Chapter 4
Kortez
There’s only about twenty-two hours left until Evie and I will be hitting the road in my Mustang, her hair floating in the wind as the CD I made for her plays over my speakers.
Our bags are packed and our paperwork for Saint Mary’s is done, our signatures are already in place saying, ‘thanks for the stay, but we’re out’.
We spent the morning together celebrating her nineteenth birthday before Atlas carried her away, promising a night she won’t ever forget.
I just hope he doesn’t try anything to make her want to stay.
I hope that he knows she deserves more than what life here would offer her.
I hope that he knows she deserves more – a future that she builds with her own two hands instead of just surviving what life throws at her.
For some reason, though, I feel like he’s going to try and screw up everything. Which…is why I went against my better judgement and slipped a tracking device into Evie’s purse.
Being good with computers has its benefits and one of those is access to the best location services known to mankind, which is exactly what I used to build my own personal tracking device that I placed into Evie’s bag before she left. Five hours ago.
Based on the little blue dot moving toward me at a very illegal speed…she should be pulling up in three…two…one.
Right on cue, I see the bright headlights of Atlas’ Maserati sling around the corner, the car barely even breaking for the turn.
“He has absolutely no care for her life.” I shake my head and walk to the edge of the curb as the car screeches to a stop.
When I bend my head down, though, it’s not Atlas in the driver’s seat.
Evie rolls up the windows, nearly closing my fingers in the passenger side, and climbs out of the driver’s seat.
The door slams behind her as she stands in the middle of the abandoned street, her sniffles making their way to my ears and immediately making the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Evie…what happened?” She shakes her head as I begin to walk around the car, slowly so as not to startle her too much. Her full form comes into view as I round the front of the car and my blood boils at the sight.
The birthday outfit she left in is effectively ruined.
Her skirt is put on backwards, like she put it on in a hurry, and the lace top she was wearing when she left is gone, replaced by the black button up Atlas was wearing when he picked her up – minus one button.
Her combat boots are in her hand leaving her barefoot on the asphalt and even from a few feet away, I can see the hickeys on her neck and chest. Her blonde curls are a tangled mess around her head, either from the wind or from… him.
“Evie…Evie did he…Did he force you?” I swear to God, if he forced her, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.
I don’t have many memories of my mother, but I do remember she was a devout Catholic – it’s why I don’t curse. If that vida baja forced her to do anything, though, I will offer his soul to my mother’s God with nothing more than a smile on my lips and his blood on my hands.
Evie shakes her head, her fist tightening around something I can’t make out. “He didn’t force me.”
Her voice is quiet, quieter than I’ve ever heard it before. I don’t like it.
I take a small step forward, “What happened, Evie?”
She lets out a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a second before opening them again and looking at me with tear-stained eyes.
“It was perfect, Kor. It was a perfect birthday, a perfect last night here…a small part of me even hated that we were leaving tomorrow and I was thinking about asking him to come with us.”
I’m surprised she hadn’t yet, if I’m being honest. Evie loves hard, and I knew she loved him. She loves me, too, but in a different way…not the way I love her.
She clears her throat, bringing her hand up to wipe at her cheeks. I see a glimpse of a small red velvet box in her hand and my blood runs cold.
He didn’t…
“We went back to his loft and we…we had sex.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t forced. I was completely willing…but after…” She chokes out a sob and looks down at the box in her now open hand. “He asked me to marry him.”
I’m going to kill him anyway.
I thought I could handle it if she chose him instead of me, but I can’t. I won’t. Evie is mine and I refuse to let him have her.
She continues on, unknowing of the dark thoughts now running through my head.
“I kind of freaked out. He knows we’re leaving for college tomorrow, and we’re so young…
but he started going on about how it’s the only way to keep me safe and…
It just freaked me out even more. I love the dark, Kor, but…
” Her eyes come up to meet mine once again.
“It hit me that saying yes to him would mean forever saying no to you and I…I just couldn’t do that. ”
Everything she says hits me one after the other. The proposal, the issue of her safety, her not saying yes because of…me. Does this mean she loves me, too? Does she love me like I love her? Have I been an idiot this whole time?
Something she said doesn’t add up, though – it doesn’t sit right. “What do you mean by the only way to keep you safe?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy before shaking her head and leaning against the Maserati.
“I think Atlas’s family is into some bad shit, Kor.
Drugs or guns or…something. He kept talking about his father being so dangerous and then he got a text while I was freaking out about the whole marriage thing and he shoved the ring into my hand along with his car keys and told me to text him with an answer but to get the hell out of there until I decided because his father was about to be there and he’d kill me if I wasn’t his future daughter-in-law. ”
And he put Evie in the middle of this?
I close the distance between us, taking Evie’s tear-stained face in between my hands and looking down at her. Even when crying, she’s the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.
“Go inside and get some sleep, Mi Corazón. Tomorrow starts our new life together, and we can put all of this behind us.”
I can see the questions forming on her lips and I do the one thing I should have done long before Atlas Valente even stepped foot into our lives – I kiss her.
I kiss her like she’s my reason for breathing – for living – and really, she is.
This time, it’s my lips, my tongue, making her moan out, and I waste no time licking the taste of her tears away and savoring the dark, rich taste of pure Evangeline underneath.
