by Hope Anika
Alexander turned that pale green gaze on him, silent for a long moment. He examined Sam with piercing directness, and Sam could see the wheels turning in the kid’s head, even if he didn’t know their direction. But he had no problem with being assessed. He was who he was, and he’d make no apology for it, so he let the kid look, his own stare unwavering.
“What happened to your eye?” the boy asked finally, the tense set of his shoulders easing a bit. “Where did you get that scar from?”
“Alexander,” Lucia chastised, tying a knot in her thread. “That is not your business.”
But it was a good distraction, so Sam answered. “My old man did it.”
Lucia stilled, hovering over his torn up leg, needle poised in the air. Alexander stared at him.
“This…” Lucia cleared her throat. “This will hurt.”
“I know,” Sam replied grimly. “Just do it quickly.”
“I will go as fast as I can.”
Her eyes were dark, worried for him. Sam couldn’t help but touch her. Just a brief graze of that silky hair, a light touch, another indulgence he shouldn’t have made, but she responded to the reassurance of it with a brisk nod, and he didn’t regret it.
“Was it an accident?” Alexander asked.
The kid was motionless, his eyes locked on the scar that split Sam’s brow in two, one of the many souvenirs his pop had left him. Lucia’s gaze met Sam’s as she moved to make her first stitch, her fingers pulling his torn skin together just above the small clamp she’d put in place. Sam only nodded for her to continue and answered the boy’s question. “Nope.”
“He did it on purpose?”
“Yep.”
The needle slid through his skin smoothly, but Lucia had that look again, her mouth pinched, line between her brows. Temper, temper. Mad on his behalf, which shouldn’t have pleased him, but did. She said nothing, concentrating on her task. Another stitch, and the needle burned; Sam looked away, hardening himself against the pain. It was only a little pinch, nothing compared to the bullet that had ripped into him. Just one more thing to endure.
“Why?” Alexander demanded, and Sam noticed the kid’s fists were clenched again, white knuckled at his sides.
“Because he was a mean son of a bitch when he was sober. When he was drunk, he was a monster.” Sam met the boy’s gaze, held it. “I’d taken off. I was eleven, and I was done being his punching bag. So I hightailed it to the highway, figured I’d hitchhike into town, catch a ride out of state. Didn’t work out that way. He caught me before I even made it to the road. Beat me down, sat on me, pulled his knife out and told me I couldn’t run if I couldn’t see.”
Lucia inhaled sharply, and her gaze lifted to his. Sam felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, but he only nodded again. Her jaw hardened, and she bent over to make another smooth stitch.
“He tried to blind you?” Alexander asked incredulously.
“He tried,” Sam said, gritting his teeth. Goddamn needle. “He failed. He was three sheets to the wind, could barely hold his damn blade. When he started carving into me, I hit him in the face with a rock, knocked him cold.”
The rain grew thunderous around them then, almost deafening against the metal roof. Lucia continued the line of tight, neat stitches, her hands steady and efficient and so gentle, Sam felt a piercing moment of regret on her behalf. She was more than good at what she was doing; she was meant to do it. That she’d given it up for the boy standing next to him made rage spark somewhere deep inside Sam, the unfairness of it scraping him raw. Choices. Life was all about choices. One trade for another. This was something he knew intimately, a fact for every living being, but that Lucia had felt there was no other option infuriated Sam. Tony should have helped her. He should have fucking stopped her. Because this was going destroy her life, and she deserved better.
“And then…what did you do?” Alexander asked, his voice so quiet, so hesitant, Sam looked up at him.
“I went home. I knew no one would pick me up bleeding like I was, and even if they did, they’d call the cops, and I’d end up in foster care again. So I went home, cleaned myself up, and tried to keep my head low.”
The boy scowled. “You let him get away with it.”
“I thought it was normal. I figured every kid knew the taste of his own blood.”
Lucia made a low, harsh sound, but didn’t falter. Alexander looked away, color touching his cheeks.
“What about your mom?” the boy asked.
