Your Hate, My Claim (The Kozlov Bodyguards #3)

Prologue

F oster care sucks. My life sucks. All because of two people who decided to create a life with zero intention of being around to care for it.

It's me. You wanna know who my parents are, or should I say were? I would like to know too, as I have no fucking idea about them. They died when I was two years old. Murder/suicide at the hands of my father. The bastard didn’t even have the decency to include me in his death pact.

Instead I was left starving, festering in my own shit, until the neighbors could no longer ignore my cries.

This is the only information I have from my social worker as I don’t remember anything.

I can’t even remember what they looked like.

All I know is that they had a volatile relationship and would frequently leave me with whoever was sober enough to take care of me.

I would say good riddance, but I’m the one living with their consequences, I’m the one who has been moved around into countless foster homes with a never-ending line of abusive and nasty carers.

I realized early on that the system does not give a flying fuck about kids like me and who they place us with.

We’re a number in the system. A drain on resources that they want tucked away.

Out of sight, out of mind. Fuck ‘em. I’m on count down until I turn eighteen, and when that clock strikes midnight, I’m outta here.

“Simon!” a voice whisper-shouts at my bedroom door and I look up. I was lost in my thoughts and didn’t notice him. Leo.

“Yeah?” I say, rubbing my fingers over my eyes to wake me up from this semiconscious state I was in.

“Are you okay? I called your name like four times.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking. What’s up?” I say as I swing my legs over the side of my bed and face him where he stands at my bedroom door, against the rotting doorframe. Reminiscent of my own rotting brain living in this shitty house.

Leo is one of the other two boys that lives here with me in foster care.

Leo is the same age as me, and Donny is the eldest, who is about to turn eighteen.

He never talks to us. I think he just wants to get out of here like the rest of us.

But Leo is the only reason I’m sane. He’s also the person that made me discover that I’m bi-sexual.

Or gay. I’m not sure which. It’s a work in progress.

We’ve kissed a few times, when we can manage to find a time and place to be on our own, which, with a controlling foster parent like Mr. Morgan, is nearly impossible.

He has to have his nose in everyone’s business and he’s a cruel fucker.

“That’s okay. Wanna meet in the shed? He’s finally passed out in front of the TV downstairs.

I reckon we could have half an hour together,” Leo says with his sexy crooked grin.

He has chin-length black hair and dazzling crystal blue eyes with a dimple in his right cheek that would cause any human to give in to his demands.

“Meet you there in five,” I say as excitement takes over.

He smiles and quickly scuttles away as I stand and check myself in my cracked mirror that's resting on an old dresser under the window in my room. I peek outside and see Leo creep into the shed out back. After one last check of myself in the mirror, I quietly make my way downstairs and out of the house through the back door in the kitchen. Mr. Morgan is fast asleep in his armchair in the living room. His crazy witch wife, Mrs. Morgan, is out with her friends as usual. She’s never home.

But if I was married to that loser, I wouldn’t be home either.

Putting on my ratty old trainers, I rush outside and into the shed, where Leo stands waiting for me, with only the moonlight lighting him up from the small window. I feel more nervous this time. The more we kiss, the more I feel connected to him, and it scares me as much as it thrills me.

“Come here,” he whispers, holding his hand out to me.

Then we just fall into a passionate kiss.

His arms engulf me in a tight hug as we enjoy the softness of each other's mouths. My hands grip onto the back of his hoodie, trying to ground myself and enjoy the moment. But like everything else in my pitiful excuse of a life, it gets ruined. In the worst way, which will define my life in the future. Turning me into a hardened asshole who needs to protect himself. All because of the dickhead who has just swung the shed door open. Mr. Fucking. Morgan. Oh how I wish I was a little bigger and older, so I could beat his snarly face until it is mush under my knuckles. To enjoy watching him die and be covered in his blood. But I’m not, I’m just a kid who needs to survive.

The light of his flashlight illuminates us and Leo is still standing here, holding me like we haven’t been caught.

“You fucking faggots,” he snarls, but I don’t react or even flinch.

With the hits I've received from this asshole over the many years here, I’ve learned that flinching and showing fear makes it worse.

Leo has not picked up on that, as he pushes me away and falls back against the wall.

He’s terrified, shaking like one of those little snappy dogs that you would see on those funny home video shows that people watched when we were little.

Mr. Morgan yanks me by the shirt, like I’m a piece of filth that needs scraping off the floor to be discarded in the trash. He pushes his face right into mine, wrinkly eyes crazed, growling like a rottweiler off its leash.

“You think you’re a man now? You think this house is gonna raise queers? That you can do this shit under my roof?”

He wasn’t looking for silence, or even an answer.

He wants compliance and fear. But I just stare back at him.

Burying my feelings and anger down as far as I can, showing as much indifference as possible so that he’ll back the fuck off.

Shock . He doesn’t. A hard backhand smashes across my face, throbbing intensely across my cheek, but he’s not done, he follows it up with a punch that he aims into my gut, which has me dropping to the floor like a sack of rotten potatoes, clutching at anything to try and catch my breath.

Before I can get ahold of myself, I see, from the corner of my eye, Mr. Morgan walk over to a cowering Leo against the wall, where he aims several hard punches at his face.

Leo’s cries break me. Kill me with anger, pissed at myself for not being able to protect him, and ashamed at myself for being too scared to physically try to defend myself, because I know I’m not strong enough.

As soon as I gather myself to be able to get to my feet, Mr. Morgan is already back at the door.

“One more time I catch you both, I’ll make sure you’re put somewhere worse than here. I have friends that could make your life beyond a living hell. Somewhere nobody asks questions. You hear me?”

“Yes,” Leo cries, curled up on the floor, and I can’t take my eyes off him. But he won’t look at me.

“I asked you a question, boy.”

Knowing that comment is for me, I turn to face the man I dream of killing. Hurting in every way possible.

“Yes, sir,” I grit out.

“From now on, no doors are to be closed in your rooms or bathroom. Even when you’re taking a shit. You have no right to privacy anymore. I see you breathe the same air, you're gone. Now get out and go to your rooms.”

I do as I’m told and walk away to the house, away from Leo. I don’t look back. I didn’t dare.

Later that night, my cheek throbs and I feel the tenderness in my stomach where a bruise is forming, with the taste of Leo still on my lips. I don’t cry. I never do.

But in the room across from mine, Leo never looked at me or talked to me again.

That's when I promised myself to never allow that part of my life to show again. To keep that part of me shielded. Put away in a gilded cage where nobody could get to me, and I would never feel what it was like again to lose someone I came to rely on. To lose someone I loved.