Chapter 11
11
LAZARO
It’s like a switch flips as soon as the words leave my mouth. Her eyes go from heated to ice cold, and the shocked look on her face shutters to one of fury. She looks like she’s ready to murder me, though it’s a little hard to take her seriously in those pajamas she’s wearing. I know she chose them purposely, but she looks so fucking adorable in them, and I want to reach out and grab her and cuddle her close to me. Then slowly peel them off her, unwrapping every inch of her skin.
“I want my own room,” she says sharply.
“Sorry, they’re all full,” I lie easily.
“You expect me to believe that every other room in this gigantic house is full?” she sneers.
“As far as you’re concerned, they are. You’re not sleeping away from me, Amara. You might as well get used to it.”
“I already told you that we’re not going to be anything,” she explodes, her voice rising to a yell. “What’s worse, is you had this all planned out. What, as soon as you found out about me, you called dibs and came to get me? Is that why there are clothes in the closet still with tags on them? Or why you kept getting pissy with your brother in the car? I might not speak Italian, but tone says everything and it’s pretty obvious you were telling him to stay out of your way.”
“No, that’s not how it went.” Though now that she’s laid that all out for me, I can see why she might think that. Shit, I’ve screwed this up. “I asked for those clothes to be picked up for you while we were on the plane, when you were hanging out with Rori in the bedroom. They’ve only been in there for maybe six hours. Did I ask for them to be put in there? Yes. Because I want you with me, Amara. I don’t want you on the other side of the fucking house, worrying that you’re freaking the hell out, or that someone might get into the house and get to you before I can. And we are going to be more than something , Amara. You and I, we’re going to be everything . You just need to catch up.”
“What you need to do is open those ears of yours and actually listen to what I’m telling you. You have a lot of nerve saying any of that, considering what happened on the plane.”
Huh? Now I’m confused. “I apologized for snapping at you on the plane, Amara. What more do you want?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she snaps. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice that the stewardess looked freshly fucked? And you dare to stand here and act like I should be so happy that you’re giving me attention again? That you want me so much, you’re willing to move on from her so quickly?”
Fucking Camilla. I never should have fucked around with her, but she was an easy lay, and up until now I’ve had no reason to refuse her. Clearly that was a fucking mistake. “Nothing happened with her,” I tell Amara firmly. “She fucked around with one of the soliders. She only came back when we landed and said she was there to clean up. Nothing more.”
She definitely doesn’t believe me. “It doesn’t matter,” Amara says flippantly. “None of it changes the fact that there’s not going to be anything romantic between us. If you want to be friends, fine, maybe we can manage that, but that’s it. I don’t want a relationship, not with you or anyone else. I’m not going to pretend to be in one to make you feel better, either. I want my own room. You need to get back to work and stop worrying about me or anything to do with me. I’m not your responsibility anymore now that I’m here, right?”
“Friends?” I repeat, unable to keep the sneer out of my voice. “Amara, I don’t want to be friends with you. I’ll never be able to accept that, and watch you be with another man. That’s the fastest way for him to end up dead.”
“Can you not hear me from all the way up there?” she shouts. “I don’t want anyone else! There aren’t going to be any other men, because there aren’t going to be any. Ever . No one is going to die because you’re jealous.”
“I can hear you just fine,” I snap back, exasperated. “And you can’t see the future, Amara. Eventually you might?—”
“No, I fucking won’t,” she hisses. “Do not even begin to tell me what I will or won’t do, Lazaro. There are no men, or women, in my future. I’ve been through too fucking much to even consider it a possibility. So if that’s why you won’t let this go, then you can rest easy.”
“Does this have something to do with that fucker who was being rough with you in your salon?” I ask, everything inside me going ice cold. “And that business with the broken marriage, and someone saying that you slept with a father and his son?”
“What does it matter? It should be enough that I’m saying no!”
