The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (7 page)

“Keep it. Retire off it. I hate that fucking job of yours. I don’t know why you insist on working there.”

He knew he didn’t have to tell her not to put that much money in the bank. His mother was smart. She didn’t need him to draw her a map.

“What about your friends?” she asked.

What a very polite way to ask Chuito what he was going to do about abandoning his entire crew in Miami.

“They’re okay. Angel’s handling it.”

“You’re going to stay?” she asked in disbelief. “You said it was snowing.”

“It is snowing.” He groaned as he looked out the tiny window on the side of his apartment. “It’s cold as fuck. This is the most miserable place I’ve ever been to in my life. The people here think I’m toxic.”

“Come home,” his mother argued. “I know this is about Marc—”

“I’m just going to stay until he gets out.” Chuito felt sick again as he glanced around the small room. “I’ll feel better if I’m here.”

“
¡Me cago en ná!
You don’t always have to be the same,” she snapped at him. “He doesn’t want that.”

“It’s either that or going down in Miami. You choose.” Chuito took a deep breath and looked around the room again, feeling the walls close in on him. “Really, you pick, Mamá. Here or there, either way I’m doing this. I can’t live with the guilt anymore. I got too much already.”

“Fine. Stay in the snow until Marc gets out. I don’t care. Be miserable. Let the gringos treat you like
mierda
!”

“They gave me a free place to stay.” He raised his eyebrows at that. “I think they’d give me money to eat too if I let them.”

“What do you have to do for it?”

“They said I just have to win.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he mumbled, because he didn’t believe it either.

“Don’t let them give you money,” she snapped at him harshly. “They’ll think you’re weak.”

“Okay.” He nodded as he took another deep breath. “I got enough to live off of for a while. You take the rest.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he growled at her. “Take it.”

“I don’t want it!”

“Mamá!” He pressed his phone closer to his ear, practically shaking with how frustrating his mother was. “Take the fucking money!”

“No, I’ll send it to you.” Her voice was tight with pride. “I don’t need your money. I never needed it. You always think—”

“Please,” he said as he took another deep breath. “I have enough mierda to deal with. Let me just know you’re okay. Can you do that for me?”

“I don’t need you,” she said in a quivering voice. “If you want to live in the snow, then I don’t need you. I
never
needed you.”

He arched an eyebrow and waited for a long moment before he asked, “Do you want to say sorry for that?”

“I guess I’m sorry.” Her voice was still quivering. “Are you going to be okay?”

“If you promise to take the money, I’ll be okay.”

She was silent now, still breathing heavily as if fighting tears, though Chuito knew she wouldn’t cry. She never did. He’d only seen her cry once in his entire life, and he never wanted to see it again.

For something to take down Sofia Garcia, it had to be truly horrific.

“I’ll take the money,” she whispered.

“Good.” He nodded and took another deep breath as he admitted, “I love you, Mamá. Visit Marc for me.”

“Every week,” she promised.

“Okay. I’m hanging up now.”

“I’m not going to say I love you too, ’cause I’m mad at you,” she told him, and she didn’t even hesitate about it. “You have to earn it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“Ay,
bendito
, you better win.” Her voice was stern, unbending. “Kick their asses. Promise.”

He smiled in spite of everything. “I’ll win. I promise.”

“I raised you strong so the world wouldn’t hurt you,” she told him firmly. “Don’t let them hurt you now.”

“I won’t.” He was confident about it too. “The world never hurts me because I’m weak.”

She was quiet, as if hearing the unspoken accusation Chuito had leveled at himself. “I have to go back,” she said and then hung up before Chuito had a chance to say good-bye.

He let it go without getting too upset about it. His mother was prideful. She was willing to take the money. It was a fucking miracle, and Chuito would take his miracles where he could find them.

They were few and far between.

He picked up his bag and set it on the table. Then he unzipped it and dug through it. He pulled out a coffee tin and stared at it for a long moment, still feeling that horrible rush of loss hot against the back of his neck.