My fingers tangle in her hair as her arms wrap around my waist, trying to pull me closer even though I know I’m already as close as physically possible.
Our breath is rough and ragged as we pull apart, and I leave one final lingering kiss on the side of her mouth.
“Goodnight, Evie.”
Her eyes glint with mischief where there was sadness only minutes ago and my heart fills with pride in being the one who put it there. Evie should always live with a little mischief in her eyes. “Goodnight, Kor.”
I watch her walk through the back entrance of Saint Mary’s before I make my way to my car, sliding into the driver’s seat and pulling up the map on my phone showing where Evie’s location pinged over the course of the night.
Right before she headed back to Mary’s, she was at the warehouse district for a little over an hour. That’s got to be where he’s staying. Loading the address into my maps, I turn on some soft music and head across town.
It only takes me about ten minutes to get there and most of the lights are off when I pull up.
I flick my headlights off and park my car next to a dumpster a few yards away.
If Atlas’s family is involved in some illegal stuff, then I’m taking a risk even being here.
But Evie deserves it. Atlas put her at risk for nothing more than his own selfishness and I’m her guardian angel here to seek retribution.
My door shuts with a faint click before I make my way across the lot. There are a few different vehicles here, mostly some dark SUV’s that are in line with the illegal side of things Evie mentioned, but I don’t see anyone outside.
I try the handle from a side door and find it locked, but it’s nothing an orphan can’t handle. Running back to my car, I grab a paper clip from one of Evie’s essays she has in my back seat and then go back to the door, making quick work of the deadbolt with the straightened-out paper clip.
I slide the paper clip into my pocket and open the door, finding the bottom floor of the warehouse pretty much empty.
There are voices coming from somewhere above me, multiple voices, but none of them sound like Atlas.
Moving around the edge of the room, I let my eyes adjust to the dark until I see movement from the far corner of the room near the staircase.
A few inches higher, shaggy dark hair, tattoos all over his arms…I press against the wall as he walks past me, and I get a whiff of Evie’s cherry blossom perfume.
That’s him.
Not wasting another moment, I jump from my hiding spot in the shadows and wrap my arms around his waist, slamming into him from behind and sending us both down to the ground.
His shout echoes around the warehouse and I hear pounding footsteps coming down the stairs in response to his cry, but I pay them no mind.
I’m here for the man on the ground in front of me.
Atlas’s dark eyes meet my own with surprise and something that looks an awful lot like excitement shining in them before he throws a punch, hitting me directly in the jaw.
“Finally grew some balls there, did you, mezza sega?”
The light turns on, highlighting Atlas in all his sinister glory as he raises up to land another punch. I dodge his fist and throw my own out, hitting him in his temple and sending him back down to the ground.
“You selfish bastard! Are you wanting to ruin her life?” My screams mix with the sound of my fist hitting him over and over again, sometimes on his arms where he blocks me and others on his face when I get a real hit in.
His legs come up to wrap around my waist, squeezing me tightly until he gets us flipped around and begins to rain his own punches down on my face. I don’t let up, though, sending my own fists into his ribs and laughing like a maniac when I hear one of them crack.
“ENOUGH!”
Atlas immediately drops his fists and scrambles off of me, standing up with his hands around his back and chest poked out like some sort of soldier.
My arms are grabbed by someone I can’t see, and I’m dragged until I stand a few feet away from Atlas, watching as an older version of him walks down the stairs.
“Atlas, who is this boy?”
Atlas clears his throat, answering immediately. “This is Kortez Smith, an orphan from Saint Mary’s.”
Smith. I hate the generic last name they give us.
The man grunts and I keep my head held high as he walks over to me.
His eyes are the same shade as Atlas’s, although his skin is a bit darker and covered with far less tattoos and many more scars.
He almost looks familiar in this light with the shadows raining down on him like devoted followers.
He looks like someone I’d want to stay away from.
And here he is standing directly in front of me.
“Why are you attacking my son, Kortez Smith?”
So, he is Atlas’s father.
I shrug, deciding if there was ever a time to break my no cussing rule, it’s now. I just hate Evie isn’t here to see it. “He’s an asshole.”
He laughs, turning to look at Atlas with a raised eyebrow before turning back to me. “That so?”
I nod.
The man turns back to Atlas. “This have anything to do with that pretty little thing we saw driving away in your car not too long ago?”
I see Atlas swallow, his eyes shooting to mine, and for the first time since I met him, he looks scared.
His father storms toward him, backhanding him across the face right over where I split open his jaw just a few minutes earlier. “Two months you’ve been on your own and you already defy me.” He leans back and spits right on Atlas’s cheek, “It’s sickening.”
His father turns back toward me, his eyes glinting with something I can’t place. “And you – you came to attack my son and protect this girl?”
I stay silent, grinding my teeth together at the responding chuckle he lets loose.
“You got the jump on Atlas, that’s saying something…” He turns around, looking at his son before spinning around to look back at me. “You know what, I like you. You got balls, kid.”
Atlas eyes grow wide as his father turns to the man on my left. “Bring him with us.”
The last thing I see before my world goes black is Atlas lunging for his father, and his father’s gun pointed at his chest.