“Because it has clearly affected you and?—”
“You fucking idiot,” she screams, advancing on me with a look of such utter rage and pain that I almost back up a step. “Of course, it’s fucking affected me. I was sexually abused by every single foster home I was in from the ages of ten to sixteen. I’ve been subjected to hatred and abuse every year since because I finally spoke up and put a few of them in prison. No is supposed to mean no, goddammit, and I’m saying no, but you stand there and act like I’m just being difficult? Take it as a personal insult that I don’t want to be anything to you? Fuck you, Lazaro. Fuck you.” Tears stream down her reddened face as she spins on her heel and stalks toward the bathroom door.
I wrap my arms around her before she can reach it, turning her toward me as she tries to fight me. Her fists hit my chest as she thrashes wildly, her knees coming perilously close to my balls. I manage to block those, gripping her wrists in my hands and hauling her up into me, holding her tight. Her sobs shatter something inside me, pain and guilt almost too much to bear. She hits my chest a couple more times before she finally sags into me, her face buried against my neck and her body shaking as she cries.
“I’m sorry, Amara. I’m so fucking sorry,” I murmur, gutted that I’ve brought this pain back to her. I’m a fucking idiot. Such a fucking idiot. I’ve been too focused on what I want, what I need from her, to think about what she’s been through. What she’s suffered. No wonder she’s been fighting me so fucking hard this entire time. I’m ready to kick my own ass, but all I can do is keep repeating the same words over and over again, rocking her and trying to make it better.
It sends me back to a time when I had to do the same thing with Sofia, though she saved herself before anything terrible happened. The guilt and fury I felt for not knowing or noticing. But this is Amara, and she’s just as strong as Sofia. Hell, stronger if you consider she didn’t have anyone to help her, had no one to comfort her. I’m here now, though. She’ll never have to handle this alone again. Ever.
Finally, her sobs subside, and a few little sniffles sound before she lets out a sigh, and her body goes lax. For a minute I wonder if she’s fallen asleep, but then she whispers, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
This woman never ceases to amaze me. “No, I am sorry, colombina , and you don’t need to apologize to me, not ever. I should have given thought to what you’ve been through and not tried to force you to go along with what I want.”
She sighs. “You said you had information on me but didn’t look that much into it, so it’s not like you knew.”
“I knew some of it,” I admit carefully. “Though not any details. The only thing I knew about was that you had been sexually assaulted, and that at sixteen, you finally got to a hospital and they were able to identify who did it. I didn’t look at any other information about you. And when I saw you, so strong and confident in your shop, not letting anyone get under your skin, I was stupid enough to think that maybe you were okay. That you put it behind you and sought therapy or something to help you.”
She gives a soft snort. “The foster system doesn’t really care if you get therapy or not. You’re just another number to the overworked social workers. I saw someone when I was in the hospital, and they wanted me to continue seeing someone, but the group home I got sent to didn’t have time for that. They were understaffed and trying to handle other kids that needed the help more. By then I was just numb to it, and I forced myself to let it go. They were in jail, and I needed to get on with my life.”
“They?” It clicks then, and guilt is replaced by hatred and fury. Those fuckers better still be in jail, and I’m going to make sure they never leave it alive.
Amara is quiet for a moment and then she starts talking. The longer I listen, the more disgusted and enraged I become. I have to work hard to contain myself so I don’t frighten her.
“I hit puberty early. I’d barely turned ten when I got my first period. The foster family I was staying with had an older man, an uncle, who stayed with them for a few months to get back on his feet. They all knew his history, that he spent time in jail for raping a twelve-year-old girl. I guess they thought that since I was only ten, I wasn’t his type.” She gives a dark, humorless laugh. “They were very wrong. I was ten, but I was already filling out, and he noticed. I saw him noticing me, and I avoided him as much as possible. I started locking my door at night. He tried to open it a couple times, and I hid under the bed. Such a stupid hiding place. If someone heard him, he would pretend to be sleepwalking and go to bed. But one night, I forgot to lock my door, and that was all he needed. He waited until he was sure that everyone was asleep, and he crept into my room.”
