3. Nero
Chapter 3
Nero
I wake up in a panic as I do every night. My breathing calms when my eyes meet the darkness of the room. I preferred the darkness to any nightmares plagued with real-life scenes of my fucked-up childhood. Sleep was never more than a few hours each night in my quest to avoid the memories. Reaching for the rosary on my nightstand, I drape the beads over my neck. It’s a habit I have. The only thing that silences the hammering in my ears.
I walk to the bathroom and splash water onto my face. Looking up, I see my reflection staring back at me. I take in the discolored scarring on my upper chest. The most fucked up of all my memories. There would be no walking around shirtless here in the penthouse. Not without my new roommate.
Grabbing a cigarette, I walk onto the balcony, enjoying the night’s fresh air. The first two weeks as Ariella’s bodyguard have gone by quickly. Mainly because we say the bare minimum to each other throughout the day. The first two days, she tried ordering me around.
“Nero, get me a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine?” No.
“Nero, can you carry these Amazon boxes to the penthouse?” No, again.
“Nero, can you take Guapo to pee?” Fuck No.
Ignoring her aggravated the hell out of her. I get the feeling that she’s annoyed by my presence, and the feeling is fucking mutual. Anytime I catch her glaring at me in the penthouse, I smile at her, causing her to roll her eyes and walk into another room. She stays as far away from me as she can.
We just coexist. And I like that. There’s no talking or getting to know each other. I know everything I need to know about her from her TikTok lives and phone conversations. She never shuts up. Talking into her phone, to Guapo, and even herself.
She’s also a creature of habit which makes my job really fucking easy. Every morning, she was up at six am, and since I never sleep, it gives me something to do. She’s not thrilled that I follow her to the gym, but tough shit. I could let her go alone, but why would I? Not when I find joy in pissing her off.
Before she heads to the gym, she feeds Guapo, her dog. She feeds him cat food. That’s right, she feeds her dog cat food. I bite my tongue from asking her why. It’s weird, but I have to remind myself I don’t fucking care.
She also pours something that looks like vomit into one of the 10,000 pink cups she collects. I’ll give her five years before she’s on a hoarder show. Apparently, the green shit is edible because she slurps it down in record time, washes the cup, dries it, then places it inside another cabinet.
Turning to find me, she lets out a sigh. Every damn time. Like she woke up and thought today would be the day I disappear from her life. Surprise Princess.
It’s amusing to watch how pissed off she gets. Her nostrils flare, and her pout is fucking adorable. She breathes deep, murmuring in between, and the woosah kicks in somewhere after the fifth dramatic exhale.
I keep my distance from her enough that she has her own space but not enough to let anyone else access her. Her uncle trained both Jasper and me when we worked for the hotel. Which is why I don’t get why she’s so bothered by my presence. She’s a cartel princess, and while I don’t know everything about her world, I know enough to know I’m not her first bodyguard.
“Buenos Dias Besties! Today’s workout is an upp—” she says into the camera, huffing again and turning to face me.
“Can you get out of my camera view!?” she demands.
“Oh, of course, Princess,” I say, feigning remorse.
This really pisses her off. I learned early on that she hated being called Princess, so I did it more regularly.
The dog is cool, though. We have had a secret alliance ever since I started leaving dog food for him on the balcony, and Homeboy has been a frequent visitor since. He reminds me of Charlie, my childhood dog, so that’s the only reason I carry him when she asks.
Today, Guapo and I are sitting on a nearby bench while Ari records her entire workout routine on TikTok live. It pisses me off how na?ve she is. Unphased by everything going on around her.
The gym is usually empty when she goes in, but every now and then, there will be some lucky bastard who leaves with a hard-on after watching her squat in biker shorts and a sports bra. If I catch them, I give them one look, and they avert their eyes. She shouldn’t be giving them a free fucking show. I debate telling Axel this, but again not my fucking problem.
When she’s done entertaining the entire internet, she returns to the penthouse, showers, gets ready, and heads to work. She was punctual as fuck. I like that about her.
Ariella was interning under her older cousin Thalia, the Chief Financial Officer of Calavera Hotels. She worked and lived at the hotel and rarely stepped outside it. I would stand outside the office door or sit on the office couch reading while she worked away typing, answering calls, and sticking a million sticky notes over her desk. She had a sick obsession with lists and sticky notes. They were all over the fridge and bathroom mirror in the penthouse.
