The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (8 page)

If his mother hadn’t brainwashed him with all that weakness bullshit, he would have. No crying. Don’t let the world hurt you. It had been pounded into his head since the day he was born. Someone should give his mother a clue. The reason the world hurt him wasn’t for being soft. It hurt him because he’d been born hard. That was the reason it hurt all of them.

The soft ones were dead.

God spared the good ones and left Chuito, his mother, and Marcos behind to pay for their combined sins. It was like the apocalypse, Latino style.

“Is there a Catholic church
anywhere
in this place?” Chuito found himself asking Clay, because he couldn’t decide if he was pissed off at God or desperate for his help. “Anywhere?”

Clay frowned at him. “Why?”

“I’m Catholic.” Chuito gestured to himself, pointing to the cross tattoo over his heart that had the names of his brother and aunt branded in his skin along with the date they had been taken from him.

“You go to church?” Clay looked thunderstruck.

“Sometimes.” It was essentially a lie. Chuito hadn’t gone since the day they’d buried his brother and aunt. “I’m thinking of picking it back up. Don’t you go?”

Clay shook his head. “There’s one church in this town, and they fucking hate my ass.”

“Why?”

“Because of what I do,” Clay said. “They think we’re all heathens. Maybe we are. I wouldn’t know. We weren’t exactly friends before I started fighting professionally either.”

“Wow, no shit?” Chuito mumbled as he thought about it. “Do they hate the Conners too?”

“Fuck, yes, they hate the Conners.” Clay laughed at him. “They have been trying to get someone to run against Wyatt since he got elected. Who’s gonna take on Wyatt as sheriff? He’s the only name on the ballot. Most folks in this town know he’s a good sheriff. It’s just a small group of crazies who ain’t never approved of him because he used to be a fighter. Even the fools going to church every Sunday approve of him. It’s just Reverend Richards and his little pack of cronies who don’t like him.”

“What about Jules?”

“Jules?” Clay laughed. “Carries-a-gun, businesswoman, doesn’t-take-shit-from-any-man Jules. They hate her most of all, especially since the preacher’s daughter has been living over her office since she was eighteen.”

Chuito turned back to him at that, feeling his breath catch in his chest. “She’s a preacher’s daughter?”

“Alaine, yeah?” Clay frowned. “I guess y’all live next door to each other now. I didn’t think ’bout that.”

“She baked me cookies,” Chuito said with a smile. “They were good. Like, spice or something.”

He’d actually eaten them for dinner. The sugar seemed to help when he’d started to crash, and he was sort of mourning not having them anymore.

“I
would not
fuck with Alaine,” Clay warned him. “That girl is Jules’s prodigy. Jules even pays for her college. She will bury you for that shit.”

“Yeah, she communicated that.” Chuito dropped his head to his folded arms resting on his knees as he took a deep breath. “Why does she pay for her college?”

“She says it’s an investment. Maybe one day she’ll help Jules with the law office. You know she’s the only lawyer for two towns. She’s swamped with work.”

“You guys make a lot of shady investments,” Chuito observed, because he’d been a businessman of sorts before he left. “I’m not sure if that chica has what it takes to be a lawyer.”

“She did tell her daddy to fuck off and moved out on her own the day after she graduated from high school,” Clay said with a laugh. “That ain’t nothing to dismiss. Her daddy scares the fuck out of me with all that hell-and-brimstone shit.”

“Switch to Catholicism,” Chuito suggested. “We’ve got a patron saint for everything. Sinners are welcome as long as you’re willing to confess it.”

“I don’t think there’s a Catholic church near here. Not even in Mercy,” Clay said with a wince. “Sorry, buddy.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been putting off confession for this long; what’s a little longer.” Chuito forced himself to stand up rather than lie down on the mat and fall asleep like he really wanted to. “Let’s do this, Powers.”

* * * *

Chuito lay on the floor in the living room, staring at the ceiling.

Every muscle in his body hurt, but he didn’t know if it was from crashing or from Clay Powers, who was hard-core about working out. Chuito hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours because he was fucking terrified of what was going to happen when he closed his eyes.

He wanted to go back and fight some more because he was just so angry at life. He wanted to drink, but that was a downer, and he suspected that would just make the crash worse.

