has ever affected me like him. Turned me inside out.
Do I betray Jorge? The man who already betrayed me by setting me up. And for what? One last payment on my head? Because he was too much of a chickenshit to deal with me himself if he wanted rid of me?
I roll to my side, but Galeno’s scent is all over the bed and does little to ease my mind.
He’s been in his office all evening. Last I heard, he was on a call with one of the Decena brothers. I wonder how they’re taking my presence here.
I rub my hand over my bicep as a chill rattles me. I’m not cold, but the shaking won’t stop.
I close my eyes. Count my breaths. But nothing helps.
The door opens and I’m sure it’s Galeno, but I don’t move until his hand touches my hip. “Don’t,” I hiss, pushing him back.
“Sera, it’s just me,” he says softly.
“I know,” I snap. “I don’t feel like being touched.”
“Does it have to do with that office?”
“You said you weren’t going to push me.”
“I said I wasn’t going to push you right then, not that it would never happen.”
“Fuck off, Aguilar.” I hope to push him away by using the name everyone else seemed to use. “Let me sleep.”
Instead, he sits on the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, covering it with my hands, then I roll off the other side of the bed and to my feet, heading straight for the door. I need distance from Galeno and fresh air.
The cold hits my toes first. The pavement feels frozen under my bare feet, but I keep running until a hand grabs my shoulder and knocks me sideways into the bushes. I regain my balance, swing my fist as I turn toward him. I don’t expect the impact, but I hit Galeno straight in the jaw. A drop of blood forms on his lip as he straightens.
“Are you done?” he barks.
Back down before you make the beating worse.
But I don’t. I can’t. Everything inside of me is exploding and I don’t know another way to stop it.
“No,” I scream, shoving him backward with both hands.
I go to swing again, but he’s expecting it now and evades me. Over and over, he ducks or knocks my attacks off center. But he never fights back.
He’s saving it all for the finish.
I drop to my knees, thankful we’d moved from the pavement to the grass. My hands hit the ground next as I drag in one ragged breath after another.
How quickly I’ve fallen out of shape.
I dig my fingers into the grass and yank at it. “Just hit me already!”
“Is that what you want?” Galeno crouches next to me. I could take the very open opportunity to punch him in the balls. Maybe then he’d retaliate. “I have
n’t gone through all of this trouble trying to get you healed up—which you seem insistent on fucking up at every opportunity—just to bust you up again myself.”
He gives me another minute, then hooks a finger under my chin, lifting my head. “You feel better?”
“No,” I grunt. “That was entirely unsatisfying.”
“If satisfaction is what you wanted, you could have just asked. You had no problem with it last night.”
His words stir within me. Desire and disgust simultaneously tear at my core. I sit back on my knees. The cold damp of the ground seeps through my skin and my muscles begin to quake.
“Did you hurt yourself?” he asks.
“No,” I mumble.
“Were you trying to?” His tone is more pressing this time.
“Not really…”
Galeno makes a sound in his throat that tightens my gut.
“Come on, then.” Galeno holds out his hand.
He doesn’t just haul me into the house.
He doesn’t jerk me to my feet and order me to bend to his will.
Part of me wonders if this would all be easier if he would do just that. But no, the betrayal is on me. He isn’t forcing me to do anything. He didn’t threaten me so I would turn against Jorge. It doesn’t matter that Jorge betrayed me first. I’m still guilty. I was conditioned to be stronger than this. To do my job. To return to Jorge.
“I don’t need your help,” I say.
His hand drops and I wonder if I’ve finally pushed him too far. Asked too many questions.
And part of me hopes so. I want an end to the façade. If Jorge could betray me, it’s only a matter of time…
But, Galeno lifts me to my feet.
Higher.
Until my legs are wrapped around his waist. “I don’t expect you to need me.” His lip is swollen where I punched him, and I imagine that somewhere under that beard, his jaw is in a similar condition. But he holds me gently, one hand on my back, one on my ass, holding me to him. “Deep down, I know you’re too strong for that. But do you really know how strong you are? I told you, I want you Serafina. Your determination. Your attitude. Your crass. Everything I can’t have…”
I frown.
“Unless this is what you choose.”
He kisses down my neck, then rests his face against me, his beard tickling and prickling my skin, but I feel the sensations much deeper. Down my spine. Between my legs. As much as I push him away, my body is determined to remind me I do want him.
“What do you say we get warmed up in the Jacuzzi before we both get frostbite. Maybe it’ll help you relax.”
“It isn’t that cold.” And I don’t feel like relaxing. If I do, I don’t know what’s going to bubble to the surface next.
———
I stand in the doorway, arms crossed over my chest while Galeno fills the tub and strips off his shirt.
“So, how many people fit in this Jacuzzi of yours?” I’m still determined to keep up the wall, and make sure he stays on the other side of it.
“More than three and it gets a bit snug.”
My stomach sours. And I stare out toward the bedroom instead of at the man lowering his pants next to me. I rake my tongue over my teeth and silently seethe.
His hand brushes against my arm and he whispers the name he’s given me. How is it different from any of the names Jorge gave me?
“If you didn’t want to know, why did you ask?”
Part of me wants to pull away from him. Most of me. But the most I can muster is leaning back against the frame of the archway. “Because I want a reason not to fall for you. I want a reason not to climb in that damn tub.”
“Did it work?” He whispers in my ear, clearly knowing that it didn’t.
