Chapter 8
Eight
Shiloh
We stepped outside. Sebastian opened the passenger door for me as Nox climbed into the driver’s seat of his car.
The sound of a car door slamming had us each turning to look across the street.
A young man walked towards us from a newer model silver sedan, dressed neatly in a pair of chinos and a button-down.
I didn’t recognize him. Not that I made a habit of hanging around gang members other than my brother, but he definitely looked like he could be one of them.
“Do you know him?” Seb asked, taking a protective step closer to me.
“Ven, amorcito.”
My stomach sank, the food I just ate turning into rocks. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
“I’ve been worried sick. You shouldn’t be out. Come back to the house so you can get some rest.”
As he stopped right in front of me, I took a closer look at his pleading gaze. He had to be at least a few years older than me, somewhere near Seb and Javi’s age. His dark brown hair was neatly braided and secured into a small bun with the sides buzzed short.
“I know you’re hurting,” he reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear and I barely stopped myself from flinching.
“Shiloh?” Sebastian startled me from my stupor.
“Yeah, okay,” I answered the stranger who smiled at me so lovingly I almost believed he knew me. The sooner we left, the lower the chance of this guy thinking I’d told anyone anything.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“Adrian Castillo. And who are you?” The guy countered, not giving me a chance to reply. He rolled his shoulders back with a smile in some sort of smooth power move as he glanced between Nox and Sebastian.
Nox looked stunned, leaning out of the car as he flicked his gaze between me and whoever this guy was.
“No one,” I answered for him. Fuck! Please, just shut up, Seb! Please, just shut the fuck up and let me leave! “I was just helping a classmate from school with his math homework.”
The guy, Adrian, sucked his teeth and nodded, rocking back on his heels.
“Well, thanks for having her over. Vamos, amor,” he tipped his head towards the car, grabbing my backpack from my hands.
“I’ll…see you at school I guess,” Nox called out as he closed his car door and joined Sebastian’s watch party from the driveway.
My heart raced erratically, but that was a constant at this point, so I willingly climbed into the stranger’s car and buckled my seatbelt.
Fuck. I should’ve ended things at school. I should have fucking ended things myself!
It was inevitable that Carlos found me, I was lucky to have been left alone for as long as I had. I tried to force myself to calm down, to come to peace with the fact that this was the end for me.
The silence in the car was awkward, but I wasn’t about to break it. It was only when I noticed we were heading away from town that I spoke.
“This isn’t the way to my house.”
He chuckled softly, “I never said I was taking you to your house. I’m taking you to Carlos’s house.”
I dug my nails into my leggings and hoped to God I wasn’t showing this punk how afraid I was.
My lungs collapsed again with pain, and I grabbed my side.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking shitting fuck,” I hissed. “Shit on a fucking stick.”
“Let me guess. Broken rib?”
I seethed through my teeth glaring over at him. He smirked at my attempt at a death glare, seemingly unfazed by my inability to breathe.
“I know it hurts like a bitch, but you’ve gotta breathe or you’re gonna pass out.”
“I know that, fuckface,” I whined with what little oxygen I was allowing myself to inhale.
“I guess it was that mouth you’ve got on you that got you into trouble in the first place, huh?” He chuckled and shook his head.
After several more minutes of silence while I struggled to get the balls to finally take a full breath I asked, “Why are you acting like you don’t already know?”
“Because I don’t know exactly what happened. Although, I can take a pretty good guess. You know, you’re pretty odd. Who the hell decides to sleep in a junkyard when they’ve got a bed at home?”
“What?” My heart skipped a beat. “You’ve been stalking me? You fucking pervert.”
“Cálmate tus nalgas. The school doesn’t have security cameras in the locker rooms. I tracked you to that gas station, and then watched you wander around the drugstore.
I felt kind of bad when they kicked you out.
You looked like you needed some pharmaceuticals.
Uh…then you were in that junkyard and spent time at the shopping center.
And then you went to school today,” he concluded with a nonchalant shrug.
Fuck, how did I not realize I was being followed? Please, God, don’t let Carlos think Seb or Nox and his family are involved. Let them stay safe.
“Honestly, really fucking boring. What seventeen-year-old doesn’t have at least one social media account?”
“Wait, what?”
