Chapter Five
Xiomara
I t was bizarre knowing my boss–who I’d mentally called an hijo de puta many times–was picking me up for work.
I was grateful that he hadn’t mentioned anything to my mamá. If she would’ve known he fired me only to rehire me, she would’ve taken a belt to my back or glared at me in disappointment for the lies I spewed.
Still, the next day I dressed with more care than usual.
For some fucking reason.
Not like I was trying to impress that asshole.
But I was grateful for the second chance. So I took care pencilling in my brows and darkening my liner, lining and filling my lips red. I took a toothbrush to my edges, pressing and curling the hairs against my cheeks and forehead.
My hoops went in last before I admired myself in my mirror. My band shirt, a hand-me-down that was too big for my curvy frame, belonged to my brother. A tighter, white, long sleeved shirt went beneath that and tan pants with a black belt completed my ensemble. My converse were frayed and coming apart. They were one of the first gifts my papá had sent from the other side before he stopped calling altogether.
I would’ve tossed them out of pure spite if I hadn’t needed them so badly. Shoes in Mexico were expensive, and the ones that didn’t cost around thousands of pesos were made of cheap, ugly material.
The first thing I was going to do–if I survived until payday–was shoe shop.
My mamá was in the kitchen when I went downstairs, tying a checkered apron behind her waist.
“Buenos dias,” I greeted.
She was looking out the window. “Who is that in front of our house? Is that your boss?”
My heart pounded and I snapped my gaze outside. Sure enough, Ink was there, climbing off his bike. I hadn’t heard him arrive. There was a truck there too, and a man hopped out and went to the back, pulling things out of the bed of the vehicle.
I went to open the door before they could knock.
“You’re early.” The words felt like an accusation on my lips, and I regretted the tone immediately.
I shouldn’t piss him off when I knew how volatile his moods were.
But he didn’t mention it. Just nodded his head.
“I brought a prospect.”
“Okay?”
We stared at one another for a tense moment. I wasn’t sure why he brought a prospect, and I should’ve asked, yet I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Ink’s.
Something felt… different since he hired me back. It was only a few moments in which we’d interacted, and yet something phenomenal had shifted between the two of us. Maybe it was his own guilt driving him. He wasn’t kinder, but he hadn’t actively growled at me when he came over yesterday. And now, there was something softer around the edges of his eyes. Not too soft, of course, and he was still an asshole.
The longer we stared, the more my heart began beating faster and faster until I couldn’t stand the anxiety.
But still, I refused to look away.
It wasn’t until a man shuffled up behind him. “Where do you want me, Ink?”
Ink spoke first. “Can we come inside?”
I should have said no. No need to expose my mamá to them any more than need be. No need to dawdle either.
But I found myself moving aside and letting them through.
I went after them, awkward in my own home, as the prospect stopped in the living room. For the first time, I noticed he carried with him bags from the paint store.
“Um…what is that for?”
“The prospect is going to paint your walls.”
I blinked at Ink.
What the fuck?
Just then my ma came in, fussing with her hair in front of company, but pursing her lips in displeasure.
“Buenos dias,” she greeted, though she looked like she’d sucked on a lemon.
“Buenos dias, senora,” Ink greeted politely, moving to take her hand and press a kiss to her cheek. The prospect did the same.
It was very surreal.
“What’s all this?” my ma asked, staring with mistrust at the bags on the floor and the men in her living room.
“We came to fix the walls,” Ink declared.
He didn’t ask permission, either. He just… commanded, and he commanded the room with his very essence.
My ma started to bristle.
“Then they’ll be repainted. The prospects will finish in about a week, sooner if they can.”
“They?”
He looked at me, gaze piercing. “We have several prospects.”
Okay?
The prospect in question began pulling the supplies out of the bag, a small tin can of that special varnish to kill the mold on the walls and the special brush and face mask.
“Hold on,” my ma demanded. “How much is this going to cost?”
For real. One of those tins went for five hundred a piece. That was a week’s worth of groceries, if that. Half a week if we bought meat or chicken.
“No cost, senora. Xiomara is a great employee, and we like to give benefits like this to everyone at no cost to you.”
Jesus Christ.
This man didn’t lay on charm, but it came across that way regardless. My ma looked at me with furrowed brows.
