14. Amiyah
Chapter fourteen
Amiyah
The apartment smells like someone tried to mask a crime scene with cheap air freshener and then gave up halfway through. Stale weed. Fast food grease congealing on unwashed plates. Underneath it all, is the putrid moldy-rot smell of neglect, the kind that seeps into the walls and stays there
Julias Nevera is already high when I find him.
Not a little high. Not pleasantly buzzed.
The kind of high where your pupils eat your irises whole and your mouth hangs open like a broken cabinet door.
He’s slouched on a cracked leather couch that might have been black once, before time and bodily fluids had their way with it.
A half-eaten bag of chips rests on his chest, rising and falling with each breath.
On the large flat-screen TV screen across from him, some reality show murmurs at a volume just loud enough to mask the sound of my footsteps.
I don’t need to mask my footsteps. He’s not hearing anything right now.
“Camera three is wiped,” Penelope’s voice says in my earpiece, crisp and clear. “DVR loop running clean. You’ve got twelve minutes before the building’s security cycle resets and the cameras come back online. Clock starts now.”
“Copy,” I murmur, the word barely leaving my lips.
My nitrile gloves are the kind hospitals use-thin, powder-free, disposable.
They make a soft snap against my wrists as I pull them on.
An N95 respirator follows, the straps pulling tight against my cheeks.
The seal has to be perfect. The last thing I need is to inhale the same powder that's about to kill him.
My dark hoodie is unremarkable in every way that matters—the kind of garment that exists to not be remembered. But my nails peek out from the cuffs, painted a soft ballet pink that clashes spectacularly with everything I’m doing right now.
I like the contrast.
It keeps me honest.
The stash is right where it should be, which is to say, exactly where any idiot would leave it: on the coffee table, three feet from Julias’s outstretched hand.
A folded foil packet, the kind you get from a gum wrapper if the gum were deadly and cost eighty dollars a hit.
I pick it up between my thumb and forefinger, holding it to the dim light from the TV.
Fentanyl-laced powder.
The lab report Penelope pulled says it’s cut at about twenty percent, which means a lethal dose for someone Julias’s size is approximately two grains of rice. I eyeball it, pouring out enough to get the job done on the tip of my finger.
Julias doesn’t stir when I approach. His breathing is slow, wet, the kind of respiration that happens when your central nervous system is already halfway to shutting down on its own.
I don’t need to force anything. I just need to wait for the right moment—the inhale that comes after a particularly shallow exhale, when the mouth opens just a fraction wider—.
There it is.
I brush the powder across his tongue with the pad of my gloved finger. The motion is quick, light, almost gentle. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t cough. Doesn’t do anything except keep breathing, which is exactly what I need him to do for the next ninety seconds.
I step back. Cross my arms. Lean one shoulder against the kitchen doorway and watch.
This is the part most people can’t handle. The waiting. The watching. The moment where theory becomes practice and practice becomes irreversible. I’ve never had that problem. My brain treats it like any other process—input, execution, outcome. Clean. Sequential. Emotionally null.
His breathing changes first. The rhythm falters, like a record skipping.
Then the depth goes. Shallow. Shorter. The bag of chips on his chest slides sideways as his body relaxes into something deeper than sleep.
It hits the floor with a soft crinkle. One chip skitters under the couch.
The TV keeps going—someone is yelling about betrayal on an island somewhere, and the irony is not lost on me.
Julias Nevera goes slack. His chin drops to his chest. His hands, which had been resting at his sides, open slightly, fingers curling inward like he’s reaching for something he can’t quite grasp.
“Clean,” Penelope says in my ear.
The all-clear.
I push off from the wall. Peel the gloves off inside-out, and stuff them into a small zip bag in my jacket pocket. The bag goes into a different pocket. My hands are bare now, pink nails catching the blue light from the TV as I wipe the place of any possible prints.
The stairwell exit is three doors down. I take it at a pace that suggests I belong here but am in a moderate hurry. Not running. Never running. Running draws eyes.
Six minutes and forty-two seconds from entry to exit.
Under budget.
The hit came from a mother in East LA whose sixteen-year-old daughter disappeared eight months ago.
The FBI found evidence linking her to a trafficking ring.
They found evidence linking the ring to Julias Nevera.
They did not, however, find the daughter.