For lunch, we eat in her office or across from each other at the hotel restaurant Tres Coronas. She always asks for a corner booth where she glares at me between bites of her salad. Which she also recorded for her fandom. Letting the world know what she was eating, how many grams of protein there was, and her personal meal rating. On a scale between one and ten, everything always appeared to be a ten.
She makes dinner at night. The first night, I watched her from the living room as she debated whether to give me a plate. I went to my room to avoid the awkward conversation, but when I opened my door later that night, I saw a plate of chicken and rice outside my door, wrapped in saran wrap with a sticky note attached.
Protein: 120 g
Fat: 20g
Carbs: 50g
Cautiously, I threw the first plate of food she gave me away. You know, just in case, she poisoned me, but after the third night, I gave it a shot. So far, I’m still breathing.
She spends an hour in the bathroom doing some nighttime routine every night, then calls her parents. By the time I go to leave, she’s watching TV while working on a puzzle. When I get back, she’s usually fallen asleep on the couch.
I can’t help watching her like that. Something about her sleeping made her doll-like features more apparent. In an intriguing way, her breaths softened. Her body stills and tiny goosebumps run down the length of her creamy skin. This is what convinced me to cover her with a blanket every night before heading to my room.
I’d sleep for four hours, and then we start the process all over again—day in and Day out, all week. On the weekends, the routine shifts slightly. She skips the gym on Saturdays and takes Guapo to her grandfather’s house.
I catch up on laundry, drink a beer, and jack off in the shower. What? It was the only time I had to myself. I wasn’t sure what she did on Sundays, but when I’d get back, there were always more groceries, her meal prep containers filling the fridge next to my beer, and fresh pink carnations throughout the penthouse.
It was safe to say I could do this for a little while longer. Shadow the princess around the hotel, making sure there are no threats against her. Clear my conscious of the guilt that had been eating me from what I did- what I was forced to do.
I’d wait to see when Genesis showed up and get Leatherface whatever information he needed. It wouldn’t be long before Axel found the princess a husband, and I could get back to my life. That was the plan. Easy fucking peasy. Until it’s not.
After weeks of operating in sync, I wake up on a bright Saturday morning and grab a beer when I find Ariella standing in the kitchen. A blank expression on her face.
She doesn’t acknowledge me. I grab the beer and walk back to my room. An hour later, after I showered and set the laundry, she is still there in the kitchen with the same blank expression. I stop and watch her, but she doesn’t move.
I want to ignore her and keep walking to the door, but something tugs at me to check on her. As much as I convince myself it’s none of my fucking business, I can’t help the emotions that pull at me to see her like this. That look on her face. I had seen it a thousand times before. On Evangeline’s face.
It was usually the first warning sign I had before she would fly off the edge of reality. Before the bad thing came out. Before I became a target for her frustration. Ari is not Evangeline. I know that. Her blank expression, though similar, wasn’t rooted in anger. She looks sad. Tears rim her emerald eyes, and she doesn’t register my presence even as I walk to stand in front of her.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She blinks the tears back and looks at me. It takes a second for her to register me. The moment she does, her face hardens.
“I’m fine.”
“Did you just wake up?”
She looks back at the clock on the kitchen stove—eleven o’clock. I follow her eyes to the clock, then back to the pink sweats and white tank top I recognize from the night before.
“Yes,” she says in a whisper.
She doesn’t look at me. Instead, she grabs the cup in front of her and walks back to her room. Guapo lets out a small whimper before following after. Something doesn’t feel right. I swallow down any concern rising. Not your problem. I remind myself. And I continue to remind myself as I make my way to the clubhouse.
“Hey, Nero,” Shawny says when I enter the empty club.
The redhead wears a tight white dress and six-inch heels. Shawny works at the hotel as a maid, but Jasper hired her to work part-time as a bartender for the club on nights and weekends.
Taking the empty seat at the end of the bar, I pull out my phone and search for Ariella’s Instagram page. I had found it a week ago to make sure she hadn’t posted a picture of me without my fucking consent.
She has over seventy thousand followers, and her whole life is documented here. Not somewhere I needed my photo plastered. The first thing I notice is she hasn’t posted her annoying “Buenos Dias Besties” video.
