The Years After (29 page)

Derek froze and slowly lifted his gaze to Quentrell’s.
Olivia. Fuck.
Quentrell’s thin lips lifted into a mean, little smile. “What? Your girl? I know about her. And what a little cunt you’ve become because of her. I do—”

Derek stood up. “I sent her scrawny ass out of here. I’m done. I’m here. I’m back.”

He fought the urge to grab Quentrell’s collar and threaten him to leave Olivia alone or he’d plunge a knife right through his gut. But he knew any attention he gave Olivia would only draw Quentrell to her. His stomach felt like it bottomed out whenever he pictured any of them near her. His hands started to sweat and he tried to distract them by suddenly leaping toward Quentrell, as if he were going after him. It worked. The two that flanked him jumped as quickly back and grabbed Derek, one holding him up while the other smashed his melon-sized fists into his face. Derek’s head snapped back and blood gushed from his face. He nearly smiled as he folded over in pain while another fist knocked the wind out of him.
Fuck! Yes!
It was better than any of these goons finding Olivia. Plus, it kind of felt good. It was the beating he deserved. Why did he always run from it?

Chapter Thirteen

DEREK WANTED OUT TWO months later, which he spent by going out to parties and bars and nightclubs while dealing ever more with Carter’s growing list of wants. Carter would get himself hurt or killed. He was so greedy, he didn’t seem to realize, or care, who he was dealing with in Quentrell. Derek was tired. He had nothing left inside him, not even his will to survive that once motivated him to put one unsavory step in front of the other all those years. He was only eighteen years old, but he had nothing to live for. He had no future. He could only look forward to jail if he were lucky, and a body bag if he ever again messed up like he did over the winter.

It wasn’t enough and he knew that now. Fear of death wasn’t enough to warrant him living that way, although it always had been before. He’d have done anything to survive at one time; that primal instinct was about all he had to embrace all those years. That, and Max. But now? Neither were enough. Max was sinking into his fighting and silent sessions far deeper than Derek knew how to help him. He regarded himself as the very thing that Max should stay away from and never emulate. What good was he to his brother? None. He was toxic. Just as he’d been with Olivia.

He couldn’t get his head into dealing again, and wasn’t earning the cash he should have been. After recovering from the beating he took the night Quentrell came to his place, he failed to regain his turf, or at least, the turf he used to have. He tried to cover up for it and hide it to Quentrell, but wasn’t succeeding and Quentrell knew it. Maybe next time Quentrell and his crew paid Derek a visit, they’d end what Derek didn’t have the balls to do. No one would discover his body for days. Weeks maybe. If at all. No one would care or grieve for him. Max might feel a twinge of sentimentality, but Derek already feared he was becoming to Max what Quentrell was to him, a lifelong burden he could never shake. Derek considered himself a lousy, shit-ass brother and role model that was better off dead than continuing to poison Max’s life.

****

Olivia liked Lemon Drop shots and her favorite go-to drink was Corona. She discovered that during the next few months when she finally began to engage in the social life that was available to her since the day she moved into her dorm. She tagged after Kylie and it wasn’t long before that became the normal activity for her. Several nights a week, and all weekend long, they drank and partied and goddamn if it didn’t ease her pain a bit. The first drinks she tried slid easily down her throat and suddenly, her heartache seemed temporarily alleviated. The river of tears ceased to fall, and she happily let the numbing apathy that also ensued float her through the next few weeks. She and Derek had experimented enough for her to know what she liked to do with boys so she did that with a few. The first time it happened, she disappeared with a boy and Kylie frantically searched through the house until she burst in on them. Kylie was no less than shocked to find Olivia lying on top of a bed, topless, and instantly tried to pull Olivia off. But Olivia refused and sent her away. Olivia was tired of being good, or special, or talented. She was tired of being treated like the sheltered, stupid idiot she was, who blindly hooked up with whatever Derek was in reality.