They also did not have enough to charge Julias with anything that would stick, because Julias was good at covering his tracks and the system is good at losing them.
This isn’t the first time. Penelope’s background check pulled three similar cases over the past four years. Girls between fourteen and nineteen. All connected to Julias’s distribution network. All gone.
He shouldn’t be on the streets.
Now he’s not.
I don’t feel conflicted about it. I don’t feel much of anything, which is exactly how it’s supposed to work. The compartment stays closed. The job gets done. The math adds up. A dealer who sells children for drug money plus one measured dose of his own product equals one less problem in the world.
The cool night air hits my face as I push through the exterior door, dipping into the vacant back alley where my go-bag is currently stashed. I pull of the mask, shove it into the front pocket of the bag and I’m on my way to my car is parked a block down.
Time to become someone else again.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m a different person walking down Western Avenue with the intense need for boba. The pale pink cropped hoodie I changed into is soft against my skin, complimenting the white joggers hugging my hips. My hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, and my lips are glossed.
Civilian mode. Activated.
Boba Bliss sits wedged between a dry cleaner and a phone repair shop, the kind of narrow storefront that makes you wonder how anyone fits inside, let alone turns the massive profit it does.
Hand-painted bubble letters adorn the window in shades of lavender and mint.
The chalkboard menu beside the door is crammed with seasonal specials written in a handwriting that screams ‘you should try this one next’.
The line stretches out the door. Of course I’m going to join the back of it without hesitation, because boba after a hit is non-negotiable.
It’s the ritual.
The decompression.
The thing that bridges the gap between the person who just left a man to die on his own couch and the person who is going to sit on her own couch later and watch Bake Off Supreme with a weighted blanket and zero regrets.
I’m almost to the door when I run smack into someone coming out of the boxing gym next to Boba Bliss.
The impact is solid, warm, and accompanied by the unmistakable scent of sweat and something faintly minty—deodorant, maybe, or gum.
My hands fly to his chest on instinct, palms flat against the damp fabric of his compression shirt.
The material is thin enough that I can feel the heat of his skin beneath it, the hard plane of muscle, the rapid thud of a heart that’s still jacked from whatever he was doing inside that gym.
“Shit, sorry—” I start, but the words die in my throat when I look up.
Jae.
His dark hair is damp at the temples, clinging to his forehead in a way that makes my stomach do fucking carnival flips. His compression shirt clings to every ridge and valley of his torso, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
“Oh, hey,” he says, his dark, unfiltered whiskey eyes, widening in recognition.
“Hey,” I say back.
Neither of us moves for a moment that seems to last approximately seven eternities. That is until I realize my hands are still pressed to his heaving chest.
I yank them back like I’ve been electrocuted, which, given the way my pulse just spiked, isn’t far from the truth. My hands drop to my sides, fingers curling into loose fists, and I take a deliberate step back.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod, my lips pressing together. “Mmmmhmm.”
“Sorry,” he says, “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”
“Clearly.”
He shifts his weight, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “I didn’t know you came to this part of town.”
“I didn’t know you boxed,” I counter, crossing my arms over my chest.
There’s a pregnant pause.
“I’m treating myself,” I say finally, gesturing toward Boba Bliss with the kind of casual flourish that I hope reads as effortless and probably reads as deeply awkward. “A little post-study sweet treat.”
He nods like this makes perfect sense. “Mind if I join?”
“Free country.”
“Barely.”
That gets a laugh out of me before I can stop it.
Damn him for doing that again.
He smiles, and something warm unfurls in my chest that I immediately try to strangle.
We walk in together. The shop is small enough that our shoulders brush when we maneuver past a group of teenagers clustered near the register. The air smells like sweetened milk and brewing tea. I order a large taro with boba, and light ice.
Jae steps up after me. “Americano, please. Hot.”
I raise an eyebrow. “We’re at a boba shop.”
“I’m aware.”
“They have thirty-seven flavors of milk tea and you’re ordering black water downed espresso.”
“Some of us have sophisticated palates,” he says, and the way his mouth quirks at the corner tells me he’s fully aware of how ridiculous he sounds.
We stand side by side at the pickup counter, waiting. Then my phone screen lights up and an anime theme song begins playing—an alarm reminder for my birth control.
Jae’s eyes light up like the fourth of July and his head whips in my direction.
“You watch anime?” he asks, and his voice has changed too.