She says it so matter-of-factly, like she’s reciting from a book, while I have to work to keep myself still. She was a child. A child that should have been protected . “Was it only the once?” I manage to ask.
“No. He managed to corner me alone two more times, and he said that if I told anyone, he’d kill me. I was ten, and I believed him. To everyone else, he was a happy, caring, uncle figure, and he never so much as looked at me wrong. But it was there, in his eyes. In the way he watched me just a little too long. So I kept quiet and I ran away the first chance I got. When I was found, I told the police officer, and they took me into the hospital for a rape kit… it was the first of many. But he was smart. He always wore a condom when he raped me. Didn’t want to chance me getting away and his DNA ratting him out.”
“Did they arrest the fucker?”
She shakes her head, still not looking at me. “No, because when they went to the house, he was gone. I’d managed to hide for two days before the cops found me, and he took that time to get gone. I was removed from that home and placed in another. They promised me that I would be safe, that they would make sure to put me in a good home this time. One they thoroughly vetted. One that had only women. I’d be safe. They were wrong.”
“How were they wrong?” But I already know, my stomach sinking.
“Because people don’t think of child molesters being women,” she replies, her eyes taking on a far-away look. “Sometimes, they can be far worse than the men.”
“I’m so sorry, Amara,” I murmur into her hair. “I’ll kill every last one of them.” It’s a vow, and one I plan to keep.
“The uncle is in prison, and he’ll die in there. He got arrested for raping another girl, eleven this time, in another state a few months after I was removed. I checked when I got old enough to use the internet at school. And the rest, some of them are still around, but I don’t let myself think about them.”
As much as I don’t want to ask, I feel like I have to. “And the father and son?”
She stiffens again, but she doesn’t pull away. I’m not sure if I should take that as a good sign or a bad one. After another moment of silence, she finally tells me the story.
“I knew what would happen the moment I saw them. I tried to refuse to go into the house, refused to be left there, and threatened to run away, but the social worker told me that I had no say, and that this was the best place for me to be. They were a very religious family, one that had many foster children who stayed with them until they aged out of the system at eighteen. But you can’t hide evil, no matter how big you smile, or how understanding you pretend to be. What no one told me was that all the other foster kids they had were boys. I was the first girl. I was practically served up to them on a silver platter.
“The other problem was that they were smart. Clay knew exactly how he had to play it. He never once got too close to me; he was careful to keep his distance, to warn his two sons away from me. I was only allowed to spend time with his wife and three daughters. I was never allowed to be in a room alone with the boys, or even with him, for the first four months. I started to relax, thinking that I got it wrong. He even had his wife show me the lock that was on the bedroom door so that I would feel safe. And it worked.” That last part is said bitterly, her voice full of self-loathing.
“You were a child, Amara. That fucker knew exactly what he was doing. He was probably doing the same thing to his own fucking daughters.” Even just thinking about it makes me murderous.
“You would think, but no. Instead, he spent his time abusing the young boys and girls in their Church group. Apparently, he didn’t have a type, he just liked them young. But he never once touched his own kids because that was too fucked up for his warped moral compass. Still, he eventually wanted to show his oldest son the kind of things he could get away with. He even used him to get some of the girls to cooperate. Corey would seduce them, drug them, and then they would take turns. By the time I came along, according to the police, they had the whole thing worked out.”
“Please tell me those fuckers are dead,” I state through clenched teeth. “That someone in that prison put them in the fucking ground.”
“No, they’re still alive in prison, last that I heard. They should be coming up for parole soon, though.”
I make a mental note to get their information and find out who can handle them for me. Their days are numbered, because they will never see the outside of those prison walls again. Their deaths will be slow and painful. They’ll pay for every second of agony they put her through. But one more question remains…
“Did the wife know?” I ask gently, rubbing her arm soothingly.