“Alexander!” Lucia blew out a breath. “Enough.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” And it was. A distraction from the stitches and maybe an understanding. Maybe this would help the kid trust him, because Sam needed Alexander to trust him. “I never knew my mom. She took off after having me. I think that’s why my pop hated me so much, but hell, who could blame her? If he was as loving a husband as he was a father, she probably ran for her life.”
“Selfish,” Lucia muttered in a hard tone, her indignation clear. Sam touched her hair again, because he couldn’t help himself.
“Maybe,” he conceded. His feelings toward the woman who’d had him and then left him were complex and volatile, but he’d made his peace with her decision long ago. Still, he appreciated Lucia’s anger on his behalf. Lucia, he thought, was not a woman who would abandon her child.
Ever.
“She just left you?” Alexander whispered, staring at Sam.
Sam shrugged. “She did what she had to do, I guess.”
Silence fell. The rain had eased to a steady patter, and Ben’s soft snores floated toward them. Sam glanced down at the line of stitches; almost halfway. He blew out a breath.
“Do you forgive her?” Alexander asked.
Sam looked at the kid. “I should. I understand why she went. But in my heart? Hell, no.”
The boy nodded. “My mom died.”
Lucia moved the clamp further down the wound, her mouth a tight line.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said.
Alexander shrugged. “I didn’t know her. She was…sick.”
Lucia met Sam’s gaze, dark, churning, angry. So damn mad. For him, for the boy. The same rage that simmered in Sam’s gut, and for a moment, they occupied the same place in time, another shared instant of grief and pain and fury. A connection neither of them could afford, one that happened outside of control or will or choice. A tie woven of understanding and experience, compulsory and strong, no matter the circumstance.
Something else to bind them. And he knew all of his excuses were just words, and if he got the chance to put his mouth on her again, he was fucking going to.
“Did you…did you ever get away from him?” Alexander asked, moving closer.
“When I was thirteen, my uncle Magnus came to visit,” Sam replied. “I’d never met him. He was my pop’s older brother, my only other living family. I hadn’t even known he existed until he showed up on the front porch one day. Magnus was the only person I ever met who scared my pop.” Sam shook his head. “I didn’t expect that. That was a revelation.”
“Did he save you?”
“Magnus would say I saved myself, that I made a choice. But it was him.”
“What happened?”
Sam met the boy’s gaze, darker now, glittering, free of the cold, remote shell he donned so easily. “Magnus stayed for a week. I tried like hell to avoid him, because I knew my pop wouldn’t like me talking to him.” Even though he’d wanted desperately to know the man who made his father flinch. “But Magnus knew. Knew his brother well, I guess, and one day when I escaped out to my fishing hole, he followed. Brought his own line and his tackle and set up beside me without saying a word. When he offered to let me use some of his stuff, I agreed, and he hooked me up with a sweet little spinner—which I lost on my first cast.” Sam smiled wryly. “I totally panicked. I figured he was going to beat my ass, because that’s what my pop would have done. I pulled off my shirt and leaned over the closest log, ready to take his belt. Hell, I figured I des
erved it.”
Alexander’s lashes flickered, and Sam knew he understood. The memory of Lucia telling him the boy believed his abuse to be his own fault had gnawed at Sam ever since she’d said it, because Sam knew that road, was familiar with every hole and bump and bend, and it had taken him far too long to understand that none of what had happened to him was his fault. To accept the truth that all of that pain and blood and terror had been incidental, circumstance, impersonal. Just the bad fucking luck of being born to an asshole.
“What did he do?” Lucia asked softly.
Sam stared at her bent head, and something painful moved in his chest. Something that stole his breath and made his heart pound hard; something he had no desire to feel. Something far more powerful than the lust she stirred.
So incredibly fucked.
The needle slid through again, and he focused on the pain like a drowning man grabbing driftwood.