His younger brother and aunt had died three years ago in a drive-by that haunted his dreams every time he closed his eyes.

Chuito had done blow every single day since. It was the only reason he was still alive. If it wasn’t for the euphoria of drugs, he would’ve eaten his gun a long time ago.

Who said self-medicating didn’t work?

Chuito knew a clinic in Miami where, for enough money, they’d make sure anyone would pass a drug test. He was clean from diseases. He was careful as hell about that shit because his mother had scared the ever-loving fuck out of him and his cousin when they were young teenagers, but he had to pay to pass the drug test for Clay Powers.

Still Chuito knew this was coming. Professional sports took this shit seriously, and there was no one here to pay to pass. He’d known when he left that this was going to have to happen. It was part of the reason he’d done it.

But as he stared at the can, he was starting to question staying here.

Quitting cold turkey.

That was…

He was just considering doing it one last time, but instead someone knocked on his door. His stomach knotted when he thought about getting arrested in this backward state. In Miami, Chuito knew half the inmates. Hell, his uncle had been in prison for years. He had the whole place rigged to his favor.

He shoved the can back in his bag and went to the door, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice as he jerked it open. “Wha—”

He paused, because this wasn’t Jules Conner who had come back to be maternal.

This girl was— Hot. As. Fuck.

Like seriously, drop-dead-gorgeous, could-make-a-million-fucking-dollars-at-the-club sexy. She was dressed conservatively in a black skirt, and she had one of those white sweaters with pearl buttons. Her light red hair was braided in twin ropes that hung down her back, like a porn star trying to look innocent and doing a pretty damn good job at pulling it off.

This
chica
even had freckles over the bridge of her nose that just added to her appeal, making her look young and naive and corruptible as hell.

“I, um—” She held up a plate of cookies. “I made these for you.”

Chuito looked at the cookies, mainly because they were level with her chest. “Why?”

“To welcome you.” She let her gaze run over him, before it stopped on his arm that was on display since he had his hand on the door, showing off his Los Corredores ink. “Since we’re going to be neighbors—”

He laughed. “You live next door?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I work for Jules.”

“What do you do for her?”

Maybe Jules owned a strip club as well as gym.

“I’m her assistant,” she said and then looked away. “Technically that’s just a fancy word for
secretary
, but I’m going to school. Prelaw and—”

“Carajo,” he mumbled as he looked at her again. This girl was for real. The innocent-schoolgirl act wasn’t an act at all. “No wonder she was threatening to shoot me.”

“Oh, she doesn’t mean that,” his neighbor said with a laugh. “She’s always saying that, but she wouldn’t actually shoot someone.”

Chuito snorted, because he had no doubt Jules would shoot first and ask questions later. He hadn’t lived on the streets all his life not to know a threat when he saw one.

“You should go, chica.” He leaned past his door and saw just how close the other door was. This had once been a house, and they were basically as close as if they were living under one roof. He looked back to his neighbor and said, “And take your cookies with you.”

She looked affronted as she glanced back to the plate. “But I made them for you.”

Chuito was honestly at a complete loss for words. This town was fucking crazy.
Completely insane
. It was like he had landed on another planet. No way would someone like her end up living together so intimately with someone like him in his world. Not if she had any male who cared about her.

“Do you have a
papi
?”

“A father?”

He nodded. “Sí.”

“Yes.” She laughed. “Doesn’t everyone?”

No, not everyone. Chuito didn’t have a father. “Does he know I’m living next door?”

“Well, no.” She looked away. “I’m not currently on speaking terms with my father. Our relationship is strained.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t approve of me working here. Or living here.”

“Yeah, I bet not.” He snorted, thinking of Jules Conner again. She was more than a little rough around the edges. It didn’t bother Chuito. He could handle hard, pushy women, considering one did give birth to him, but there was absolutely nothing hard about this woman in front of him. “Maybe you should listen to him.”

“Please take them.” She held up the cookies again in offering. “They’re good. I made them from scratch. It’s my grandmother’s recipe.”

