Chapter 12 Alejandro
TWELVE
Alejandro
I’d been sent a shaky ten-second video and a location pin.
No explanation. Didn’t need one. I’d already taken twenty grand up front for a situation at a private party that had apparently gotten out of control.
By the time I got there a little after one a.m., the guards on the gates to a huge McMansion had them open—both of them in matching black suits, the kind tailored so precisely you could practically see the price tag in the stitching.
Valet lanterns lit the driveway like a runway, and the distant thump of bass vibrated through manicured hedges.
A security guard waved me through without meeting my eyes, ushering me across the gravel lot toward what passed for their “bar”—a converted wine-tasting hall with a Baccarat chandelier, an island covered in bottles of liquor, velvet sofas shoved against the walls, and a baying crowd of drunk idiots piled around designer bar stools.
The whole place reeked of excess—champagne puddles on marble floors, designer heels abandoned under tables, a chandelier swaying as if someone had used it for leverage.
Someone’s discarded sequin jacket glittered from a puddle of spilled drink.
This was wealth that considered consequences as optional.
I assessed the situation, already checking for exits, just in case.
“Through there.” Someone pointed, and I headed that way.
A big bastard, the kind of over-muscled trust fund heir who only lifted weights and lawyers, his thousand-pound designer shirt torn open, had a woman pinned by the face to a pool table, his hand spread over her jaw as he shouted at her.
She kept trying to twist away, but she was half his size, and he had her locked down, using her like a prop for his temper.
The party guests hooted like assholes—diamond watches flashing under the lights, champagne flutes sloshing over their wrists—as they placed casual bets on when she’d bite him again, like it was some perverse after-dinner entertainment.
Again? A bite? Was I here for a bite? Not exactly life-threatening. Jesus.
“Separate them!” I snapped at the nearest trust fund asshole. He stared at me as if I’d asked him to reach into a running engine with bare hands—as if doing anything useful might cost him a few fingers. “Fuck it!”
I grabbed the collar of the man holding the woman down and yanked him back. “Twenty extra if you don’t let go now!” I shouted right in his ear.
“Fucking whore bit my fucking cock!” the man yelled.
The woman sobbed.
I could see cuts on her back and on her bare ass, blood. I yanked him again.
“You wanna make it fifty?” I snarled.
He finally loosened his grip enough so I could reach between them and tear him off her.
I clocked two other women in short dresses, heels—clearly brought in as party favors and currently crying in the corner.
I made the connection fast and gestured for one to come over.
She hesitated, then lifted her chin as if she was trying to look braver than she felt and edged toward me.
I saw the fear in her eyes. Small. Brunette.
Dark-eyed. Blood on her cheek, haunted eyes filled with regret.
Too close to what my sister had looked like when we’d run. It hit harder than it should’ve.
“You,” I said. “Take her, your friend, and whoever else needs to get out of here, and go to my SUV outside. It’s the only one out there. Wait there. Do not fucking move. Got it?”
“She’s hurt,” the friend said. “We don’t have any money but—”
“I’ll deal with that later,” I snapped, and the women scattered.
No one stopped them. No one even flinched.
The party guests watched, and a couple of them laughed.
One raised his glass in a lazy salute, as if the whole thing was entertainment.
Not a single one of them lifted a hand to help the girls or their friend.
Men surrounding something on the ground, laughing, boots kicking up dust, the kind of noise that fills your ears until you can’t hear yourself think.
My momma is on the ground, broken in the middle of it all.
Dead. Eyes open. Blood everywhere. Their shadows falling over her as if she weren’t even human.
Raven on Lucia. Using her—the way men like him always used anything they thought they owned. His hand fisted in her hair, her face turned away, blood streaking her thigh. She was barely conscious, limp under him.
Men shouting, “My turn next!” Drunken voices overlapping, fighting to be first.
Raven snarling over his shoulder, “Fuck off—she’s mine!” while she cried soundlessly.
Me, fourteen, stepping in front of them with nothing but rage and a shaking knife.
Raven finishing, and throwing Lucia to the dirt like trash, her body hitting the ground so hard I felt it in my teeth.
Me hauling her up anyway, although I was sure we’d both die for it.
They laughed; they told me to fix her. That she was no good if she was bleeding all over them. My sister’s dark hair was matted with blood, her face cut, but she wasn’t crying.
