Chapter 20
Twenty
Shiloh
I blinked. My eyes were still slightly puffy and difficult to keep open.
I tracked the blurry movement out the window my head was leaning against. My lips and fingertips were still numb from hyperventilating, so I knew little time had passed between my panic attack and now.
Long enough for someone to carry me into the car and drive away from… there.
When Adrian showed up in my bedroom telling me it was time to take the blood oath, I thought it was going to be some weird ritual where I had to drop some of my blood into a cup like a horror movie. I wasn’t expecting the needle in the arm, again.
I wasn’t prepared for what the final portion of my initiation would entail. I wasn’t prepared for the amount of blood I would be sacrificing to join the family. I wasn’t prepared to hold that g—stop.
My stomach cramped and I pushed the memory away. Buried it so deep that I could convince my brain to forget it ever happened. That it wasn’t real. That none of this was real.
Since my flesh initiation, the guilt had grown, festered, crawled so deeply into my DNA that I had convinced myself that I deserved this. And now, after what I’d done to save my own skin…fuck, I didn’t deserve to get out. Los Siete was where I belonged.
I rolled my head to face the driver, relieved to find that it was Adrian.
“How,” I paused, having to clear my scratchy throat. Had I been screaming? Shut up. Shut. Up. Nox. Nox is holding my hand. I’m okay. I held that mental image in my mind before starting again. “How far away from home are we?”
He looked over at me, something akin to pity and grief marring his features and the bile rose in my chest.
“Dad?”
I watched Adrian’s arm go slack against his side, the gun slipping from his grasp and hitting the concrete floor with a clatter.
My stomach rolled as Carlos removed the second man’s head covering.
I clenched my jaw, my lungs constricted and begging for oxygen as I stared at Adrian’s stricken expression.
“Don’t.”
He licked his lips, turning his attention back to the highway. We weren’t in Bumfuck, Nowhere anymore. “Ten minutes.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to distract myself from my thoughts.
It was only the second time I had ever left Granby.
The first being when we took a field trip to the state capital in elementary school.
I remembered the fact that he had asked me to pack a bag of my things and realized that it seemed pointless if we were going home the same day.
“Why did you make me pack a bag?”
Adrian took a deep breath, fingers drumming against the steering wheel, a dead giveaway to his anxiety.
“To take you to your new place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s not new. It was your brother’s before. But Carlos said you can stay there so you don’t need to stay with your dad anymore.”
“What place? What are you talking about?”
He looked over completely confused. “His apartment.”
“What?! He had an apartment?” My heart pounded with anger. He had a fucking apartment yet made me live at dad’s shithole? Maybe Carlos wasn’t lying after all. Maybe Javier really was just selfish prick.
“Well, it’s technically owned by a member of Los Siete, but several members have an apartment in the building.
Now that you’re…sworn, Carlos agreed to let you have it.
He doesn’t trust your dad to keep you safe, and since you won’t stay with him, he’s allowing you to live on your own.
This building is secure, so you don’t need to worry about anything either. ”
I shook my head, too fucking pissed with Javier to appreciate the fact that I would no longer be forced to stay with my dad.
“How long had he been living there?”
Adrian blew out a breath, tipping his head to the side. “Like three years, since the apartment building opened.”
The fuck? The last argument we had was about getting an apartment, yet he fucking had one.
Why the fuck did we sleep on lumpy-ass mattresses on the floor when he had a whole fucking apartment?
Did he enjoy watching me suffer? Was it just a fucking game to him?
All a part of his fucking tests to see how much I could handle without crying?
Maybe the selfish fuckface deserved the bullet he got to the head.
I mentally slapped myself for thinking so poorly of my own brother.
But I wanted to believe that Adrian was right.
That Javi’s death wasn’t because he was trying to get money to help me leave, that he wasn’t snitching because he had a moral compass.
Every new piece of information I gained pointed towards my brother only caring about himself.
I was livid, and more than ready to see this secret apartment I was apparently unworthy of knowing about while he was alive.
???
Laughter was the only way I was preventing myself from sobbing.
An apartment. Not just any apartment. It was a fucking two bedroom, fully furnished, fully kitted out kitchen, apartment. With a damn balcony that overlooked the lake and the new outdoor shopping center that the building was located in.
Although it was clear that Carlos and a Ghost ended up here at some point because the place was already trashed much like our bedroom was the night Javi—Stop.
“This is hilarious,” I wheezed, my ribs aching slightly with the effort.
“I fucking…I fucking can’t. This is just so damn hilarious.