Surely she thought I was fucking him.
Because I’d only been working for him for a damn week. Hardly enough to warrant this special treatment.
He probably felt really guilty about his fuck up. Why else would he be doing this?
But now my mamá probably thought I was a puta.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t accept this,” she stated firmly.
“All due respect, senora, I'm not asking.”
God, what a dick.
I stepped in between them before my ma could snap at him. I turned to her, grabbing her hand and lowering my voice to a whisper. “What’s the problem, mamita? Let them do this for us. Dios knows our walls need the upkeep.”
“Xiomara, we don’t accept charity.”
She’d rather suffer moldy walls and shitty lungs than accept anyone’s help. This woman’s pride… I understood. I really did.
But Ink was a massive piece of shit, and I figured I’d earned this at least. A signing bonus, so to speak.
“Come on, ma. It’s free.”
She stared at me, her disdain clear. “At what cost?”
I knew what she was implying. She really did think I was fucking him. Or at least a loose woman. She probably thought this was my one-way ticket to hell.
“Ma…”
She sighed in obvious resignation. “Fine. Let them do it. I have to get to work.”
She said her tense goodbyes and then left. Her disappointment in me was viscerally obvious. It choked through me, causing that familiar anxious sensation to rise. I glared at Ink as soon as the door closed behind her. “You realize she thinks I’m blowing you in exchange for this, right?”
The bastard didn’t even crack a smile.
The prospect, however, chortled. I finally looked at him, taking him in. He was an attractive dude, I supposed. A little young, maybe a few years older than me. His dark hair was gelled back and his cut didn’t have any fanfare except for the single word Prospect on it.
His own eyes raked over me and he bit his bottom lip, a leering appreciative gesture. His pierced brows kicked up.
“I mean, if you want to blow someone in exchange for this…”
Ink’s entire expression changed then. It darkened, a storm ready to erupt. He whirled so fast, his palm slapping against the prospect’s face and shoving him against the wall. There was a resounding crack as the guy’s head collided against cement.
“You don’t fucking talk to her,” Ink threatened. “You don’t fucking touch her. Don’t even fucking look at her, pendejo. You got that?”
The prospect’s reply was muffled against Ink’s palm. But the panic was evident in his wide eyes. Ink made a sound of disgust and shoved him away. “Get to fucking work. Your time frame just shortened thanks to that big fucking mouth.”
The prospect immediately moved, but he didn’t look at me again.
Ink did, the previous expression settling back to the unaffected bastard I’d come to know. Though there was something about the anger that had made a shiver slide down my spine and goosebumps to crawl along my arms.
A tiny, miniscule, puta-ish part of me wanted to know what it felt like to be handled so roughly. To be fucked with my face against a wall just like that.
Another part of me screamed to get a fucking grip.
“Ready?” he asked. As if he hadn’t just shoved a dude’s head against my wall.
“I can’t leave a stranger in my house.”
I wasn’t born yesterday. People liked to steal irrelevant shit, but stealing was stealing. I wouldn’t hear the end of it if someone pilfered one of my ma's recuerdos from a distant cousin’s baptism from ten years ago.
“If he touches anything or if anything turns up missing, a speck of paint gets on your belongings, I will personally shoot every fucking finger of his and make him eat the bullets afterwards.”
Why did I believe that?
A better question was, why the fuck did that turn me on so much?
“Okay,” I said, hating how absolutely breathless I sounded. “Then let’s go to work.”
There was something about getting on the back of Ink’s bike that felt even more intimate than his piercing stare. He waited patiently, quietly, while I stood awkwardly trying to decide if this was a good idea or not.
My body was already having a strange reaction to him. Adding the intimacy of riding a motorcycle together would make my concha cry out like la llorona wailing for children.
Damn.
There went my errant thoughts.
Eventually I did hop on before he could bark at me to do it. Throwing one leg over the bike, I tried to keep a respectful distance between our bodies. He still didn’t start the thing, however. He reached an arm behind him and yanked me close by the hem of my shirt until I was practically molded to his back.
“Hold on tight,” he ordered in the growling voice of his. The rumbling sound of it sent tiny bursts of delicious, dizzying energy through me. I wrapped my arms around his waist in a daze and then we were off.