“I think so, but I can’t prove it,” she finally admits. “I think she was happy to bury her head in the sand, and as long as he didn’t touch their kids, she let it slide. But the daughters had an idea. They never had friends over, and they stayed away from their brothers as much as possible. I think he planned to teach each of his sons the same behavior, but Corey, being the oldest, got all of it from the get go.”
“How long before you were able to get out?”
“After it started, it took me a month before I finally got away. They were so sure that I would never escape that they never even bothered to wear condoms or try to hide any evidence of what they did. They always drugged me so that I was awake enough to know what was going on, but unable to fight back. That last night, they either were too cocky or not paying attention, because they didn’t give me enough. They went back to their rooms afterward, and when I heard Clay snoring, and Corey talking on his video game, I knew it was my only chance. I got out, ran to a neighbor’s and called 911. I deliberately picked a neighbor that didn’t go to their church, because everyone thought the family was so perfect and righteous, they wouldn’t have believed me; they would have called them or took me back. Clay and Corey were both arrested within hours after they did the rape kit at the hospital. The rest of the kids were removed from the house, yanked right out of their beds.”
More hot tears soak my neck. It breaks my heart even more and I hug her tighter, nuzzling at the top of her head to give some sort of comfort, small as it may be. “You were so fucking strong. So fucking brave, colombina ,” I murmur. “You had the courage that no one else did.”
“I had to face them in court,” she whispers. “It was awful. Especially when their attorney tried to discredit me, saying that I was trying to seduce them, and that I was accusing them of a crime that they didn’t commit. The only thing they could be guilty of was giving in to my devilish temptation.” She gives a hollow laugh. “The Prosecutor ripped that to shreds, but it was enough to have some of the jurors and the judge looking at me sideways for awhile. At least until they saw the rest of the evidence; it was pretty hard to discredit the damage they did and the DNA they left behind. But they tried really hard to say I was the one in the wrong. Not the other girls, though. No, they were mistaken, just acting out, or agreed to sleep with Corey which can’t be used against him. But not me. I was a troubled girl that no one wanted, and they opened their home up to me, just like they did for so many other kids, but I was the only one that ever caused any trouble. The majority of the town agreed, and any sympathy I’d gotten was gone. Even in the group home.”
“And they still blame you?” I ask carefully. “That’s what you meant when you said you were accused of breaking up another marriage by sleeping with the father and son.”
“Yeah, they do, even after all these years. It doesn’t matter that the jury found them both guilty — a jury made up of completely unbiased strangers from the city, because there was no way of getting a fair trial if any of the townspeople were on it. They see me as the girl who broke up a family. I shattered their perfect illusion of a Church leader being above reproach, incapable of any kind of mortal sin. And they’ve been trying to get rid of me for years.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” I can’t comprehend why she’s stayed this long, and put herself through that kind of pain for so many years. Or how she’s managed to flourish as much as she has.
“I didn’t have the money, and there’s no easy way to get anywhere. The town doesn’t have a bus station. I could have walked, sure, but with little food or water, and no real experience surviving the kind of heat we get there, I didn’t even bother. I stayed in the group home and tried to keep out of the way and out of sight as much as possible. When I turned eighteen, I got accepted into the local beauty school. I thought it would be my new start, but it was much the same. No one wanted to work with me, not even the instructors, so I had to learn on my own. They couldn’t kick me out because I got tuition assistance from the government, and part of the rules for them to get the money was that I had to complete the course. But honestly, I’ve been thinking about leaving for awhile. I’ve been living in a hotel because no one will rent me an apartment, so I’ve been saving a bit there, but when you’re running your own business and people only come in to spew hate at you, money gets pretty tight.”
I hate that fucking town. How can any of them dare to treat someone this way? To treat a child that way? Because she was a child. She was relying on adults to protect her, to believe her, and every fucking one of them failed. And then to hold it against her, even now? It’s been a fucking decade.
