7. Nero
Chapter 7
Nero
11 YEARS OLD
“ D ime la verdad.” Mrs. Rivera says.
“I told you. I fell.” I protest.
I fell, a dog bit me, and I got in a fight with one of the kids in our apartment complex. It was the lies Evangeline had coached me to say. Most of the adults I met turned their cheeks to the bruises I came to school with. I was a lot of paperwork they’d rather not deal with. Mrs. Rivera, however, was not letting up on the lies.
Her persistent attempts to save me, however, only made matters worse. I take the long way home. I don’t know what’s waiting for me there, but it’s a four-day weekend, and Evangeline won’t be happy the school interrupted her day.
My hands tremble as I turn the knob. The smell of stale smoke and molding food hits my nose, and I wince. Home Sweet Home. I inch through the small apartment, but I don’t see her. Holding my breath, I debate whether I should call out to her or not. I was always damned either way. If I called out and she was sleeping, I’d be locked in the kennel all weekend. If I didn’t call out to let her know I was here, I’d go the whole weekend without food.
Thankfully, Charlie sees me and lets out an excited bark that alerts her I’m there.
“Nero, is that you?” she calls out.
“Yes, ma, I just got home.”
“Come back here.” She commands.
Her voice sounds kind, but I already know Evangeline. When she speaks with a kind tone, that is when she’s the scariest. The bad thing was coming out to play.
Since Tala had escaped and set the old house on fire, Evangeline and I had been on the run. She had cut her long hair and dyed it dark black. She enrolled me under her maiden name, and we were living off the money she stole from her and Benigo’s joint bank accounts. Money that was running scarce.
I walk toward the light streaming out of the back bathroom. Evangeline stands there smoking a cigarette. The smile she gives me makes my heart tighten inside my chest.
“Bath time mijito.” The bad thing says.
My eyes bounce from the empty tub to the mess covering the bathroom counter: a half-empty bottle of Jose Cuervo, scissors, and small hairs covering the sink. Evangeline compulsively cut her hair daily. The long hair she once had now barely grazed the end of her earlobe. She’s stopped caring about her appearance in the three years since we left Texas.
Slowly, I began to undress. I know this game. “Bath Time.”
I climb into the cold tub and lie straight, mentally preparing for the torture. She loved this game. A deranged smile would form on her face at my struggles.
How long will I hold my breath this time? I could handle her attempts to drown me, only because sometimes I had hope that it would finally be the end to everything. Hope that she’d hold me down just long enough for me to escape this world. To never wake up to another day where I had to guess what I did wrong. Questions about what I did that made her not love me.
I lay there waiting for her to turn on the water. For the ice-cold water to hit my bare skin and the verbal abuse to start.
“!Pedazo de mierda!”
“You ruined everything!”
“I should have thrown you in that fire.”
“!No vales nada!”
The words don’t hurt because they are all I know. I’ve learned to accept them as my truth. I know it will be over soon if I close my eyes and do what she says. Closing my eyes, I wait.
I expect to feel the ice-cold water so I can begin to count down in my head.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
I’m prepared to take on everything. There’s comfort in what you know, even when it comes to abuse.
Seven.
Six
By the time I get to one, nothing has happened. No water running from the faucet and no Evangeline. She’s not even in the bathroom when I open my eyes.
I lay there, my heart pounding loudly in my ears. A whistling sounds in the distance, and when Evangeline returns, my eyes shoot to the kettle in her hands. Panic floods every cell in my body at the excitement on her face.
I shake my head.
Please. Please make this quick.
I stop praying for deliverance from the pain and start to bargain with whatever angel or demon is willing to listen to me. If I deserve this, then make it quick, I ask them.
Sometimes, they listen.
“That teacher is causing me a lot of problems Nero.” she tsks.
“I-I’m sorry.” I cry out—my last attempt to beg her for mercy.
“That fucking puta thinks she knows you better than me.”