Adrian eyed me with confusion. “What do you mean ‘what’? You do have one?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t. But how the hell do you know that?”
“It’s kind of my job,” he stated plainly.
“Your job? You’re a professional stalker?”
Adrian chuckled and shook his head. “Well…I mean, sort of? I’m a sabueso.”
“You’re a cop?” I asked warily.
“No,” he shook his head. “I do the dirty cyber work for Los Siete. Kinda like a private investigator, but I don’t usually have to do anything in person.
Just digitally. Hacking when I need to, finding information or planting information, that kind of thing.
Well, except today when Carlos told me to bring you to the house. ”
I crackled my knuckles nervously as I watched the houses thin and give way to dark, empty farmland. Fuck, I was right. No fucking wonder Javier never let me get a phone.
“So, you weren’t actually there watching me?”
“Nah. All from the comfort of my home office,” he said with a cheeky smile.
Great. I’m never going to fucking escape this hellhole. They’ll be able to find me anywhere.
“It was pretty funny watching that guy at the gas station freak out when you showed up covered in blood. How the hell did you manage to get so fucking…messy? What’d you do, take a bath in blood? It’s not like you stabbed him in the aorta.”
“Te quie—”
The gunshot rang in my ears, and I focused on the clock on the dashboard. Seventy-two hours. Nearly seventy-two hours without him. My chest ached, and it wasn’t from my injuries.
“Aren’t you a sabueso?” I muttered bitterly. “Investigate and maybe you’ll find out.”
We turned down a road with spotlights coming from a fence that bordered one side of the street, and I tried to shake off the growing pit of nausea swirling in my gut.
Adrian pulled to a stop at a large, regal gate where a security guard with a gun strapped to his chest motioned for him to roll down his windows.
“He’s expecting us,” Adrian said with a head nod, like he was familiar with the guard.
The man’s gaze lingered on me before nodding and leaning back to speak into his shoulder.
The gates groaned as they opened, and we continued down a paved road lit by small lamp posts on either side of the long tree-lined driveway.
We pulled into a circular drive in front of a lavish ranch house, that even in the dark had my mouth open in awe.
The ranch house, or mansion, was a far cry from what I had imagined a street gang leader or a small city mayor in south Texas to be living in.
It seemed ludicrous that a man with this much money would be slumming it as a mayor, who despite the title didn’t actually make much money. But then again, greedy people wanted more than just money, they wanted power too.
“Is he going to kill me?” I asked quickly before Adrian exited the car.
He paused, turning to face me for a brief moment. “No. If he wanted you dead, Shiloh, he’d have killed you when he killed your brother.”
I tried to release some of the tension in my body, but it was fruitless. I was still freaking-the-fuck-out over what Carlos wanted with me, if it wasn’t to kill me.
I followed Adrian out of the car. The front door was opened for us by yet another man dressed in all black, although this one was wearing the signature Los Siete look: a crisp suit. I was beginning to realize that Los Siete was nothing like the typical street gang I had pictured in my head.
He stopped me at the entrance.
“Arms out, feet apart,” he ordered.
Adrian nodded for me to listen. I rolled my eyes and glared at the man as he ran his hands along my body.
Nox’s baggy sweatshirt didn’t aid in his search, and he spent extra time patting around my breasts and waist. Which, unfortunately for me, made me look like a pussy when I whined as he prodded my likely broken rib.
He finally stepped away, and Adrian tugged me along by my sleeve.
I followed closely beside Adrian as he maneuvered his way with the familiarity of a frequent house guest. Although luxurious, each room we passed didn’t feel sterile.
There were signs of it being an actual home.
A kid’s backpack, some Halloween decorations, family photos, stuffed animals on one of the large chaise lounges.
We stopped outside a double door room just long enough for Adrian to knock before opening it. There was a fire going and the heat immediately sent goosebumps across my skin as I stepped inside.
Carlos was sitting behind a large wooden desk, deep green built-in bookshelves surrounding him on all sides.
There was a lounge in front of the fireplace to my right, but Carlos motioned for us to take a seat in the armchairs in front of him.
With the door shut behind us I was beginning to sweat, the warmth and dark colors suffocating.
I wondered if that was the atmosphere he was aiming for, or if he was just a cold-blooded monster who only liked to work in the dark.