HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (40 page)

Sometimes time passed so quickly that it blew my mind. The only days I didn’t work were times when I was sick. With the money coming in and some of my regular clients requesting me specifically, it was hard to get away from the nightclub. Working constantly meant that days and nights melded together, becoming a long string of action. It was a grind at times, but my friendships with the rest of the girls made everything better.

We really were all family — especially for those who didn’t have a real family anymore.

Another reason I worked all the time was so that I could send money to Granny. Granny — Eulalie Bell — had raised me from the day I was born to a heroin-addicted teenager. As a tiny baby, I was just as addicted as my young mother.

The court stepped in to strip my mother’s rights to keep me, but Granny wouldn’t let them put me up for adoption. She was a court worker during the case, but close to retirement. She said later she was tired of watching families ripped apart and that she wanted to start mending some instead.

“You know as well as I do that adoption’s a crapshoot these days,” she said, facing down the judge in an epic battle she told to me later as a bedtime story growing up. “This baby will get the care she needs from me. You know me. You know how I operate. The child will flourish.”

My mother hadn’t shown any interest in naming me before going to jail, so Granny gave me my name: Collette Bell.

“Granny, why ain’t I got no middle name?” I asked when I was old enough to care about such things.

“Maybe I’ll tell you if you can ask me correctly,” she answered primly. She was downright authoritarian about proper grammar, and the neighborhood was doing me no favors in that department. I parroted my classmates at school in their grammar and their rough language. I’d already learned not to curse in front of Granny. I still imagined I could taste the sharp, horrid bar of soap that she’d washed my mouth out with.

I took a deep breath and tried again. “Granny, why do I not have a middle name?”

Granny nodded minutely. “Child, you only need one name because you only have to be one person: yourself,” she said, drawing me into her lap to straighten the ribbon in my hair. “As long as you’re true to yourself — because you always know what’s right, deep down — you’ll have nothing to worry about in the whole wide world.”

It was a lesson I took to heart. Granny was very wise then, having just retired from a career of watching young people and families fail. She knew exactly what needed to be said to push a young mind in the right direction.

So for a while, I did go in the right direction. Granny made a happy home for me. She went to teacher conferences, helped me with my homework, and took me to the park when it was nice weather. I loved hearing the swish of her polyester pants as she moved around in her daily business, cooking up something delicious for me to eat or doing her portion of the chores. Her perfume floated down the hallway after her, leaving a lingering fragrance of sandalwood to mark her passage. She got her hair done once a week, always in the same tight curls that washed over her head like waves.

She was never without her thick, pink-rimmed glasses, though she was vain about them.

“They’re just my reading glasses,” she’d say dismissively, holding them up to her eyes from the chain they usually dangled from. I knew that the way she squinted at me sometimes meant that they were everyday-use glasses. She probably should have been wearing them at all times.

We had a good life together. Granny was strict but loving. She made me eat all my vegetables but always had a slice of cake waiting. She braided my hair until I learned to do it on my own. My skirts were always starched and ironed. Her home was an oasis against all ills, but some good things have to come to an end.

The problem was twofold: We lived in a bad neighborhood, and Granny liked to try to help lots of people. She couldn’t turn down a lost cause. I benefited from that, of course, but many people tried to take advantage of her.

Kids moved in and out of that house, and it became something of a halfway home. There were success stories, and I had some fond memories. We called each other cousins and ran around together, thick as thieves.

But for as many success stories, there were twice as many failures. We were once robbed blind by a drifter Granny had opened her home to. He took everything of any value, probably to pawn for cash to fund his all-consuming addiction. That even included the toaster. It took months for us to save up enough money to buy a TV.

By that time, I was in high school and working after classes in a daycare. All the little children were bright spots in my day. They could never pronounce “Miz Collette,” but “Miz Cocoa” they could more than manage. They chirped it like birds, running back and forth across the center.

And Cocoa stuck. Even Granny took to calling me that.

“But you’ll always be my Collette Bell,” she said, snaking her arm around my waist and hugging me to her. I’d surpassed her height during middle school and had to lean down to give her a kiss on the top of her white curly hair.

Granny — to multiple people's objections, mine included — took in Tito, a notorious thug in the neighborhood. I avoided him as much in school as out — during the days he was in school, anyway. He was a truant, a drug dealer, a thief, a gang member, and an all-around troublemaker.

"Granny, Tito's beyond hope," I protested as she made up a cot for him in the living room. He had gone to his buddy's house to pack a backpack before coming over.

"Cocoa, no one's beyond hope," Granny said. "I never thought you were beyond hope, small as you were and addicted to heroin when you were just born."

"That's different," I continued, following her as she continued to bustle around. "I was just a baby. Tito's bad news."

"He asked for help, Collette," she said, her use of my full name indicating she was getting irritated. "When somebody asks, I can't deny them the help I have to give."

