Chapter 7 Voice Notes
Chapter seven
Voice Notes
Lena
Seventeen seconds of his voice made me come harder than any man had in person.
But I'm getting ahead of myself like I always do, like my brain's a trauma bay at 3 AM—everything happening at once, no time for proper triage, just react and hope nobody dies.
It's Wednesday, my first day off in twelve days, and I'm doing what any normal person would do: running a ghost clinic out of my converted mobile van in a Home Depot parking lot.
My scrubs today are the ones with tiny cacti on them because apparently, I think whimsy will distract from the fact that I'm slowly losing my entire mind.
The morning started normal—well, my version of normal.
Two construction workers with "ladder falls" (sure, Jan), a teenager with road rash, and a woman whose "I walked into a door" story makes my chest tight with recognition.
After she leaves, I'm cleaning up when my brain decides now's a good time to research the man whose voice has been living rent-free in my head.
I pull up Iron Talons MC on my phone.
The logo appears and my blood turns to ice water. Actual ice water, like someone's injecting liquid nitrogen directly into my veins.
Iron Talons.
Iron fucking Talons.
My phone slips from my hand, clatters on the van floor.
I'm seventeen again, Miguel coming home at 3 AM, knuckles split, blood on his Coyote colors—not all of it his.
"Iron Talons killed Carlos," he'd said, voice flat as a flatline.
"At the strip mall. Execution style. So we—" He'd stopped, looked at me like he just remembered I was still a kid.
"Just stay away from anyone wearing skulls, Lena. Promise me."
And here I am, fourteen years later, screenshots folder full of their bikes, their clubhouse, saved right next to photos of Miguel at Carlos's funeral, jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth would shatter.
My phone vibrates on the floor. Bad Decision. The Iron Talon I've been having phone sex with while my brother cleans guns in my living room.
I should delete his number. Block him. Move to another state. Get a new identity. Become someone who makes better choices.
Instead, I pick up the phone with shaking hands.
Bad Decision: [Voice note attached]
Seventeen seconds. A seventeen-second audio file from someone my brother would dismember on principle.
My finger hovers over play like I'm about to detonate a bomb. Which, metaphorically, I am. I'm about to blow up fourteen years of Miguel's protection for seventeen seconds of a stranger's voice.
I press play.
"Angel." His voice is rougher than usual, morning gravel or whiskey or both. "I've been thinking about your hands. About what they'd feel like on my skin. Gentle at first, the way you'd check for injuries. Then harder, when you realize I like the pain."
I sink onto my rolling stool, the one with the squeaky wheel. My body's having a complete systemic response—fight, flight, or fuck—and apparently, we're going with option three despite my prefrontal cortex screaming about family loyalty and not dating people your brother would murder.
"I want to watch those hands work. Want to see them shake when you're close. Want to feel them in my hair when I'm between your thighs, making you forget everything except 'please' and 'fuck' and my name—if I ever tell you what it is."
The van suddenly feels like a sauna. Phoenix in November is still Satan's armpit, but this heat is internal, spreading from my core like contrast dye in a CT scan, highlighting every bad decision I'm about to make.
"Touch yourself for me, Angel. Right now. Wherever you are. And send me proof."
Seventeen seconds. That's all it took to completely override fourteen years of careful walls, family loyalty, and the voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Miguel saying "I'll kill anyone who hurts you."
I look around my mobile clinic—this space I've built to help people, to be something good in all the darkness. And I'm about to defile it for a man whose club killed Miguel's mentor.
My hand slips into my scrub pants anyway.
Somewhere, the seventeen-year-old whose brother joined Coyote Fangs to keep her fed is screaming. But the thirty-one-year-old disaster with her hand between her legs? She's already too far gone, lost in the gravitational pull of spectacularly bad choices.
I'm already embarrassingly wet, my body a traitor at the cellular level. My fingers find my clit, and I think about his hands—SINS and RAGE tattooed across knuckles that have probably broken Coyote bones. Maybe even Miguel's friends. Maybe even—
I come harder than I should, biting my cheek until I taste copper, my body shaking on this squeaky stool while committing what amounts to familial treason.