He wanted sugar and caffeine and some of his mother’s cooking.

Chuito wasn’t incompetent. He knew how to cook.

He just lay there instead.

Staring at the ceiling, trying to breathe past the misery.

Over twenty-four hours and no blow.

He wanted to fucking die.

Like really die.

Instead he was counting the popcorns on the ceiling because he needed something to focus his mind on. His skin felt like it was crawling. A cold, uncomfortable sweat covered his body, but the back of his neck was hot with the longing for an escape from the misery. All he could think about was the blow. Everything in him told him to get into his car and drive back to Miami as fast as he could. He wanted to get high so bad he could taste it, bitter and sweet in the back of his throat.

He closed his eyes against his will, imagining that first wild rush when it hazed the pain and heightened the anger, making it easy to take out all the fuckers who had killed Juan and Tiá Camila. God, he wanted it back. Desperately. He wanted ten more gangbangers to hunt down and kill to give him some sort of satisfaction.

But there was no one left to take out.

And there was no more blow to hide in.

No cars to steal.

No business to manage.

Just Chuito, alone, in his own private prison that was too cold because the heat in this place sucked, and it was fucking snowing outside.

He should have turned himself in to Miami PD.

At least then he’d be with his cousin and uncle.

He had more people on the inside than out.

It was late, and these Garnet pendejos all went to bed at nine o’clock. Clay wanted Chuito to meet him at his gym at five a.m. tomorrow.

Fuck him.

Chuito would work hard. He wanted to work hard. It was the only thing that distracted from the crash, but he drew the line at waking up early, and he told all of them that.

He kept his eyes closed, trying to imagine being loaded as a placebo. He wasn’t sure if it worked, or if twenty-four hours of no blow, forty-eight hours of no sleep, and nothing to eat or drink except cookies and caffeine had him passing out so hard it was like he
had
died.

Chapter Nine

Alaine sat at the kitchen table, doing advanced calculus, even though she hated it. The numbers were swimming, and she was cursing the educational system for forcing her to learn this when she saw absolutely zero application to it in her real life.

She didn’t want to launch the space shuttle.

She just wanted to be a lawyer and help people write out wills and file for divorce. She wanted to support Jules, who had been the only one willing to listen when Alaine had said she did not want to be the daughter her father was trying to mold her into.

Someone meek and obedient. Who was supposed to get married and have a dozen babies. She didn’t begrudge anyone else that life. There were a lot of very happy women in the church, but it just didn’t feel like the life Alaine was supposed to have.

Her mother had always encouraged her independence.

She said if God had given Alaine a free spirit, it must have been for a reason. She saw the good in that streak of rebellion Alaine had been born with, but her father never had.

Now her mother was gone, and her father was angry.

It made Alaine sad; it really did, because she didn’t want to be alienated from him just for being herself. She had stopped going to church, which meant she didn’t have any friends anymore, when she had grown up with a huge social circle.

All her friends had sided with her father.

Now all she had was Jules, who was funny and kind and bold in a way Alaine would likely never be, but she was still so much older than her.

She wished she had a friend her own age.

All of a sudden a sound broke the quiet air, something raw and terrible and so heart-stopping she jumped out of her chair on instinct. She ran out of her apartment when she realized it was coming from next door.

She knocked, but no one was answering, and she could still hear the screaming. He was speaking in Spanish, but she didn’t need to understand the words to hear the horror in them.

“Mr. Garcia!” She pounded harder. “Jesus!”

When he didn’t answer, she tried the doorknob, finding that it was locked. Since it was an emergency, she went ahead and dashed back to her apartment to grab the keys. She opened it and found her new neighbor on the floor wearing nothing but a tight pair of blue boxer briefs she thought only men in underwear ads wore.

But she didn’t stop to ponder his nakedness, because he was still yelling in Spanish, and it almost looked like he was crying, if someone like him could cry, which she wasn’t really sure he could.

“
¡No tu tambien!
” His words were raw and horrified. “
Marc!
”

She dropped to her knees next to him and shook him. Then she gasped, because he grabbed her arm, finding it blindly, and pulled so hard she ended up falling over him. She screamed, because her shoulder felt like it was on fire.