She does this religiously, even if she doesn’t go to the gym. However, there is no picture of her breakfast or video of Guapo, who also has his own Instagram account. I checked his page, and there was nothing.
Shawny sets a bottle of Modelo in front of me. I take a swig before I start a tortuous game of pretending I don’t care about what’s going on with Ariella. I entertain Shawny’s questions and flirting, but I have no idea what she’s saying—something about a leather kink.
“Not my thing,” I say, and then I’m back on my phone. Stuck in a loop of pushing my phone away and picking it up seconds later. Checking to see if Ariella has posted something.
Unsatisfied with my lack of attention, Shawny walks around the counter and sits on my lap.
“You want another drink, or are you hungry?” she says, pushing her chest into my face.
It does nothing for me, which is frustrating as fuck because I think getting my dick wet could help whatever was going on in my head. The door swings open, and Jasper and Leatherface walk in.
“Ya get me another,” I say, pushing Shawny off my lap and shutting off my phone.
Jasper takes the seat to my left and Leatherface to my right. I didn’t realize the club had filled up. Most of the patrons in the bar are people from town coming by to get discounted happy hour drinks.
Two other girls have joined Shawny, and I look around for Ofelia—Hueso’s wife, who manages the bar. Instead, I see a brunette approaching the counter. She bats her lashes at Leatherface, who is actively ignoring her like he does every woman. All but one woman, that is.
“You find anything out?” He says to me, opening the beer bottle on the counter.
“Not yet,” I say truthfully. In the weeks I shadowed Ariella, I hadn’t seen Genesis.
“Ariella hasn’t told you anything?” he says suspiciously.
“We don’t talk.”
“Then start.” He says, a threat undertoning his voice.
“Why is it so fucking important to you?” I ask.
“Why is anything?”
This was what it was like talking to Cassiel Ontiveros, the infamous Leatherface. He said little. He did a lot for the club, but he said little. His obsession with Ariella’s best friend was well in place from the day I met him. I had been caught up in his games more times than I care to admit, but this last time, he went too far.
When Cassiel ordered Jasper and I to gather information on the Consuelo family, I was fine with bugging the place, even snooping around their living quarters, but then he fucked up.
He saw an opportunity to intervene when Silas’s daughter, Lucia, was kidnapped. All he saw was an opening to get to Genesis. Roping me into his flawed plan, I had to kidnap an innocent Ariella.
In Cassiel’s sick head, he thinks that because he saved Silas’s daughter, his biological niece, it counteracted him kidnapping Genesis and Ariella in the process.
But I heard the way Ariella cried in the car. I can still hear her begging me to take the hood off her. Still, hear her pleas to uncuff her. I had to watch her hide away from the world when it was all said and done.
She stopped leaving the hotel after that. The guilt consumed me. Guarding her was my sad attempt to rid myself of the guilt, but here it was, torturing me all over again.
“Look around you at every single one of these people. They all want something. Even you. We all are here because we want something. He may want protection,” he says, pointing to guests at random with his index finger.
“He just wants to drown in his sorrows. All I have ever wanted was Genesis. So, ask Ariella.” he growls.
“She doesn’t want to be friends with her bodyguard,” I say rhetorically. It was true. I was an annoyance to her.
“You need to be her friend, Nero. Get her to tell you.” He stands up to leave. “If you can’t get her to talk, I will.”
Anger courses through me at the threat.
“I’ll get the information.” I grit out.
I’d have to because I already felt sick to my stomach, wondering if the kidnapping was what was affecting her today. I knew how that bitch trauma worked. One minute, you’re fine, and the next, it’s sneaking up on you with a grenade.
I stay at the club and drink another beer before heading back to the hotel. When I return to the penthouse, I find Ari passed out on the couch. Gordon Ramsey is screaming at someone on the TV, and there’s an empty package of iced oatmeal cookies next to her bottle of Dr. Pepper. I reach for the blanket behind her, and Guapo growls at me.
“Hey homie, I’m just covering her up,” I say, and he sits back beside her.
I drop the blanket over her before I palm her face. Her long lashes lay across her cheek. I stand there for a moment longer to watch her chest rise and fall. How did the earth conspire to bring such beautiful things into the world just to break them?