They were at another party, on another night when a guy with intensely dark eyes kept feeding her drinks, smiles and compliments and she was soon lulled into giggling and hanging all over him. He was huge. Nearly the opposite of Derek. She felt all tiny and cute with him. With Derek, they were equal. Partners. Together. She banished him because he was too short, wasn’t he? Any guy who was so small had to have short man’s complex. She snickered thinking of it, and of Derek standing next to this giant. The giant had no clue why she was laughing, but happily joined in with her, which made it even funnier to her. When he leaned down to kiss her, she let him. He had thin lips and stuck his tongue deeply into her mouth. It shocked her and her eyes widened to find his were closed. Not a good kiss; but nonetheless, a kiss. Another guy. Another night. She giggled at that thought too. She was trying to be like Kylie. She remembered how she used to worry about Kylie. What she failed to realize was how misogynistic her worry was. So what if Kylie liked sex? So what? A girl was allowed to like sex too. And not just with soul mates. It was okay to experiment. And although she wasn’t up for girls, she was also not ready to be put out to pasture, as if she were married at the age of eighteen. She misread Kylie’s behavior as acting out, and signs she needed help.

Why couldn’t Kylie just enjoy being a player? And not be afraid to admit she liked sex? Why couldn’t she, Olivia, like sex? She had no hang-ups or traumas. She really liked how it felt, so why did she allow what she’d been taught all her life to cause such conflict? Because our prudish, Victorian society still persists. A girl is only allowed to like and enjoy it if she were in love, or married, or committed. One thing Olivia quickly learned was that was not true. As much as any guy got off from an easy hook-up, so could any girl. Maybe Kylie wasn’t acting out, but simply having fun, which Olivia planned to do now.

After Olivia got over her initial unwillingness, she found out she liked it and thought it was rather liberating. She was always careful, of course, and didn’t intend to end up diseased or pregnant. But finally, she decided to act her age.

The guy she hooked up with that night was aggressive. He lifted her up above his chest and let his erection push hard against her crotch. She gasped in his mouth at the unfamiliar, rough handling. But he didn’t listen. He just kept kissing and kneading her ass. She let his tongue explore her mouth while a little, tiny tickle of desire awoke her drunken body.

She felt much weirder than usual and drunker than usual. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t sure. Her head started to spin and her limbs felt too heavy as she nearly went limp in the man’s arms. He smiled and muttered something that sounded like, “Good girl.” Why was she a good girl? What a ridiculous thing to say to her. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked. She was slipping away from reality although her body was still moving.

****

There were many moments in Derek’s life when he actually believed he was about to die. His fear was often more real than any physical pain. One time, his dad held a knife to his throat, being so high and out of his mind, and his father’s hands shook like a Parkinson’s patient, causing the knife to prick into his skin. There was another time when Derek tried to get a tweaker to leave their apartment after he screwed their mother who was passed out. She could have been dead for all Derek knew; and the skinny, dirty guy compressed Derek’s neck until he almost passed out from suffocation. There were many more unsavory memories, which was why he didn’t often care to remember them. Suffering from the overall feeling of fear, it permeated his consciousness and became the reason why he so often ran from everything. When it came to fight or flight, he always chose flight.

That was until Quentrell called him and suggested, very kindly, that he come to an address on Sullivan Street. It wasn’t familiar to him. Derek hung up his cell, confused what the hell his twisted fuck of a brother wanted from him now.
Another beating?
Watching his gorillas work someone over? Could have been that. Sometimes, he watched Quentrell supervising a poor guy who tried to cheat or screw him getting their special brand of punishment. The expression on Quentrell’s face turned Derek’s stomach more than the thug who was actually doing the violence. Quentrell liked to watch people being tortured. He got off on wielding power over those who were weaker or more needy. Most of his dealers were addicts themselves, and the drug eventually got the better of them. They stole from Quentrell, usually in the form of drugs, not money, and wound up on the receiving end of Quentrell’s wrath. His crew did the dirty work through knives or beatings. Derek had witnessed it once, and it was enough to make him puke his guts out. He tried to disappear for several days, but his common sense returned along with the knowledge that if he left, Max would be at their mercy. Max was next up. Max was left out of the family business, but only if Derek was performing. Quentrell took over their lives the very day he dumped their father’s body, wherever that was. When Derek’s mom begged for a fix, Quentrell demanded Derek in exchange. “Sure, you can have him,” his mother agreed as she held Derek’s hand and dragged him over to Quentrell’s apartment. Shoving him at Quentrell, her last orders to Derek were to do “whatever big brother wanted.”