“You’ve been living in a hotel since you turned eighteen?”
She sighs heavily. “Mostly. No one really wanted to hire me, but eventually one of the diners in town got desperate for staff. They didn’t have any other options, and I got the job. I worked so hard, and I never allowed myself to be late or miss a shift. I even picked up extras when I wasn’t in school. I started making enough money to get a hotel room, and that’s where I stayed. There have been a few times I’ve had to sleep in a tent, when the hotel kicked me out so they could have the room for tourists, but once the summer tourist season was done, they let me rent the room again. And that’s been pretty much it, until I finally graduated and started apprenticing at one of the salons in town.”
“Did they treat you like shit there?”
“Sometimes,” she shrugs. “For the most part they ignored me or only allowed me to do the bare minimum. Eventually they let me start to help when they got swamped, and when they realized I was actually decently talented and a few people asked for me to do their hair certain ways, they let me do more. They still took all the money and never allowed me to have tips, but it was something. I grew a thick skin and didn’t let them bother me. Because if they knew they were getting to me, there’d have been no limits. It served me well, because when I opened my own salon and people started to come to see me, a lot of them told me they’d be surprised if I could do anything right. Many tried to find problems, and when they didn’t, they’d lose their minds and start shit with me.” She laughs softly. “I’ve been so nervous to come here, but now, saying all of this out loud, it’s a relief not to have to wake up and deal with that anymore, day after day.”
“Who was the man that was grabbing you when I came in?”
“That would be Ezra Boyd, Clay’s half brother. Their father wasn’t faithful throughout his marriage, and being the mayor of the town for a long time, he got away with it. Most turned a blind eye. He cheated on Clay’s mother and then eventually left them for Ezra’s mother. Ezra is about ten years younger than Clay, and he grew up rich and spoiled. While Clay may have taken the church path, the two of them are far too much alike.”
“Did he try anything with you?” I’m wishing I killed the fucker in her salon.
“He mostly saw me as someone to toy with. He’d flirt and try to see if I’d give in and go out with him, but every time I say no, he gets more and more angry. He doesn’t like being rejected, especially by someone he considers so beneath him. He thinks I should be trying to stay on his good side, considering who his father is and what I ‘did’ to his brother and nephew.”
“Has he ever grabbed you that way before?”
“Once, but it wasn’t anything like that. He tried to stop me from leaving a bar, but I wrenched away from him and another girl shoved me, thinking that I was trying to get in her way to get to him. He blames me for what happened to Clay and Corey, and part of the reason he keeps pestering me is to see just how far I’ll go before I break. He wants me to know I’m never far off his radar.”
Yeah, I’m going to enjoy making the son of a bitch pay. The first thing I’ll do is cut off every finger that ever touched her skin.
“You’ll never have to deal with him ever again,” I promise her.
“I hope you’re right,” she says sleepily. She’s starting to drift off, and soon enough she’ll be asleep. I briefly contemplate putting her to bed and finding somewhere else to sleep, but I dismiss the thought. I want to be close in case she has any nightmares. Still, as much as I want to hold her through the night, I’ll respect her wish to have the bed to herself. “Thank you, Lazaro,” she whispers. “You’re a good man. I’m sorry I can’t be what you want. If I could be that way for anyone, I wish it was you.” She burrows her face into my neck, wraps her arms around me, and drifts off.
If she wasn’t so tired and worn out, I know this would be happening very differently, but I’m not quite ready to let go of her yet. I sit and hold her for a little while longer, making sure she’s still in a deep sleep, just breathing her in as I replay everything she said over and over in my mind.
The problem is, I want her more than ever. Maybe that makes me an absolute bastard, but I don’t give a fuck. I want to take all of her pain away and replace it with good memories. I want her to know that she will never be treated horribly or disrespected again.
I meant what I said. Amara Stanley is going to be my everything, I just need to be patient. That, however, is easier said than done.