Masked Daddies (Masked Coyotes MC #1)

1. Valentina

VALENTINA

If Nora keeps wiping that counter, she is going to scrub through the laminate and into the burger place downstairs.

I watch her make another pass with the dish towel anyway, shoulders set beneath her faded work T-shirt, while I lie sideways across the lower bunk and turn the glossy flyer between my fingers.

The counter was clean before she started.

Everything in our studio that can reasonably be clean is clean, because Nora deals with stress by making dirt regret existing.

The one plate we own that does not have a chip sits upside down beside the sink.

Our folding table has been wiped twice today.

The two metal chairs are pushed in so evenly their front legs line up with the same ugly seam in the linoleum.

The rest of the place refuses improvement.

The swamp cooler rattles in the window with the stubborn mechanical cough of something one hot afternoon away from death.

Old grease from the burger place rises through the floor and settles over everything no matter how often Nora cleans.

I can still smell the coconut conditioner I bought yesterday because apparently poverty has not cured me of vanity.

The tiny television balanced on a milk crate came out of an apartment two neighborhoods over after a landlord threw somebody’s belongings onto the sidewalk.

Nora calls it rescued. I call it stolen because accuracy is free.

“You’ve been cleaning the same six feet for twelve minutes.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Your thinking looks aggressive.”

Nora gives me a look over her shoulder, but the corner of her mouth moves. “Somebody has to make up for the fact that you don’t think enough.”

“That is vicious slander.” I sit up and hold the flyer between us. Thick paper. Gold lettering. Printing meant for people who have never chosen between groceries and a transmission repair. “Eight thousand dollars.”

“I can read.”

“Each, Nora. Eight thousand each, guaranteed, plus tips.”

She drops the towel over the faucet and turns fully toward me. “You’ve repeated the number so many times I’m starting to resent it.”

“That’s because you hate joy.”

“I hate private parties in the desert that hire young women for two days and pay them four months of wages for no obvious reason.”

“Five.”

“Closer to four if we both take extra shifts.”

“You’re ruining my argument with math.”

“If math can ruin it, the argument deserves what happens.”

The flyer says PRIVATE TWO-DAY GALA in letters that probably cost more than our electric bill.

Hospitality staff wanted. Housing included.

Eight thousand dollars guaranteed plus gratuities.

Event clothing and masks provided. Phones restricted during event hours for guest privacy.

Transportation available if needed. There is an address for the employment office we visited yesterday, a contract contact, and several paragraphs of legal language dense enough to make me stop caring before the second page.

Nora sees a trap. I see sixteen thousand dollars and two days between us and the money.

“Housing included,” I say. “No motel.”

“At an isolated private estate.”

“It’s outside Vegas, not on the moon.”

“Phones restricted during event hours.”

“Rich people don’t want servers photographing them doing rich-person crimes near a sculpture.”

“Mandatory masks.”

“It’s a masquerade.”

“Unknown wealthy guests.”

“All wealthy people are unknown to us. That’s one of the defining features of our social class.”

Her mouth twitches again. Nora has been playing responsible older sister since we were children even though seven months is not an age gap so much as ammunition.

Temperament did most of the work. We met in foster care after both of us had stopped expecting an adult to become permanent, and somewhere along the way we decided we belonged to each other instead.

Every adult after that became temporary. Nora stayed.

I swing my bare feet to the floor and cross the three steps to the refrigerator.

The door sticks unless I lift before pulling.

Inside are half a carton of eggs, mustard, two beers from a shift tip, leftover rice, and a jar of pickles I keep insisting counts as a vegetable. I open it wide and gesture.

“Behold our wealth.”

“Close it. You’re letting the cold out.”

“What cold? The light bulb is doing most of the work.”

She reaches past me and shuts the door. The transmission estimate for the Honda is pinned to the side beneath a taco magnet. I tap the total.

“That car starts every morning because you threaten it. Eventually intimidation stops being maintenance.”

“I know.”

“Rent is due in nine days.”

“I know.”

“Your shoes are coming apart.”

“So are yours.”

I lean against the refrigerator. “The second night is your birthday.”

Her expression goes flat. “Don’t.”

“Twenty-one. A traditional age for terrible decisions.”

“Twenty-one is a number.”

“A number people celebrate.”

“People with money celebrate. People without money go to work.” She gestures between us. “People like us.”

“Exactly. You can spend your twenty-first birthday getting paid to serve champagne in a free dress somewhere with chandeliers.”

“To strangers who might harvest organs.”

“I checked. Zero confirmed organ-harvesting reviews.”

“You checked reviews?”

“I’m reckless, not lazy.”

She studies me long enough that I stop smiling. “If anyone asks our blood types, we leave.”

“Mine is expensive.”

“That isn’t a blood type.”

“It’s the only medically relevant thing I know.”

Nora exhales through her nose. When fear gets serious, her sense of theater disappears and precision takes over. She builds maps from doors, names, routes, and times, then keeps them ready for the instant a room changes around us.

Mrs. Grady once used the pantry as punishment because the lock was on the outside and the little room had no window.

After that, Nora learned every hinge in every foster house.