I begged my brother to get us a place and stop supporting our sperm-donor and he had a fucking apartment this whole damn time…
Jesus Christ what a selfish fucker. And that second bedroom…
why the fuck is it decorated for a girl if I never once came here in the three years that my brother had this place? ”
Adrian eyed me like he thought I might need an intervention. He wasn’t wrong.
“Well, I assumed it was because you were staying here part of the time, but…I honestly don’t know now. Maybe Carlos set it up that way, thinking you’d be living with your brother.”
God, it even smelled like him. Cologne, the same one he’d been wearing since he was fourteen, and laundry detergent.
There was no denying this. No pretending that this was all an elaborate stunt from Carlos trying to get me to turn against my brother.
This was real. This place…this was Javier’s, and it proved just how little I knew my own brother.
How willing I was to believe everything my brother ever told me. How na?ve, how pathetic and weak I was.
Javier controlled every aspect of my life, and I let him.
I let him control me for years and I never questioned his motives, never questioned why we would go months living on pantry staples like rice and beans if Carlos was still paying him, never questioned why Javier wouldn’t allow me to work at all to bring in more income, never questioned where he was when he wouldn’t come home for days at a time.
It was control. I slid down onto the faux-wood floors of the kitchen, finally catching my breath and let my skull thud against the kitchen cabinet behind me.
He controlled me. Was he ever going to let me leave for college?
Was he even selling secrets for my benefit?
Or was he just a selfish prick who had used my name on a bank account because he didn’t have his own legal documents?
My eyes scanned the fully stocked pantry.
“What a fucking liar. What a fucking piece of shit, liar. Jesus, fuck.” I scoffed again.
“Do you want help straightening this place up?”
I eyed the absolute disaster and then studied Adrian. He shoved his hands into his back pockets, looking around the space. He probably needed the distraction more than I did. He wasn’t the only one who’d been tested today.
“Sure. God knows what we’ll find in this mess.”
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Adrian shouted from one of the bedrooms. I threw the rotten eggs in the garbage can and closed the fridge.
“What?” I called.
“In here!”
I followed the sound of his voice to the master bedroom closet.
I peered around his arm to look at the box of documents he was sifting through.
“Looks like all your personal records. Birth certificate, social security card, and a bunch of school report cards.”
I grabbed the box from him and moved to the bed to sit down.
“Jesus. He kept my certificate for graduating kindergarten.”
I sighed, holding up my social security card.
If I had known this shit was in here, I wouldn’t have stuck around to be forced into Los Siete.
If I had known he had my birth certificate and social, I could’ve gotten a job years ago, could’ve moved out, could’ve been somewhere safe.
I wouldn’t have been there to watch him be killed or have been violated and forced to…
You’re not going there. Stop it.
It. Never. Happened.
I stewed in my anger a while longer before we finished putting everything away that had been left in disarray.
We didn’t find anything else of significance, unless you counted finding out my brother had a proclivity for some BDSM toys.
I contemplated burning my hands off when I realized I was holding silk ropes for bondage thanks to Adrian’s comment.
He agreed to destroy all the sex toys and accessories he found in the bedroom and bathroom.
We both sat down on the couch after we’d finished, the box of documents on the coffee table. I stared up at the ceiling, my mind a whirling cesspool of rage, resentment and confusion.
“Why is all his stuff still here?”
“Dunno. I guess it wasn’t high on the priority list,” he shrugged.
“There’s a grocery store across the street if you want to stock the fridge or pantry.
I’ll take all that trash down to the dumpster for you when I leave.
My apartment is on the floor above yours if you ever need anything.
I’ll text you the numbers for maintenance.
Here.” He rolled onto his side so that he could pull out the apartment keys from his pocket.
“Front door, mail key, and the key fob to gain access to the apartment building. There’s a parking spot assigned to your unit in the lot below, but I know you don’t have your license. There’s cable hooked up and Wi-Fi. You’ll find the info on the back of the router.”
Adrian paused, the silence too loud. “And just so you’re aware, the internet usage is being monitored. So is your phone.”
I glanced at the nice flat screen TV that I hadn’t even registered as something in the room.
This was happening. I was living in my dead brother’s apartment.
I was finally out of that shithole of a home I’d been raised in.
God, when was this nightmare going to end?
My mind wandered to the never-ending thought on a loop… death.
I wanted to take a permanent vacation from my life, but it was too late now to back out. Carlos owned me. Completely. And if I gave up now, he’d make those innocent children go through what I did. I could stomach a lot of things, but forcing an innocent child to take my place wasn’t one of them.