I hesitate. This is not usual information I would just hand out—it lives in the same compartment as my stuffed animals and my fairy lights—the private one labeled “no one’s business but my own”.
He waggles his brows, “Well?”
I sigh, my long bangs falling forward as I shake my head. I can’t wait for these bitches to grow back out.
“I dabble,” I say, because dabble is the word people use when they mean my entire personality is built on a foundation of animated Japanese storytelling and I could recite the full opening sequence of ‘Attack on Titan’ in my sleep.
He’s looking at me like he’s just found out I speak his exact native language which, unbeknownst to him—I do. His face does something devastating. It spreads into an obnoxious, boyish, infuriatingly genuine grin that makes the air in my lungs feel entirely too crowded.
"Dabble?" Jae echoes, leaning an elbow against the pickup counter.
“Yup.”
“Ahhh, so that’s why I just heard the second opening from Jujutsu Kaisen play from your phone. You’re not actually into it or anything.”
My face feels hot.
I narrow my eyes at him, clutching my phone closer to my chest like a shield. “You recognized it?”
“Yup. So, what all do you watch?”
"That is classified information. Higher security than government files.”
“Oh, so it's bad,” he teases, stepping a fraction closer as the barista sets a hot cup with a black lid onto the counter. "You're a closet trash-isekai watcher. You've seen all twelve episodes of the one where a guy gets reincarnated as a vending machine."
“It was an inventive premise!” I snap back before I can stop myself.
A deep laugh rumbles out Jae’s chest, making a few teenagers near the door turn around to look at us.
Fuck!
Why was that so hot?
My hand flies up to fix my high ponytail, my ballet-pink nails brushing against my scalp. I catch myself, forcing my hands back down to my sides.
“Taro milk tea, light ice?” the barista calls out.
“Mine,” I say, practically lunging for the plastic cup. I shove the fat purple straw through the film with entirely too much force, the pop sounding like a miniature gunshot in the small store.
I take a long, desperate sip, letting the icy, artificial sweetness shock my system back into balance.
“So,” he says, turning to face me fully as we walk out the front door together. “Is that what you do to unwind after correcting teachers in class and studying? Binge-watch anime?”
“Normally, yes,” I say, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead on the sidewalk. “Sometimes, it’s reading or gaming.”
“You game?” he asks in an almost groany voice.
“Is that illegal?” I shoot back, glancing at him sideways.
“No, just surprising. Let me guess—Cozy Grove? Animal Crossing? Something where you can color-coordinate a farm?”
“Apex Legends,” I correct him, tilting my chin up. “And don't look at me like that. I main Horizon, and I'm sitting in Diamond.”
He actually stops on the sidewalk, turning his head with a slow, dangerous smile. “Diamond?”
“Yes. Why? Do you have a problem with that?”
“No problem at all,” he says, his dark eyes sparkling under the amber glow of the streetlights as he catches back up to my stride.
“I just—usually my friend and I play together but with the time difference, he keeps being a little bitch and falling asleep on me. Would you…maybe wanna come over one night and play?”
Going to a guy's apartment? Entering an unfamiliar physical space with zero operational control, run by a guy who already makes my pulse spike?
Absolutely not.
“Yes.” The word flies out of my mouth before my conscious mind can even register the syllables forming on my tongue.
I freeze.
Did I just say yes? Why the fuck did I say yes?
His smile is slow and warm and rearranges my insides. “Cool. I’ll text you.”
“Cool.”
We say goodbye on the sidewalk. He heads north, gym bag bouncing against his hip. I head south, taro tea cold between my palms, and with each step the reality of what I’ve just done settles into my bones like cement.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I mentally kick myself in the ass with every single step. What am I doing? What the hell am I actually doing?
I just agreed to go to a broad-shouldered, dark-eyed distraction's apartment.
He’s a risk. A massive, bright-red, walk-on-two-legs hazard sign. I can't afford him, I can't afford his distracting laugh, and I definitely can't afford to step into his personal space where I'm not the one holding all the cards.
I pull my keys out of my pocket, unlock my car with a sharp beep, and shove myself into the driver's seat. Taking another pull of my taro tea, I stare at my reflection in the rearview mirror—glossed lips, high ponytail, ballet-pink nails—and let out a slow, painful exhale.
On the bright side, I can always back out.