“He got mad.” Sam remembered the fury on Magnus’s face as he’d stared down at Sam’s back, scarred and pitted from the thick metal buckle of his pop’s favorite belt. “He hauled me up off that log and marched me back to the house. Told me to pack my stuff, that we were leaving. I just stood there. I didn’t understand why he didn’t punish me. I didn’t even know who he was mad at. None of it made sense to me.”
“Because no one had ever helped you.” Alexander’s gaze flickered to Lucia, then back to Sam. “He took you with him?”
“Well, first he had a talk with my pop. With his fists.”
“Bueno,” Lucia said, her voice cold.
“He wiped the floor with my old man, and he made it look easy. Then he put me in his truck, and we drove away.”
“Forever?” Alexander asked, and something—maybe hope—flared in his eyes.
“Forever,” Sam said. “Took me home to Oklahoma and raised me on his cattle ranch. He was a damn fine man. I miss him.”
Lucia looked up from her stitches. “He is gone?”
“Yes. A long time ago.” An ache bloomed in Sam’s chest, as piercing as the needle breaking his skin. He would always miss his uncle, hard, taciturn, intractable and kind. He had saved Sam, even if he’d never taken credit for the act. He’d changed the trajectory of Sam’s entire life, which in turn had changed countless other lives through Sam’s own choices. Paying it forward. The world worked in circles, strange, connected, inexplicable rings that enclosed them all.
“I am sorry,” Lucia murmured, her eyes shimmering deep, golden amber in the light.
“Me, too,” Sam told her.
“What—” Alexander began, only to be cut off by a sudden, shrill cry from Ben. The little boy sat up in the bed, tears streaking his cheeks, and Daisy yipped and crawled into his lap.
Lucia began to rise, but Alexander stopped her.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll go. Finish Sam.”
And he turned and went to the bed, climbing in beside his brother and speaking to him softly. Lucia watched them, her gaze softening, and Sam knew that no matter the anger he felt on her behalf, she didn’t regret what she’d done. That she would do it again, no matter how it ended, no matter what it meant.
Any sacrifice.
It was a concept Sam understood, one he’d undertaken himself when he’d joined the service. Something he respected. Added to everything else he was beginning to feel for the woman who sat before him, it was a damned powerful aphrodisiac.
Like you even need one.
Lucia met his gaze, and her cheeks flushed, and Sam knew the hunger he felt was written on his face. He was tired of hiding it.
“My father,” she said quietly and bent over to make another stitch, “was murdered in his bed.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sam’s gaze had weight.
Lucia always felt it, even if he only skimmed her with it. A corporeal sensation, as effective as touch. Sometimes heavy with darkness, but other times, like now, piercing and charged, a whisper of electricity splintering through her veins.
“When I was a child, my family owned a citrus farm in Belize,” she said, uncertain why she felt compelled to share one of her worst memories. It was not something she had ever spoken of, not even with her brother or her mother. The pain had been too great—for them all. “The farm was in my family for generations; he was very proud of it. My brother and I grew up working in the orchards, surrounded by their bittersweet scent. It was a place I loved very much.” She watched her hands stitch Sam’s flesh together as if they had a mind of their own. “My mother did not like it. She was American, from California. Her father had been a vinter from Spain, and she preferred the warm desert to the tropical rainforest. But my father, he was the head of the household, and we did as he said. Even her.”
“How did they meet?”
Sam’s voice was low and rough, and Lucia deliberately kept her gaze from traveling any further up his thigh than his wound. There was no missing the hard line of flesh beneath the soft black cotton boxers he wore. Wholly unashamed of his desire, watching her with unflinching heat.
The memory of his kiss flashed through her, and her skin prickled as he stared down at her. Her cheeks flushed; her heart beat hard in her throat. A revelation, that’s what that kiss had been. A reminder that she was a woman, and alive; a bittersweet lesson. One she held tightly guarded, secreted away, buried in that place that held her few treasured moments. Because that was all it could be. She wasn’t sorry it had happened, but it could not be repeated.
No matter the seed he’d planted when he’d put his mouth on hers.