She grabs my hair and tugs my head back. Her dark eyes meet my petrified ones.
“She doesn’t know what a fucking waste of space you are. Just like your fucking father.” She laughs.
My body starts to fight back. I try to wriggle free, my legs push up, and my arms extend in front of me, but it’s useless. A scrawny eleven-year-old body is no match for hers.
“Stay still!” she screams.
Laying still, the voice in my head prepares me for the torture on the horizon. My eyes squeeze shut, and my fist clench in preparation.
Evangeline begins to tell me how much she hates me. How I’ve ruined her life. Seconds later, I feel it. The scorching hot water that hits my upper chest.
A scream escapes me as my body jolts up. Her fist comes flying down onto my face, and I cry out.
I cry out, but nobody hears me.
I hate that these memories plague me at the most inconvenient of times. I’d spent half my life repressing them, but it was inevitable to avoid the triggers of my trauma. What triggered this was different.
The look in Ariella’s eyes, the concern on her face. I never take my shirt off around anyone. Especially not women. I always feared the pity in their eyes. The women I associated with didn’t care about my past, though. They didn’t care if I took my shirt off. They only cared about the escape.
The orgasm.
Freedom.
Praise and release.
I heard Ari screaming and didn’t care about the fucking scars. Seconds were barely spared when I took off down the hallway. Finding a shirt was the least of my concerns.
Knowing Ari, she will eventually bring it up. It was in her nature. I’d cross that bridge when I got there, but vulnerability was not my strong suit.
“How can you be eating right now?” Jasper asks, pulling me from my inner turmoil.
This whole day had been a shit show from the moment I woke up. From not being any closer to finding Tala to finding Ariella in that apartment. I still have a million questions.
“Is there something else I should be doing?” I ridicule Jasper before taking another bite of the tuna sandwich.
Ari had been leaving a week’s worth of them for me since she noticed I had eaten one of hers. I was always hungry when I got home from the late-night gun runs. Expecting her to say something, I was surprised when she made more.
She did things that made me see her in a new light. Her family always sees her as na?ve, but it’s just in her nature to be kind and to think of others before herself. After being around monsters my whole life, she is a comforting presence.
My dominant needs and desires pry on the inside of me every time she touches me. She was not one of the submissives I contracted to be a distraction. There was a line between us that I could not cross.
But it was things she did like this. Like a fucking tuna sandwich that made me want to return the favor. Praise her for all her efforts. Pleasure her. Barry myself deep into her while she cried out my name.
She has no idea what it does to me when she calls me Sir. The erotic images of her on her knees are the only thing driving my dick to get hard these days. I’ve convinced myself I was busy, and that’s why I hadn’t called an escort, but the truth was my dick only wanted one girl—the one I could not have.
Not just because there was a ten-year age gap but because she was about to be Preston Cuevas’s wife. The husband thing wasn’t my thing. Unless he wanted me to fuck her while he watched, then who was I to refuse my services.
“Hey, you got another one of those, brother?” Louie asks, eyeing the sandwich.
I was comfortable reclining back on the bike with my feet propped up while we waited for the Russians to meet us. However, the fact that Ariella made these sandwiches for me makes me hesitant to share.
Prospects were required to go on runs. I feel bad for the guy, though. His sister was an addict, and the state threatened to take her three kids. Louie stepped in, taking full custody until she got out of rehab. He was a good guy, and these night jobs were straining on him.
Dropping my feet, I get up and walk to the back of my bike. I reach in my saddlebag and then hand him one of the extra sandwiches I brought.
Reaching back inside the bag for my cigarettes, I freeze when Louie’s high-pitched voice starts to mimic that of a young girl.
“Nero, remember to take your vitamins. X-o-x-o—Ari.” I turn to see him reading the quote directly from the sandwich bag.
Fuck. I forgot she did that .
