21. Amorette #2
Lafe didn’t answer, and we ended up sitting there in silence. My eyes drooped and, at some point, I leaned against his chest.
“It was the girl,” he whispered.
Like he’d thrown ice water on me, I was jolted back from the sleepy haze that had blanketed me. “The girl?” I asked, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. Vicente had brought her up. I’d gotten enough pieces to see the picture, yet so much was still missing.
I craved this piece of him.
After a while, I’d started collecting his thoughts, his hugs, his pain. Like I was holding the jagged pieces of his soul only I could put him back together. It was ridiculous to feel this way. He was just as much a cartel son as his brothers. Just as dangerous.
Still, I wanted it all.
And I think Lafe needed it too.
“I tried to save a girl, once,” he whispered against the crown of my head.
It was daytime and sunny. The perfect beach day, except with him curled around me, it felt like his midnight confession.
“She was nothing like you. She was weak. Weak-willed. Weak-minded. It wasn’t at the Gallery.
That didn’t exist then, not the one where you were.
At the mansion, Maikel would bring a few girls in to break. She was young. So fucking young.
“I don’t even remember why I was in that part of the mansion that day. But I walked in, in the middle of them breaking the girls. Their cries haunt me. But this girl’s more than most.” I pushed my face into his neck, hoping the touch of affection would comfort him.
“One of Maikel’s men had her bent over a bench, and there was blood.
I think she was a virgin,” he said with almost no inflection.
As if he was too desensitized to violence after all these years.
“He didn’t care that I was there, and I had no reason to believe he was doing anything wrong.
But I told you…I told you when I took you that my brothers and I never wanted any part of that. That was our hard stop.”
He inhaled a shaky breath, and when he exhaled, it moved my hair.
“She saw me. She was probably confused because I was around her age and I was there, in that hellhole. She started crying. Screaming. Begging me for help.” Lafe choked out a laugh.
“You have to understand, my brothers and I weren’t the ones people turned to for help.
If anything, we were considered monsters, small extensions of Vicente.
It wasn’t until we started going on jobs outside the mansion that we felt the adoration the people had for him.
It was only there because they didn’t know him.
He hid that part of himself away for appearances.
But even that’s faded over the years, and the people still love him. ”
“Because they don’t know they’re not supposed to,” I rubbed my hand up and down his thigh.
“Yeah…I didn’t save her then,” he confessed like it was a dirty secret.
“I left. The soldier of Maikel’s would have slit my throat.
He had no respect for Maikel and barely any for Vicente.
He wouldn’t have cared that I was the bastard son.
I would have been interrupting his fuck, and that was enough for violence. ”
“Is he still with Maikel?” I would add him to the list I was compiling inside that space in my brain that I’d never forget.
Maikel. Randall. The ones who deserved to die.
I might not have any power now, as Grey made that all too painfully clear, but I would someday.
I’d make sure of it. I didn’t think I’d mind their deaths on my hands.
“No. He was hanged after he tried to force Andre’s mother, Vicente’s favorite concubine. Vincente tortured and castrated him before hanging him in the courtyard where all visitors entered the grounds.”
As much as it turned my stomach, I was glad his ending had been a terrible one. What was happening to me that I could stomach violence sometimes and not others? That I could forgive some acts…and not others?
Intent. It was all down to intent. If I couldn’t save women and children in Virginia with my career, I would do as much as I could here. There were still skills required. They just came from a different toolbox.
I could do it. I could change enough to be the justice these people needed here.
“You went to see her later?” I prodded.
I felt him nod against my head. “I did. She was a blubbering mess. I think she’d been crying since she had been taken.
I think that was why he raped her, because she wasn’t worth saving to auction off her virginity.
The girl was broken, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I could do something good.
Make a difference in someone else’s life.
If I could get her away from there, I could stomach living my own nightmare, since I’d given her her freedom back.
“The logistics didn’t cross my mind. It never would have worked.
But my teenage self didn’t understand that.
I grabbed the spare keys and unlocked her cage.
” He squeezed my shoulder when I stiffened.
Memories rushed back to the forefront of my mind and my stomach rolled.
Pushing away the nausea, I focused on him.
Why it was necessary to hear his story. “We made it by the kitchens, and Andre found us. She could barely stand. I was practically carrying her and she was still sobbing. He blew up when I told him what I was doing. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d needed to lie to him.
I guess I thought he’d want to save her too. ”
My blood ran cold, and I was getting a new perspective on the brothers who seemed to hate each other. “He didn’t.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. He called me stupid, pushed me away from her, and continued to berate me for trying to get myself killed. I’d never seen Andre so wild with anger. We almost got in a fight right there by the kitchens.”
“He was afraid for you.” That was the only thing that made sense.
“Andre has never cared about anyone or anything else as much as us. It’s his downfall. He’ll strangle us in order to save us. It’s suffocating. I didn’t ask him to be that way. I hated who I was. Already at that age…” he paused.
“One of Vicente’s men came around the corner, ready to break up a fight.
He saw the girl cowering in the corner, recognized her, and pieced it together.
He knew what happened. One look in my eyes, and he knew what I’d tried to do.
Then, Andre spun a tale about how she escaped and we’d caught her.
We were taking her back.” His breath hitched.
“Shortly after, Vicente appeared and decided to make it a game. See how far I was willing to go. If she had tried to escape, she was useless to them. She was as good as dead. He handed me a knife and told me if I was taking her back, I would have no problem slitting her throat.”
You didn’t , was on the tip of my tongue. I tensed, but I couldn’t help it. But then, so did he. I stared up, and his jaw was tight. He refused to look at me, even when I knew he had to have felt my attention on him.
I let out a slow breath and slid my arm across his waist.
This time would be different. I wouldn’t berate him or land judgment on his shoulders. It hurt, because now I could see both sides. How monstrous her murder was. Along with how horrific it was for him to live with it.
He never should have been placed in that position. And that one moment, maybe more than all the others in his fucked up childhood, was most likely responsible for so many of his issues and dependency on drugs.
“Have you ever talked to Andre about it?” I didn’t ask if he did it. If he wanted to tell me, he would. But I also wanted to give him a chance not to.
“Fuck no,” he grunted, and second by second, his body slowly relaxed.
“Maybe you should.” The tension was palpable between them, at least on Lafe’s side. They had to feel it.
“What are you doing, Amorette?”
I was startled by his use of my actual name.
“What do you mean?” When I peered up at him this time, he met my gaze unwaveringly.
“Do you think we’re some dysfunctional family you can fix with therapy and vent sessions? Your own version of an intervention?”
The words themself weren’t bad. Neither was his tone, but it still made me feel foolish. These weren’t dolls I could rearrange to my liking. They were dangerous men, even if sometimes I forgot that fact in the normalcy of it all.
I just didn’t forget for long. They wouldn’t let me.
A car sped around the corner, and Lafe pushed to the edge of the cushion to get a better look.
“Who’s that?”
“That’s Parker,” he said as he leapt up. He grabbed my hand and rushed us toward the door. “Something’s wrong.”