She knew which windows opened without squealing, where adults dropped their keys, and which bedrooms had furniture heavy enough to brace under a knob.

Mrs. Grady could mock the way I spoke English until I cried and hit either of us for answering back, but she never managed to teach Nora that a locked door shouldn’t be accepted simply because an adult called it discipline.

I learned the opposite survival lesson from the same house. Waiting quietly never made anyone kinder. Doing everything right never kept a caseworker from moving us or a foster father from deciding rules changed after dark. When a door opens, I move before somebody remembers to close it.

“We visited the office,” I remind her. “There were other applicants, actual contracts, actual desks. We didn’t give our Social Security numbers to a man behind a laundromat.”

“The office could be rented.”

“Everything can be fake if you work hard enough.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“No, but staying here isn’t risk-free either.”

The edge in my voice makes her look toward the crates beneath the window.

They hold restaurant pants, work shirts, cocktail uniforms, and the one decent pair of jeans each.

Her faded blue duffel stays under the folding table; my battered army-green bag lives under the bunk.

We have been in this studio long enough to recognize every bad sound in the walls, and familiarity is the closest thing it has offered to safety.

“I don’t want to stay forever,” she says.

“I know.”

“I don’t want you thinking I’m scared to leave.”

“I don’t.” I flatten the flyer on the table. “I think you’re scared to leave badly. There’s a difference.”

“And you don’t care how we leave as long as we’re moving.”

“I care. Sometimes I care a little late.”

That gets the real smile, brief and unwilling. I sit and shove the other metal chair toward her with my foot until she takes it.

“Pretend I’m capable of caution. What do you need?”

“A different personality.”

“I meant the gala. God can schedule a separate intervention.”

Nora reaches for the pen beside the unpaid electric bill. “We write down the address somewhere that isn’t our phones. Full name of the contract contact. Employment-office number. We keep our identification on us and our bags where we can reach them.”

“The contract says housing is assigned.”

“Then our bags stay in the assigned room. They don’t disappear into storage.”

“Okay.”

“Our phones stay with us outside event hours. If they try to take them for two days, we leave.”

“Okay.”

“We check the Honda before we go.”

“The Honda is what the money is supposed to rescue.”

“Which is why we’re taking Uber if I don’t trust it in the desert.”

The flyer offers event transportation, but Nora would rather pay somebody we choose than ride in a stranger’s vehicle controlled by the people hosting us. There it is, her version of agreeing. Excitement never enters the process; she starts building a safe enough version of yes.

She copies the address, contact name, and phone number onto the back of an old takeout menu, then writes everything a second time.

One copy stays with us. The other goes downstairs to Mr. Alvarez, the sixty-four-year-old owner of the burger place who has spent two years pretending not to notice when rent makes us late with some other bill.

I suggest again that he is secretly in love with her.

Nora reminds me he has been married for thirty-eight years.

I tell her true love has survived worse obstacles.

“We also leave together,” she says, and the joke drops out of the room.

“Obviously.”

“I mean it. If either of us wants out, both of us go. No argument about the money once the decision is made.”

“You think I’d leave you there for tips?”

“I think you might tell me something is fine because you don’t want me to lose eight thousand dollars.”

She has me exactly. I look down at the table.

Nora gives me a moment, then turns the pen between her fingers. “If either of us says nos vamos, we go. No questions until we’re outside. Same as before.”

We started using the phrase when we were too young to explain danger without adults overhearing. Nos vamos meant stop arguing, stop packing, stop trying to be polite. It meant I believe you. It meant the room is wrong and explanations can wait.

“Nos vamos,” I repeat.

“And we go.”

“Even if I’m making out with a billionaire?”

“Especially then.”

“Cruel.”

“Alive.”

I reach across the table and hook my little finger around hers. She rolls her eyes before hooking back. We stopped believing most promises made by adults a long time ago. The ones we make to each other still count.

“Deal.”

Nora releases me and reaches for the Honda keys. “I’m checking the fluids, tires, and transmission.”

“You cannot glare at transmission fluid and make it behave.”

“Watch me.”

She crouches to pull on her shoes, then opens the door. “Pack something you can run in.”

“That’s my girl.”

“I can still change my mind.”

“You wrote the number twice. That’s practically a blood oath.”

The door closes behind her. I stay at the table while the swamp cooler loses another argument with the heat.

The studio looks smaller with the flyer spread across it: bunk bed against one wall, folding table against another, crates under the window, stolen television, two duffels waiting for lives that never quite start.

The refrigerator kicks on with a tired buzz and gives up.

Sixteen thousand dollars already has a job.

It can put rent ahead, repair the Honda, fill the refrigerator with food that belongs to meals, replace Nora’s leaking shoes, and maybe cover deposits on an apartment where the kitchen is farther than three feet from the bed.

For one night, she could wear a dress she didn’t buy for work while strangers hand her money and keep their problems to themselves.

The warning signs have a place in the calculation. They do not get the whole calculation.

I fold the flyer, slide it into my jeans, and keep my fingers over the pocket for another second. Maybe this job opens enough space for both of us to get out.