My pueblo was a maze of potholes and cobblestone roads, but Ink dodged each one as if he knew them by heart. When he got on the main roads and sped up, I felt a thrill of adrenaline whirl through my insides. The urge to throw my hands up and let out a shout was immediate, but I only held tighter to him. There was something freeing about this, in every possible way.
When we finally pulled to a slow stop, my heart was racing and my wind-whipped hair ratted down my shoulders. But I didn’t care about that. Laughter filled me as I hopped off the bike.
“That was fun.”
Ink grunted, and the sound pulled me back to my current reality.
He was my boss.
This was my second chance.
I couldn’t act like a foolish child and risk losing this job. Again. Yes, he was painting my house, but that felt more like an apology on his end rather than anything else. I knew I had to work extra hard to keep him happy now, regardless of what happened.
I cleared my throat and started across the street towards the shop. It was open, and when we went inside, Fer was sitting behind the desk.
A wide smile broke out on her mouth as soon as she saw me. “You’re back!” she squealed. The genuine, excited greeting brought a small smile to my lips. “Good! I told him his shitty system needs an update. I knew it wasn’t your fault, amiga.”
My face heated at the reminder of said system.
“Let it go, Fer,” Ink growled.
“Never. You need to get a new one. Fix it. Something! Anything!” Fer waved her hands through the air, her dyed hair flinging with every exaggerated movement of her body. She was such a character.
But her words reminded me of something, and I wasn’t sure…
My mouth dropped open. “I–” I shut up again when Ink’s piercing gaze whipped in my direction. Why did he have to stare at me like that? It made me lose all my senses. My breath came out in shallow pants, and I had to force my lungs to expand at a normal fucking rate.
“What?” he asked.
I started to retreat into myself. I shouldn’t have opened my stupid mouth. This shop was his baby. It was something he’d been working to perfect for years, right down to the system. I’d only been here a week, but even I could tell the immense pride and work he put into this place. I was nobody to come in and start throwing out ideas. I was on thin ice as it was.
The fact that I knew how badly I needed to keep this job–for my ma and my siblings–diminished my confidence. Or maybe that was a culmination of losing jobs, one right after the other.
“You got an idea? Spit it out,” Ink declared, and his voice was tinged with annoyance. “Don’t keep quiet when you have something to say.”
Bastard. Just when I was starting to think he was decent. It seemed like my mind and vagina weren’t on the same wavelength.
“I was going to say that I know an easier way to help with the system. In a way where it won’t mess up and double book clients. The calendar app is so easy to get wrong because it relies on the cloud and internet. If your internet goes down, as I suspect was the case with this mix-up, then it’ll just happen again.”
Ink looked at me differently then; not with anger or annoyance, but with something else that shone in his eyes.
Something that looked a lot like acceptance.
It was too early to tell, but I think I’d just impressed my boss.
“Show me,” he said.
Days had passed since the incident , which was what I was officially calling what had happened when I got fired and rehired. I’d fallen back into my routine. Payday had come and gone, and I’d put a good amount down to go buy myself some new shoes next payday.
Ink no longer stared at me like I was a useless addition to the shop. Sure, we weren’t buddy-buddy, but he wasn’t buddy-buddy with anyone. At least he was nicer, smirking at me occasionally when he found it in his icy cold heart to do so. I hated how that smirk made me feel. Like I wanted to preen every time I seemed to do something right in his eyes. Like I was looking for that asshole to praise me.
Newsflash, I wasn’t…
Was I?
No, no era eso.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit it, but I found I was rather enjoying the job. Even if his presence still gave me anxiety.
I was wiping down the surfaces in the shop with a rag and disinfectant when the front door opened. The entire place smelt of lemon and it made my nose twitch.
I set aside the rag and turned at the desk. Every cell in my body froze.
Something cautious, born from years of being a woman in a machista country, rose up inside me. Where men catcalled you even if you wore pajamas and a messy bun. Where men leaned out car windows to slap your ass only to peel off in a cloud of smoke and raucous laughter while you were left to deal with the violation.
We were always told not to wear skirts, to not provoke. There were scarier things than monsters that roamed the shadows of the streets.
So I knew. Immediately I knew that the men before me were not nice people.
They weren’t Mexican, or even Latine for that matter, with their too light skin tone and burnt noses. I knew we came in all colors, the remnants of European blood flowing through our veins, but one could usually tell when someone wasn’t local or didn’t quite belong.
