Chapter 10 Alejandro
TEN
Alejandro
I couldn’t stop thinking about Levi’s hand on me.
His breath on my throat. The way he’d dragged me into his apartment as if he didn’t want any space between us.
The way he’d taken everything I gave him and wanted more.
It hit me hard and wrong—it had been a lifetime since I wanted anyone.
I never hooked up, never had a sex life, never had a partner, never wanted one.
And now one cop—a fucking cop—and I was crossing lines and wanting more?
Wanting what I’d spent my whole life cutting out of myself. Wanting something was dangerous.
I shut my eyes for a beat and exhaled, waiting for regret and confusion, but instead I had only want. I should regret even going there. I knew that. I understood the shape of regret, the idea of it, the way people were supposed to feel it. It wasn’t something I’d ever had the luxury of feeling.
So why did I feel more ashamed than regretful? I’d been in the apartment of a detective who’d already tried to put a gun to my face, which was the kind of mistake that could get someone killed.
Why was I ashamed? It wasn’t tied to guilt or conscience or the weight of what I’d done with Levi. Shame was a reflex, not a feeling—my body remembering lessons I should’ve outgrown, reacting to a man I shouldn’t want, a man who could end me if he ever figured out what I really was.
“I’m not ashamed. I took what I wanted. It’s okay.”
I winced—fuck, was I becoming someone who used affirmations? Whispering shit to myself as if it made a difference? Fuck that bullshit.
But the worst part was the silence that followed—the kind that left too much room in my head. Thoughts I didn’t want crept in. Wanting Levi wasn’t an itch or a distraction; it felt like something crawling under my skin, settling in my blood. A pull I didn’t choose. A pull I didn’t trust.
Men like me didn’t get what they wanted.
Want got you killed, or used, or twisted into someone else’s weapon.
Wanting to keep my momma alive had made me a torturer; wanting to save my sister had made me a mass freaking murderer.
And yet here I was, sitting on the edge of my bed like some idiot with a crush, pretending I hadn’t let a cop put his hands on me, pretending it hadn’t been the best and worst mistake I’d made in years.
My head wasn’t where it needed to be.
I gave up on working in my office, went and took a shower, and the hot water hit me like a punch. I braced both hands on the tiles, head down, steam curling around me. I didn’t mean to touch myself—didn’t plan it—but the second the spray hit my chest, I needed to come.
Perfunctory. Like a typical morning.
But then I pictured Levi, his hands on me.
“No,” I said, but who was I kidding? He replaced the normal images I summoned to get off, and my grip tightened before I could stop it.
Slow, then faster, rougher, chasing the burn instead of the pleasure, because fuck if I was going to enjoy this.
I wanted it to hurt because then it might make sense.
My forehead pressed to the tile, breath coming hard.
I hated how fast my body reacted, how easy it was to tip over the edge when I remembered the sounds he made in my ear.
It didn’t take long. I came with anger and need tangled so tight I couldn’t separate them. The water washed the evidence away.
Except my pulse stayed wrong.
Once and done. Get him out of my system and prove to myself that sex with him was a waste of my time, even if that felt like lying through my teeth.
If it was meaningless, why was he still under my skin?
Why was my body still wired tight? Why did it feel as if I’d opened a door I couldn’t close again?
It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. It wasn’t supposed to be anything.
And yet every thought I had kept sliding back to Levi, as though my mind didn’t care what the rules were anymore.
I shut off the water, dressed, holstered my knife, and pocketed the hypodermic after checking that the reserve was full. I wouldn’t attach it to my wrist until I left the house and my hands were steadier, but for now, it was there and ready.
I headed back to my office. Time to stop thinking about Levi. Time to move money and check in on safe houses.
“Uncle Alli?”
I glanced up from my desk to find Molly hovering by the door, biting her lip as if she’d been standing there for a while.
“Hey, Mols, is everything okay?” My default was to worry. “Is it Bradley again?”
She shook her head and slipped inside, closed the door behind her, and leaned against it, shoulders hunched.
The way she glanced around before speaking told me this wasn’t a casual drop-in—it was one of those moments where she’d already decided I’d be the one to fix whatever it was and all of this before breakfast. I nudged the mouse to one side and waited, because with Molly, I didn’t push—she needed space to find the words, and I let her have it.