That was his role and he never stopped performing it. Not even now. Today. When he was contemplating his own death. But he knew that was only a selfish means of escape. He could no more leave or die than he could run because Max was next up in the family legacy. The only thing that separated him from Quentrell was Derek hadn’t passed this legacy on to his little brother yet. He hadn’t demanded that his little brother’s life be sacrificed for Quentrell, and it was the only thing Derek had to measure his life against. It was the only thing decent he could do.

He climbed into his car and went to the location Quentrell named. It was a dull, blank building with sad, seedy apartments. He climbed the steps past the weather-beaten, splintered doors where loud banging and sporadic swearing could be heard from inside the apartments. On the fourth floor, he knocked on the specified apartment. It was silent, but footsteps soon reached his hearing and stopped as he swung open the door.

His brother stood there. Alone.

He had never met with his brother alone before. Quentrell swept his hand to invite Derek inside. Derek entered, his heart beating louder and harder. His hands clenched as he wished he had decided to carry a weapon. Now it really seemed like a good idea.

“What is this?”

Quentrell’s smile was slow and sinister. He finally replied with great drama and said, “This? Why this is your reeducation.”

The hairs on Derek’s arms rose. He sensed something wasn’t right. This was way more off than usual. The new location. The fact that Quentrell was alone. It felt like something much bigger was happening. He forced his lungs to inhale, and reminded himself he had to keep breathing. He had to keep his wits clear. Perhaps, he didn’t actually want to die. Now faced with it, and the almost certain knowledge that Quentrell was playing for a deadly end, he didn’t want to die. Not without trying to escape first. Or trying to save Max, and maybe even saving himself. He’d been wallowing in his own stagnating stew since banishing Olivia from his life, but maybe he and Max could simply disappear. Together. Vanish. Maybe he could finally do something right.

But that wouldn’t happen if he died. What would Max do? For the first time, it wasn’t just lip service. His chest grew wider as adrenaline began to trickle throughout his body parts.
No!
He wasn’t doing this! He refused to die in some rotten stinkhole over drugs that he never wanted to sell for money that he never got to enjoy. Quentrell took it all.

Quentrell confiscated all of his life and his choices, and he’d done nothing about it. He practically let Quentrell rule and ruin his life.

“My reeducation into what? What more could you do to me? I’m your bitch, your criminal, your bank and your cash cow. There isn’t much more you can squeeze out of me.”

“Oh, but there is. See, I know what’s going on. I think you’ve decided to grow a late-in-life conscience. Fuck you, Derek. No one leaves me. Not unless I say. I
own
you. And it’s time you remembered that. And learn what happens to those who forget it. You have until Monday to report back to work. Be there. And this is just a warning. You won’t survive the next encounter with me.”

Quentrell walked out the door. Derek didn’t react for a full second. What the hell was that? The silence seemed too thick and heavy. What was this place? Why didn’t he feel he was alone? Fright again started to percolate through his blood system.
Run. Leave. Get the fuck out. Go get Max. RUN.

But something made him step into the darkened bedroom. Something made him look. He expected… what? Another of Quentrell’s dead dealers in there? Bleeding out over the bed as an illustration of what awaited Derek? He had it mapped out in his brain, right down to the last detail. He knew as he flipped the light with shaking hands what he’d find.

Instead it was a thousand times worse. Until the day he died, he’d never forget it.

Olivia.

She lay on the bare, dirty mattress. She was naked. Her long hair was strung around her in gnarled hunks. Makeup was plastered on her face. And her eyes were closed.

Everything stopped. His pulse. His heart. His brain. He could not move. He could not believe what lay before him. He was petrified. So afraid to step forward. To feel her cold skin. To know she was dead or raped, and he’d done it to her. Tears coursed down his face. His breathing hurt, deep in his chest and his head spun into dizzying depths.