I knew I was already skating on thin ice, but I had to try. The time the drifter had robbed us had been bad, but I was afraid Tito would be so much worse.

"Granny, I heard he's done bad things," I said. "I don't want him bringing that kind of nonsense inside your house."

"Anyone can hear anything, child, but that doesn't make it true," she said, dusting off one of the coffee tables. "Now, if you're finished with your homework, you can start some supper."

Thus began Tito's reign of terror. Granny didn't take any mouthing off, which Tito learned right away. One baleful look from her was all it took for him to stop cursing in the house. That surprised me and heartened Granny. Was Tito really going to work out? I began to wonder ...

... and stopped the day I got out of the shower and found him leaning against the wall, staring at me.

"Get out of here!" I shrieked, covering myself as fast as I could with a towel. I knew he had seen everything.

"Just here for the show," he'd said casually before swaggering out the door.

Ever since that incident, I had a creeping, pervasive dread about Tito. I'd lock my door when I went to bed, aware that he could probably be able to jimmy it open just as quickly as he had the bathroom lock. I would have nightmares of him standing over me as I slept, doing nothing but watching and waiting.

I never knew what he was waiting for in those nightmares until they came true.

Granny had gone to the courthouse to attend a benefit and Tito and I were in the house alone together. I'd gone to my room as soon as she'd left, locking the door and getting started on my homework.

It'd been a speech against gangs; I remembered even to this very day. It was funny the way memory worked.

I'd been so absorbed in the subject that the knock on my door had scared me nearly out of my skin. My hear knocking against my ribcage, I set my pencil down.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"You know who the fuck it is," was Tito's reply. "Open the goddamn door."

"No!" I said viciously. "Leave me the fuck alone, asshole!"

With no Granny around to wash our mouths with soap or give us the stink eye, Tito and I easily reverted to our real selves — the ones that let us survive in this neighborhood.

"That's it, bitch," Tito warned. "That's it. You think you better than everyone. I'll tell you the truth: You're not good enough for me. But I'm feeling charitable today. Must be all this living with Granny. Best thing that's ever happened to me."

The door rattled for a few seconds before popping open. I gasped and threw my book about gangs at Tito, but he slapped it away. He was on me in a second, a very violent, very real manifestation of my worst nightmare.

"I've been good in this house for too long," Tito said, his lips right by my ear. "It's time to be bad. I've fucking earned it."

I screamed as he tore at my shirt, the force of his movements bruising my neck where the collar dug in. One button popped off, then two, three, and four. I smacked him on his ear — a wild, desperate blow — before he could get a hold of my wrist.

He slapped me hard on the face.

"Tit for tat," he said, ripping my breast out of my bra.

"Get off me!" I screamed, writhing beneath his weight. He was too big, too strong, I realized, reeling with the knowledge that he was about to do whatever he wanted with me.

"I've definitely had better," Tito said, roughly squeezing my breast. "Shit, I think Granny has a better rack than you do. Maybe I'll have her next."

"Fuck you," I said, spitting in his face. That earned me another slap and a painful twist on my nipple.

"That's not ladylike at all," Tito said with mock reproach.

He ripped my shorts off me even while I beat at him with my one free hand in a last-ditch attempt to ward off what I was beginning to realize was inevitable. Tito intended to fuck me whether I wanted it or not.

I began to scream when he ripped off my panties, tearing my skin with his ragged nails in the process.

"Go ahead and scream, bitch," he said. "It just makes me hornier."

This was the kind of neighborhood where no one answered screams for help, no matter what house they were coming out of.

He grabbed my other hand so that he was holding both of my wrists with one of his big, meaty hands. That freed him up to whip out his cock. It strained angrily away from his body, thick and vicious looking.

I tried not to look at it, tried not to think about what it was for, tried not to acknowledge that I was going to be raped. I wasn't innocent to the idea. I knew girls it had happened to at school. But I had always been so sure that it wasn't going to be my fate.

Now I was certain that there was going to be no way to escape it.

Tito forced my legs apart with one of his knees and plowed into me, laughing at my cries of pain.

At least he wasn't the first. That was my sole, cold comfort as he viciously took me, grunting at the effort it took for him to grind in and out of my dry pussy.

My first had been a sweet boy in my English class who'd wooed me with poetry. The coupling hadn't been as good as the couplets in the poems he'd recited, but at least the experience was there — the experience of what sex was supposed to be.

At least Tito didn't ruin that for me.

I was weeping in spite of my pride by the time Tito had shot his thin stream of seed into me. He pushed me away as if I disgusted him, spitting on me as he tucked his deflating cock into his pants.

"Worst lay I've ever had," he said. "I hope you'll be better next time."

He left the house, the front door's slam rattling all of Granny's walls. I really let myself go then, weeping at the utter injustice of it all. I'd begged Granny not to take Tito in, and this was what had happened.