“If I get in that tub, you’re going to try to get me to talk, aren’t you?”
“Do you want me to lie?”
I look up into his eyes. “Yes.”
“Then, no.” His fingers tug gently at the knots in my hair. He turns my body to face his and presses his naked form against me. “I won’t ask you a single question.”
“You’d make a shit spy.” I almost spit the words, but like everything else, it doesn’t deter him.
He loosens my arms and drapes them over his shoulders to move closer, his cock pressing against my lower stomach. “I’ll mark that off my life goals list then.”
His hands move down my sides, then to the front of my jeans, unfastening them and pushing them down over my hips. Crouching in front of me, he kisses each of my hip bones as he frees my legs from the material. For a split second, I remember Serge and I whimper, sinking to my knees before I can stop it.
Galeno cradles me, holding me to his chest. “You need to let it go before it rips you apart.”
I shake my head. I can’t. Secrets are best left buried and what I really need to do is put them back where they belong. “No, you’re doing this. You’re ripping me apart.”
“If you believe that, leave.”
When his touch vanishes, my body goes numb. Not the numb I’m used to or even the numb I want. It’s not the fear of having nowhere to go that holds me back.
I use the wall to push myself up, but Galeno remains crouched near the floor.
It’s the fear of losing him that cripples me. I can walk out, walk away, and lose it outside, or I can strip off my shirt, climb in that Jacuzzi and give him even more power over me.
I close my eyes, and all I see his his face. I feel the touch of his lips on my skin. Taste his tongue in my mouth. “I’m going to cut off your balls if you betray me,” I warn.
Galeno chuckles, straightening before me. “Fair enough.”
I would’ve never dreamed of threating Jorge like that, and with him, he laughs.
When my shirt joins the clothes scattered across the floor, Galeno leads me to the Jacuzzi and holds my hand as I step over the porcelain wall. He hits the button on the wall, activating the jets as he climbs in and settles next to me.
“What do you want to know?” I ask. With the jumbled mess in my head, I need a direction, something to hone in on.
“What’s your native language?”
I roll my head back, sink into the water and let go. “I've spoken at least four languages as long as I can remember. My father was born in Quebec, where his mother grew up, but his father was from Cuba. My mother was part Persian, mixed with whatever her absent father gave her. English, Spanish, French, Persian, I don't know which is native.
Galeno turns slightly, laying his arm across the edge of the tub under my head and pulling my right leg up over his knees.
“My father used to declare a language for a day, if you wanted to communicate it had to be in whatever language he chose or…” My chest aches. I can’t swallow. Can’t breathe. My instinct is to shut my body down rather than talk.
Galeno reaches across me and takes my left hand, uncurling each of my fingers until our hands are palm to palm and my fingers lace through his.
“He’d beat us or take us into his office where he had this bamboo mat and make us kneel on it and read or recite until it cut into our knees.”
“You had a sibling?”
I suspect he’s known this for a while—he’s at the very least suspected it since last night. But she’s the one secret I swore would never escape. The only way I could protect her was to keep her memory locked away, so no one could ever use her against me. Or me against her. I squeeze his hand until I feel I might break it. “A sister. We were twins.”
“What happened to her?”
“After Jorge took me away, he forbade me from talking about her. He said I would put her in danger if anyone found out what I’d done. I just wanted her to be safe.” My words come out in a rush. “It was all for her. I couldn’t watch him hit her again.”
Galeno’s thumb circles against my hand near the scar where the tracker used to be.
“For Father it wasn't good enough to throw someone into the deep end of a pool to learn to swim, he wa
s the kind to throw someone into the rapids. ‘You learn faster and better when your life depends on it’ and that applied to everything.
“We were homeschooled, but all we learned about were cultures, etiquette, and politics. When I was six, he hired a Russian tutor. At eight, a German one. All in addition to constant studying, improv classes, self-defense, gunmanship, dance, and twice a month we had to join him and his friends for poker.”
Galeno exhales and presses his forehead against my temple.
“He gave us a hundred dollars to start with, and for every ten we were under five hundred by the end of the night, we got a stripe from the belt. He wanted us to learn to read people, how to bluff, and we won a lot—not up to his standards—especially since we had to compete against each other as well.”
I sink deeper into the water so my head rests against his shoulder. “One night, my sister lost everything. Fifty strikes. I couldn't… So I ran to his room, got his gun, and I shot him.”
“Your father, it sounds like…” His words are uncharacteristically broken and unsure.
“He was training us to be spies. Jorge was there within an hour of the shooting. He said he'd take care of everything and keep me safe. I guess safe meant locked in a closet with no human contact. But I thought it was my fault anyway. Dark room at his house versus prison or dead—which at ten years old were the only options I ever considered.”
I flatten my hand on the surface of the water, letting the bubbles from the jets collect between my fingers. My skin tingles as each one bursts, making room for the next. “I asked about my sister every time he came to see me, and it pissed him off. He’d leave me alone in that room even longer, so I learned quickly to stop. To do whatever he said, hoping that he would just let me out. When he finally did, he said I'd have to start earning my keep if I wanted to stay and that meant training until he thought I was ready. One night he set me up with a halcone who had a thing for young girls. He sent me in with a hat pin hidden in my dress and told me I'd better make sure the man was dead or he'd turn me out. I did. I ran it right through his heart. Then I ran. Jorge's driver picked me up and Jorge cleaned me off and gave me my first reward—a soft bed and a room with a window.”