“Good evening,” the man in the front of the pack said. He took off his shades, revealing crisp, blue eyes. Like chips of ice. He smirked and spoke in an accent.
He was wearing a stuffy suit in the heat. I knew he had to be sweating buckets under there.
“Can I help you?” My tone was droll.
His eyes raked over me, making me uncomfortable, though I’d never show it on the outside. I took a breath, eyeing the bat Fer kept behind the desk on the floor.
At first, I’d thought that thing was a decoration, meant to be mounted on the walls alongside the instruments and artistic paraphernalia. When I’d asked about it, Fer just shook her head, hair bouncing against her rouged cheeks.
“People don’t fuck with Los Diablos,” she said. “But you can never be too careful.”
And there the bat stayed, a ghost of a companion behind the desk beside me.
It lay just within reach and out of sight from the people on the opposite side.
“Is your boss around, pretty thing?”
My brow lifted, mocking his condescending tone. “Do you have an appointment?”
The slight tick of his jaw that I didn’t rush to find Ink let me know he was annoyed.
“I don’t need one.”
“Everyone needs one.”
One of the white goonies in the back pushed forward, the aggression in his movements making me tense. “Just call your boss to the front, puta .”
The accented way he butchered the insult made me want to sigh.
“You gringos and your privilege,” I said, surprising them with my own perfect English. Their eyes widened and I smirked. What? A brown woman in Mexico couldn’t speak English? I wanted to laugh in their faces at that bias. “You always want things done as soon as you order it. Understand, no one sees Ink without an appointment, got it?”
What I didn’t tell them was that Ink wasn’t in. Neither was Fer. They’d gone to a local class to teach piercings and tattoos, but they wouldn't be long. I opened to clean and set appointments. They still had afternoon clients to see. I just hoped the silence in the back wasn’t so glaringly obvious.
The angry goon looked like he wanted to reach for me, maybe strangle me.
For a moment the darker side of me wanted it. Fuck with me and find out, gringo pendejo.
But the leader of the bunch put a hand to his chest and they stepped back.
“You tell Ink we stopped by.”
“And who are you exactly?”
“He’ll know who we are.”
And with that, they left.
It wasn’t ten minutes later that Ink and Fer came into the shop. I was still at the counter breathing heavily when they arrived, chasing away the darkness that threatened to cloud my vision. But chasing nightmares was hard, and it was no wonder that those who did it were too afraid to dream.
Ink took one look at me and demanded, “What’s wrong?”
It was like wading through fog, and his voice was a beacon of light that I tried my damndest to get to. I recounted the events, my voice steady, though my heart thumped hard in my chest. Ink stepped in front of me, using his fingers to grasp my chin and tilt my head up.
“Did they hurt you?” he snarled.
I took a breath. His anger was like a balm to my soul, and it chased my own feelings away enough so that I could look into his eyes as I answered, “No.”
“But they frightened you.”
I didn’t say anything, not because I was afraid I’d appear weak, but because I was afraid I’d sound like a total loca. He let out a curse. “Xiomara, whenever anyone comes in and pulls shit like that, you call me immediately. I don’t give a fuck if I’m teaching a class or tattooing in the back. You tell me and I will come.”
I felt it. A promise of protection I somehow knew would never be broken. I swallowed tightly as I nodded.
“Okay.”
“Fer, watch her. I need to call Loco.”
He left, taking the heat with him as he dug into his pockets and fished out his phone. His presence was replaced with Fer’s, her eyes soft with concern.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Who’s Loco?”
“The president of Los Diablos.”
“Why is he going to call him?”
Fer offered me a smile. “That’s club business. I bet the guys that came in were looking to start beef with Los Diablos. They always target the businesses first, but don’t worry. The club will protect us.”
“Does this happen often?” I resisted the urge to remind her that she was the one who told me nobody was stupid enough to fuck with the MC. It appeared as though someone stupid had definitely arrived to shake shit up, and I’d been caught on the warning’s end.
“They haven’t had any problems in a while, and it’s not as common as you think. Are you worried? Are you going to quit?”
Her panicked expression made me offer up a small smile. “No,” I said, and there was a truth to my words that settled down to my bones. “I’m not worried.”