My vision thinned at the edges—as if the room I was in now was collapsing into a single point I couldn’t quite focus on.
The noise from the bar warped, distant, and my hands moved, but they felt a step behind my thoughts, detached, automatic.
The smell of blood, and abruptly it wasn’t the private event suite anymore—it was dust, heat, screams.
For a few seconds, I wasn’t a grown man.
I was a teenager, barefoot, shaking, covered in my sister’s blood, staring down at my momma’s lifeless body, and the world around me split down the center, present bleeding into past until I had to blink hard to remember where I was.
My heart hammered against my ribs in a stuttering pattern, too slow, too fast, then nothing at all.
I forced myself to breathe. One breath. Then another. Pulled myself back into the now by sheer will, by the weight of the job, by knowing the women outside needed me sharp. Not drifting. Not drowning.
The dissociation snapped like a rubber band, leaving pain behind it, a headache blooming hard at the base of my skull. I wiped a hand over my face and focused on the man in front of me, on the blood, him screaming and cursing, the mess I could control—not the one I couldn’t change.
“Don’t let that bitch fucking leave,” he shouted, and then he twisted toward me, wild-eyed, grabbing his crotch with one hand, nearly tripping on pants around his knees.
“Fucking paid the whore and she tore my cock!” he snarled, doubling over as if it was somehow her fault he’d been using her as a useful hole and a punching bag.
Blood smeared his knuckles, and he kept cursing, spit flying, trying to lunge past me to get to her again.
I stepped into his space. “Back off,” I told him.
He was crazed, though, and swung at me. I shoved him into a table.
He lunged again, but this time I caught the whole ugly picture—blood soaking the front of his powder blue pants, torn skin, the unmistakable shape of a human bite.
The woman had sunk her teeth into him hard enough to leave a full imprint, and he was too drunk and furious to register anything except pain and humiliation.
“She fucking tore me up!” he bellowed, trying to shove his bloody crotch in my face. I didn’t need a closer look. I’d treated enough bite wounds to know she’d gone for the best target she had.
Good for her.
“Keep coming at me,” I warned, “and I’ll finish what she started.”
“Calm the fuck down, Briggs!” someone else shouted, a man, a big presence coming from a door to the left of the private event suite. The crowd parted for him without a sound, every guest finding the floor really interesting.
“Jeremy Winter,” the new arrival said. “This is my event. I trust you got your money, doctor.”
I tipped my chin. “I want another twenty for having to handle this diseased cock.” I took out my phone and sent a second request, and he chuckled as he tapped his screen without flinching.
Meanwhile, the cock-chewed asshole was whining. “She fucking mutilated me, Winter!” He took a step toward the host, tripping over his pants, and hit the floor, panting, glaring, too loaded to notice he was bleeding all over himself.
“Jesus, Briggs!” Winter muttered, then he faced the crowd. “Show’s over!”
Everyone scattered, the room emptying until it was a closed-door space, with only me, Winter, and the shit stain with a bleeding cock left. I hauled the latter up by the collar, slammed him into the pool table so he was lying down.
“He’s all yours,” Winter said. He didn’t wait for a reply.
Just gave the Briggs guy a disgusted once-over, shook his head as though he couldn’t believe his guest had his bleeding cock out on the pool table.
“Fucking loser.” And then it was me, the patient, and the wreck Briggs had made of his night.
He was still trying to bare his teeth through the pain, like a rabid dog that didn’t understand its injuries, and I pressed my thumb under his jaw, forcing his head up.
Then I leaned in close enough that he could see I wasn’t bluffing, my scalpel out and close to his right eye.
“Stop, Fucking. Moving. Or the eye goes. Understand?”
He whimpered.
Good.
I yanked up his stained T-shirt, revealing a belly that hung low, to inspect the damage—deep bruising, torn skin, blood, and swelling that was probably going to ruin his week. Then I saw more: scratches down his hips from her nails, defensive. Nothing consensual about any of it.
I disinfected him with alcohol pads and a wipe that was absolutely not meant for the groin, fixing the damage as best I could, given the circumstances—fast, rough, and efficient.
He yelped and cursed, high and desperate, but a fancy sound system playing rap drowned most of it.
“You’re being rough,” he wheezed, sounding more like a small boy with a school nurse than a hard-edged rich kid playing at being dangerous.