Chuito took the cookies and turned to close the door.

“Oh, is that the Puerto Rican flag?” She reached up and touched the tattoo on the back of his neck. “What does
Boricua
mean?”

Chuito paused and took a deep breath, because feeling her fingers against such a sensitive spot affected him. “What do you think it means?”

She shook her head, her blue eyes wide and bright against her pale skin. “I have no idea.”

“It means I’m Puerto Rican.”

“Right.” She nodded. “That would make sense.”

“I’m going to close the door now,” he told her and started to close it to illustrate his point. “Gracias for the cookies.”

She reached out before he could. “If you need anything—”

“I don’t need anything,” he assured her as he pushed her hand out of the way.

“But if you do.” She tilted her head, following the narrowing space between them. “I’m right here. I have baking supplies and measuring cups and—”

Chuito closed the door in her face.

He stood there afterward, listening.

She huffed on the other side, sounding hurt. “That didn’t go well,” she whispered, obviously to herself.

He just waited rather than answer her.

When he heard the other door open and close, he turned around and searched for a telephone. He needed a landline, and he found a portable in the kitchen.

Thank God.

He called his cell phone, getting the number. He texted it to his mother, telling her to make sure Marcos had it. He couldn’t beg her and tell her to make sure he had it right now because he needed something normal in this crazy place.

He would just have to wait.

Then he grabbed the coffee tin before he could change his mind and dug the plastic bags out of it. He dumped it all in the toilet, and it was like standing there having a funeral in a cloud of cocaine that was billowing up around him and sinking to the bottom faster than he could save it.

He broke out in a sweat when he flushed it and had to sit down on the bathroom floor next to the small shower with his head in his hands and the room swimming.

There was nowhere in this town to buy blow.

He was certain of it.

He’d done it.

Those stupid gringos all thought they were giving him a chance of a lifetime. They didn’t know he’d just put himself in prison instead. A gringo prison, with scary cop guards and jack shit to do but work out and look at the walls around him.

And it was fucking snowing.

He’d been trying to get caught for the past six months. Stealing cars in broad daylight. Fighting in the most deadly underground rings possible. Dealing in the gringo neighborhoods, the ones with extra heat.

He had done absolutely everything save drive up to the Miami PD and turn himself in, because he couldn’t handle the remorse anymore. He couldn’t stand that his cousin was in prison for being caught chopping cars Chuito had stolen. The guilt was too much, and he already had a fuckload weighing heavy on his soul.

Then Clay Powers showed up and offered him something worse than getting arrested.

At least there was blow in prison.

Chapter Eight

“Are you okay?”

Chuito nodded and sat down on the mat in the center of the cage. The construction in the old rec center was making his head throb worse, and he was sweating like crazy. He took a deep breath and mumbled, “I need another cup of coffee.”

“You’ve had like eight cups of coffee today,” Clay said as he sat next to him. “I guess everyone has their vices.”

Chuito laughed, a horrible, pained laugh that he couldn’t hide even if he wanted to. God, he almost told him. He really did, because he felt like shit. The crash was a thousand times harder than he’d anticipated, and he had known it was going to be difficult.

He could barely keep his eyes open, and that wasn’t the worst of it.

It was as if the blow had simply been borrowed happiness from a nasty, vindictive loan shark who was taking it all back with triple the interest. He’d been living in an alternate reality, hiding behind a cloud of anger and cocaine, and now that the cloud was gone…he was just really sad. Horribly, unbearably, want-to-eat-his-Glock sad.

He’d never mourned his brother and Tiá Camila. He’d hidden from all those emotions because he couldn’t afford them. In their family weakness wasn’t an option. Even now, sitting there with agony crushing in on him so intensely he could barely breathe, he didn’t know how to express it.

Motherfuckers with as many demons as Chuito were not supposed to come down off cocaine. They were supposed to snort that shit until life took them out.

Fuck, maybe he
should
eat a bullet. Just because he’d left his guns at home didn’t mean he couldn’t find one. Jules Conner had told him several times she packed heat.