“I never said before…” she began and then straightened. “I thought it was nothing, but then I saw him again.”
“Who?”
“There was this man at Walmart two weeks back, I saw him in the store and then out in the parking lot, and I didn’t like the look of him, and then I saw him again when we went to Costco yesterday,” she began.
“Someone who lives around here, maybe?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t fit.”
“Tell me more.”
“It was the way he was staring at Mom. And he had all this scarring on his face and neck.”
“Like acne?”
“No, like Freddy Krueger but not all over, just on one side.” She paused.
“It might be nothing, but he wasn’t looking at Mom as if he wanted to kiss her, but as if he wanted to lick her.
” She shuddered, and her description of someone licking my sister made me shudder as well.
“I didn’t like it. So, I thought you should know. ”
“What do you have on him?”
Shoulders back, she made her report. “Six-foot, beard, didn’t get a good look at his eyes, never heard him talk. But, I have a photo.”
“Send it over and I’ll—”
“Done,” she said, my family phone vibrating with its arrival before I could even finish the thought.
A blurry shot came through; the grainy picture, next to a display of dog food in a well-lit store, showed a man in jeans.
Jacket. Baseball cap pulled low. Too old to be one of the idiots her twin, Bradley, had been hanging around, gray in his beard.
My spine tingled, the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
There was something about the way he held himself, how he was skulking, and it made me pause.
My instincts had kept me alive this long—telling me when to duck, when to run, when to disappear.
They hummed now, quiet but insistently, the same warning that always came before something went wrong as I traced corners of the photo for details that didn’t fit.
“Did I do okay?” she asked.
“You did amazing, Mols,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’ve got it covered.” I reached into my drawer and tossed her the tiny GoPro from my supply. “Maybe clip this on you.”
She caught it easily, clipped it to her shirt, and grinned at me. “Okay.”
“And, Mols?”
“Yep?”
“Take your panic button with you everywhere, yeah?” Both kids had one, as did Marisol, despite Bradley whining and Marisol seeming to think danger had been left behind.
“Let me worry about danger,” was all I’d said to her.
I could map my family’s routines blindfolded and knew enough to keep them safe, and that was the point.
Maybe that didn’t leave room for loving them the way I should, but the loving part of me had burned out a long time ago.
I’d die for all of them, and that was my version of love.
Not words or touch—just keeping them safe.
My chest tightened, a pull that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with guilt.
I rubbed at it, trying to ease the ache, head throbbing the way it did when I thought too much about what I’d turned her into.
The rational side of me understood that my niece shouldn’t be bringing me intel.
She should be talking about friends, homework, and makeup, or whatever fourteen-year-old girls want—not learning how to spot a tail or take a photo without being seen.
That was on me. I’d made them all that way.
Still, when I looked at that photo, fear shouted louder than guilt—because my instincts said something was wrong, and they’d never lied to me.
“Also, Mom says to tell you breakfast will be ready in thirty.”
“I have a call to make, then I’ll be out.”
She headed out, and I caught her smile—she loved observation and what she called spy stuff, and that would stand her in good stead when she was away from my protection.
One day, she’d be out there alone, and I’d tried my hardest to make sure she wasn’t as vulnerable as other teenage girls.
She knew self-defense and how to watch for the bad people of this world.
She would have a long and happy life because I’d taught her what to be wary of.
After escaping hell and starting a new life in the States, I would do anything to keep them safe. If this stranger was perving on my sister, then he was gone and warned off. Dealt with—I’d get Novak on that.
I sent the photo, for what it was worth, to a hacker who’d done some small things for me, and knew he’d laugh me out of the room, but still, it was something to get it off my desk and onto someone else’s to see what they could track down.
Next was the fact that Novak still couldn’t find Alex Dryden-Wells to discuss the small matter of organ trafficking and profiting from my clients.
Rufus might well have given us the name under torture.
Still, Dr. Dryden-Wells was suspiciously absent from the hospital, despite my digging deep and Novak’s trawling of all known associations.
I put out a dark web contract for information, then finished my coffee and stretched.
Breakfast.