That woman wrote notes everywhere, on the bathroom mirror, on sticky notes, and on fucking sandwich bags. I shoot Louie with a glare.
“Haven’t you ever heard, ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’?”
I grab another sandwich and toss it to Jasper. He catches it and continues to stare at me with a smug look. I respond with my middle finger before pulling out my package of Marlboro reds. Louie’s moaning while he devours the sandwich.
“Dude, I don’t know how you aren’t walking around without a constant erection around her.” He says with a mouthful.
Remember when I said he was a good guy? Ya, fuck him. Generosity was clearly a mistake when it came to this annoying asshole.
I give him a hard stare before I light my cigarette and focus on the blank hills in front of us. The Russians were always late. This wouldn’t be the first time we waited over three hours for them. Jasper and I kept ourselves entertained in silence, but Louie was making Ariella seem mute in comparison.
“The things I would do to her. I would just motorboat the hell out of those jugs.” He continues.
Louie shakes his face, demonstrating his desires, and I take a deep inhale. I shoot Jasper a warning glance—one that says, “Shut him up, or I’ll shut him up.”
Jasper walks over to Louie and steals the other half of the sandwich, shutting him up as he stares him down.
I’m barely finished with my cigarette when I see a large van like the one we brought making its way down the dark road. We had used this secluded place for the last three trades, and it proved to be secure. The corrupt fucking police were on the Russian’s payroll, so that turned a blind eye to our affairs.
The van slows, and the driver gets out to open the back. Four men jump out, and I recognize all of them except the man getting out of the passenger seat. Unlike the other men in bulletproof vests and net gators, he’s wearing a designer suit, hair slicked back, and tattoos covering every visible inch of his skin from the neck down.
I feel for the gun tucked into the back of my jeans. The men begin to speak in Russian until Rodya, an older man who speaks broken English, steps forward. Rodya is a familiar face, and while I don’t trust anyone, it’s safe to assume he is not a threat. I leave my gun in my jeans and step toward him.
“Rodya,” Jasper says, looking at me with uncertainty.
Rodya and the man in the suit take lackluster steps toward us. Their eyes are vacant, and their expressions somber. When Rodya reaches us, he lets out a long, low sigh.
“There is a trader among us, and my boss has come to warn you.” He says with a thick Russian accent.
I look at Jasper. The man in the suit continues to speak with Rodya in their native tongue. Rodya nods his head and then translates the man’s concerns to us.
“Boss says he thinks the Italians have sent a spy to infiltrate our operations. Our men were ambushed last week when picking up guns. Nobody knew that meeting place. Boss wants to slow the trade until we find the traitor.”
Rodya turns back to the man and tells him something in Russian.
“Tell your leader, the one with the scar down his face, to meet us tomorrow morning at Tres Coronas, nine a.m. sharp. We’ll be waiting in the rear corner booth. Do not bring any other men.” Rodya says, eyeing us.
We nod, but I look at Jasper. Tres Coronas was the restaurant inside Calavera Hotels. Leatherface was not welcomed there after all the bullshit he pulled this last year.
The suited man returns to the front of the van, and the other men go to the back to remove the guns. We open the back of our van and begin to load the guns inside. It’s quiet as we work fast to load the cargo. It’s not until we see their headlights disappear into the night that Jasper whispers to me.
“I think we just met Kostya Pashokov.”
None of us outside of Leatherface had met Pashokov, the leader of the Russian Bratva. I knew he was running the trade and had offered Los Peregrinos the job after our Rival gang, Los Bandoleros, had betrayed him.
Kostya wanted them dead after his sister was found in a human trafficking ring. She was rescued by the Houston Cartel Connect and took sanctuary in California with Ariella’s family.
“Call Cass and tell him what’s going on.” I bark to Louie.
I get on my bike and start the engine. Jasper and I wait until Louie moves the van ahead of us before we trail behind him. We had to make it safe across the border and back. This was no doubt going to be a long fucking night.