He jerked under Alaine and then rolled out from beneath her, tossing her unceremoniously onto the floor. She turned her head to see him crawl backward until he hit the couch.

His dark eyes were wide and horrified as he sat on the floor staring at her. He looked around the apartment, as if he didn’t know where he was.

She got to her knees and reached out to touch his leg, but her arm hurt, and she grabbed her shoulder instead. “Are you okay?”

“
¿Estas herida?
”

“You’re speaking Spanish,” she reminded him softly as she rubbed her shoulder.

“¿Que?” he mumbled and then narrowed his eyes at where she was still rubbing her arm. “I did that. I hurt you.”

“It’s fine.” She stopped rubbing it, because it was obviously upsetting him.

“Why, um—” His accent was extremely pronounced, as if he was having a hard time forcing his brain to work in English. “W-why are you in my house?”

“I think you were having a nightmare,” she whispered.

He tilted his head, staring at her as if she was insane. “You just come in my house? Naked?”

“I’m not naked.” She looked down at herself, staring at her nightgown. “You’re more naked than I am.”

“It’s my house!” he shouted so loud she flinched. “It was locked! How’d you get in?”

She held up the key in her hand. “I clean the apartment for Jules.”

“I don’t need you to clean for me.” He yanked it from her grasp. “Why are you here?”

“You were screaming,” she said with a pointed look. “Really loudly.”

“Coño.” He was silent for a long moment, and then ran a hand over his face and lowered his head. “What did I do to you?”

“You just pulled my arm.” She rubbed her shoulder again, because it really was on fire. “I think it’ll be okay.”

“Never touch me when I’m sleeping. Never sneak up on me. Never break into my fucking house,” he barked at her again, washing hot and cold so sharply it gave her mental whiplash. “You gringos are all loco. You don’t just shake a thug when he’s having a nightmare.”

“I don’t think you’re a thug,” she whispered softly.

“Ay Dios mio.” He got to his feet, leaving her sitting there on the floor. He walked to the kitchen and pulled open the freezer. “Jules said there was ice, but there’s no fucking ice.”

She tilted her head, looking at his freezer that was completely empty. Then he opened his fridge that was also empty. “You have no food.”

“I’ve had other issues.”

“You haven’t eaten anything?” she asked in concern.

“I had cookies.”

“That’s it?” she choked out in disbelief. “For two days?”

He closed the fridge and stood there, with his back to her, and she noticed his hands were shaking. As she studied him, she realized his entire body was noticeably shaking, as if he was freezing.

“Are you cold?”

“Of course I’m cold. It’s fucking snowing outside.” He gestured to the window. “To think my brother wanted to see this mierda. I hate it. Thank God he never had to find out how much it sucks.”

“Maybe he could come visit you,” she suggested, because he was obviously very lost here in Garnet.

“He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.” She lowered her gaze at the stark sound of pain in his voice. “Was his name Marc? You were screaming ’bout a Marc.”

“Marc is my cousin.”

“Is he gone too?” she asked, because the way he had been screaming it, she thought he might be.

“No, he’s in prison.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t hide the wide-eyed look when he turned back to glare at her as if daring her to judge him. “I’m sorry I upset you. I’m sorry ’bout your brother being gone.” She got to her feet and brushed at her nightgown. “And I’m sorry ’bout your cousin too. I’ll leave you alone.”

She turned to leave, and he groaned out loud as if defeated in some way. “Chica, wait.”

She turned back to him, trying to keep her eyes on his face, because honestly, he was very distracting in nothing but his underwear, with all those hard, cut muscles bulging and those tattoos on display. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “It was inappropriate to come into your apartment. I thought you were hurt.”

“I’m having a hard time,” he admitted with a wince. “I’m—” He shook his head. “I’ll get better. It
should
get better.”

“Are you sick?” she asked curiously, because he was still shaking like he had a fever.

“I just—” He looked away. “I’ll find you ice for your shoulder. I’ll go buy some or—”

“I have ice,” she told him softly. She pushed the strap to her nightgown and looked at her shoulder. It didn’t seem red or swollen. “And I think it’ll be okay.”