“It was an arranged marriage,” she went on, not wanting to think about that. “My grandfather wanted a stake in the citrus trade, and my father wanted an American wife.”
“Did they love each other?” Sam asked, frowning.
“I like to think so, but truthfully, I do not know. My father, he worked in the orchards from dawn until dusk, and my mother was often at Church, so my brother and I spent most of our childhood with my abuela—my father’s mother.”
“What was she like?”
Lucia shot Sam a look, surprised at his interest. But he only gazed back at her steadily, waiting for her response.
“Wild,” she said after a moment. “Fierce.”
“The apple hasn’t fallen far,” Sam said, smiling a little at her, his eyes glinting.
Lucia knew that wasn’t true; her grandmother had been the smartest, strongest, bravest woman she’d ever known. Matching her was an impossibility, but that wouldn’t stop Lucia from trying. “She was descended from the ancient Mayan. She would tell me, ‘You have the blood of kings in your veins, nieta. We have been here since time began, and we will see it end.’”
“Mayan,” Sam echoed. “That’s some family tree.”
Lucia shrugged. “It was a good life, until I was eight. Then everything changed.” She smoothed her hand over the hard, warm flesh of Sam’s thigh, part of her thrilled to be able to touch him so freely. He was a beautiful specimen of man, his body cut in clean, muscular lines, his skin as golden as his hair. The scars that marked him were profuse: knife wounds, bullet wounds, burn scars. She’d seen the marks left by his father’s belt, and while she did not consider herself a bloodthirsty person, she would have very much liked to introduce that man to her scalpel. “The land dried up, and the orchards began to die. My father could not afford to pay his men; he could not afford to replace his trees. He could barely feed us. Such a proud man brought so low, so quickly. My mother wanted to leave. Her father had gone back to Spain, and she wanted us to go there and start over. But my father would not have it. He could not let go of his family’s legacy. So he went to the traficantes and made them a deal.”
“Aw, fuck,” Sam muttered.
“Yes. He told them they could cross our lands to move their goods in return for enough money to keep the farm going. My grandmother warned him it was not a good idea; she told him there would be a price. But for a while, it was okay. We had food, my father bought new trees, m
y mother stopped talking about Spain. But then one night, there was a knock on the door. One of the traficantes had been shot, and they wanted my father to help them. He refused. He did not want them beneath his roof, with his family, and so he turned them away. It was a fatal mistake.”
Sam’s palm rasped against her hair, a tender, soothing motion that disarmed her each time he did it. Lucia kept stitching, focusing on her task instead of the unspoken words that welled forth, eager to be given sound. Her oldest nightmare, no less horrifying for all the years that had passed, a screaming echo that never faded.
“They came two nights later,” she said. “They killed my father, raped my mother, and almost beat my brother to death.” Lucia could feel Sam’s gaze, but she didn’t look at him. The words wanted out, and she was afraid if she stopped, they would get trapped forever, poison she would never purge. “My grandmother died the next morning,” she continued and moved the clamp along Sam’s wound. Almost done. “The doctor said it was a stroke, but he was wrong. It was her heart; it was broken.”
Another stroke of her hair. “And then?”
“We fled, smuggled out by the priest from the Holy Trinity, my mother’s church. We went to Las Vegas and moved into a small apartment provided by Trinity’s sister branch, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.” Lucia shook her head. “I hoped we would go to California, but I think my mother was too ashamed of what had happened. Instead, she found work as a seamstress, and my brother Elian took care of me.”
“Elian,” Sam repeated, one word filled with a hundred questions.
Lucia met his gaze and suddenly understood that Tony had told him about Elian. She could see it in Sam’s gaze, and she grew chilled, because it was not Sam’s business. Nor was it Tony’s. It belonged only to Elian, and it had no place here.
She said nothing.
“Lucia.”
She glanced up and met that brilliant, waiting gaze. “No.”
“Please.”
Damn the man. Looking at her like he cared, like he wanted the words from her. More words, the illumination of yet another nightmare.