Before my rational brain can intervene, I hit record.
"Diablo," I breathe, and my voice is already wrecked.
"I'm in my van in a fucking Home Depot parking lot, touching myself to your voice like the complete disaster I am.
" A moan escapes as I circle faster, chasing a second orgasm because apparently one betrayal isn't enough.
"Thinking about those hands. About what they'd feel like on me while you—fuck—"
Eleven seconds of evidence that I'm the worst sister in the world.
I send it, then immediately save it in my password-protected folder labeled "Tax Documents 2019" like I'm not hiding evidence of treason, like Miguel won't eventually find out, like this won't end with someone in a closed casket.
Bad Decision: Jesus fucking Christ
Bad Decision: Where are you
Bad Decision: Angel
Bad Decision: ANGEL
A knock on my van door. I nearly have a cardiac event.
"Lena? You still taking patients?"
Dr. Nathan Winters. Of course. The new attending from Boston who's been circling me like a shark ever since he found out Miguel's my brother.
Nothing attracts savior complexes quite like 'traumatized nurse with gang-affiliated family.
' He probably thinks he can save me from my complicated life with his boat shoes and 401k.
"One second!" I call out, washing my hands like I'm scrubbing for surgery, like I can wash away what I just did, who I just betrayed.
I open the van door to find Nathan in designer jeans that cost more than my monthly van insurance, looking at me with those concerned blue eyes that have never seen someone bleed out in a strip mall parking lot over territory disputes.
"You're flushed," he observes, stepping closer. "You feeling okay?"
"Phoenix heat," I lie. "Even in November."
"Want to grab coffee? Cool down somewhere with actual air conditioning?"
My phone buzzes insistently.
Bad Decision: Need to see you, Angel. Soon.
"Boyfriend?" Nathan asks, noting my expression.
"No," I answer honestly. The man I'm sexting isn't my boyfriend. He's my brother's enemy, my spectacular disaster, my seventeen-second path to destroying everything Miguel built to keep me safe.
"Someone who makes you smile like that?"
Was I smiling? Christ, I'm smiling about betraying my family. There's probably a psychological diagnosis for this level of self-destruction.
"It's complicated."
"The best things usually are." He hands me his card, even though we work at the same hospital. "Coffee offer stands. You know, when you're done with complications."
After he leaves, I sit in my van for another twenty minutes, staring at my phone, at the Iron Talons page still open in my browser, at the photo of Miguel on my dashboard—the one from my nursing school graduation where he's smiling like he's proud, like all his sacrifices were worth it.
Soon sounds dangerous
Bad Decision: Everything about us is dangerous
That's what makes it good
God help me, it's true. The danger, the betrayal, the knowledge that this ends with bloodshed—it's all twisted up with the arousal, the need, the way his voice rewires my nervous system.
Bad Decision: Angel
Yeah?
Bad Decision: That audio. Your voice when you came. I'm keeping it forever
Creepy
Bad Decision: You love it
He's right. I do. I love this insane, dangerous, definitely-going-to-end-in-violence thing we're doing.
My phone buzzes again as I'm driving home.
Bad Decision: [Voice note attached]
Twenty-three seconds this time.
I wait until I'm home, until I'm safe in my bathroom with the door locked and Miguel's three blocks away, before I press play.
His voice fills my ears, telling me exactly what he wants to do to me, how he's been stroking himself to my audio, how he wants to watch me fall apart, and I'm on my knees on my bathroom floor, hand between my legs, coming to the voice of a man my brother would kill without hesitation.
I come twice before it ends, my body convulsing like I'm seizing, while the photo of Miguel and me at our parents' funeral stares at me from the hallway.
This is fine. Everything is fine. I'm fine.
I'm not fine. I'm systematically destroying everything my brother built to protect me, one orgasm at a time.
And I can't seem to stop.