by Aly Martinez
“I’m turning Chrissy out,” he announced as though it had been his idea.
Quiet relief flooded my body, and I did my damnedest to hide my smile. “Okay.”
And then, all too quickly, I didn’t have a smile to hide.
“Shift the girls around. I’ll send over two more in a few days to take her place.”
My stomach sank. New girls meant new problems. New troubles. New fights. But worst of all, new girls meant he’d found more women to drag into this hell.
As much as it killed me, there was nothing I could do to prevent that. All I could do was keep my head high and my judgments low and accept them with open arms into the very life I’d sell my soul to escape.
Besides, my feeling sorry for the new girls wasn’t going to keep them safe.
Which reminded me…
“You need to replace Hugo.”
He slowly turned to face me with a scowl. “Don’t push your luck with me.”
I shrugged. “Okay. But he’s been fucking the girls in exchange for repairs.”
His body jerked, and then the muscles at the base of his neck strained against the collar of his pressed white button-down.
If I had led with this problem, we’d never have gotten to Chrissy. Marcos didn’t give the first damn about any of my girls being taken advantage of. He did, however, care about his cousin blatantly breaking one of his precious rules.
For the Guerrero men, pride and control were everything. And disrespect—family or not—was a mortal sin.
Chrissy he’d take care of. She’d be put out to pasture, as Nic had often called it. Basically, she’d be left on a corner and ordered to never come back. Though, if I knew that woman at all, she’d join another stable before the sun went down. But Hugo… Well, his life hung in the balance of how generous Marcos was feeling that particular afternoon.
With long strides, he stormed from my apartment. Outside, four men fell into step behind him. His entourage changed so fast that I didn’t bother learning their names. Not that I needed to. They didn’t talk to me.
“Don’t forget about Chrissy!” I yelled after him.
He didn’t acknowledge me directly, but he snapped and flicked a finger to the beefy guy on his left as they marched down the stairs single file.
“Oh my God,” Savannah breathed when we were alone. “I’m so sorry, Cora. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I replied on pure instinct before I did the physical inventory. My head was pounding, my eye was aching, my vision was partially filled with black dots, and my nose was still messed up from earlier that morning. But overall, I was as fine as I was ever going to be.
“Go to your room and lock the door,” I ordered.
“I…I…um,” she stammered.
Smoothing my pale-pink tank top down, I snapped, “We’ll talk later.”
“But—”
“Later,” I repeated. “Now, go.”
Thankfully—or my head and my slipping patience—she didn’t argue any further. With my back to her, I listened to her footsteps move down the hall. Then there was the click of her door shutting followed by the tick of the lock, the clack of the deadbolt, and then the slide of the chain. Only then did I leave the apartment.
The sound of yelling greeted me before I hit the breezeway. Usually, the chaos was a hacksaw to my nerves, but after the day I’d had, it was music to my ears.
Chrissy shouting.
Marcos cussing.
Hugo lying.
It was the raging winds of the sweetest storm.
And like the princess they claimed I was, I stood at the rusted railing that overlooked the parking lot of my castle, my long, blond curls whipping in the wind, my body aching, but not nearly as much as my heart. I sucked in a deep breath and got lost in the maelstrom of my kingdom.
I felt nothing as I watched Marcos land fist after fist against Hugo’s face. The only thing that could have been better was if Hugo had landed a few punches of his own.
“Cora!” Chrissy screamed as Marcos’s man guided her to a car with his hand in the back of her hair. “Cora, please!”
I wanted to feel guilty. Maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough to make her understand how serious I was about Savannah, but I refused to drown myself in the cesspool of what-ifs.
I couldn’t save everyone, regardless of how hard I tried. Women like Chrissy were destined to destroy themselves, and I wasn’t about to stand by and allow my girls to be slayed by her shrapnel.
Emotionless, I watched them sling her into the back seat of a black Mercedes, and seconds later, Hugo’s unconscious body was unceremoniously tossed into the trunk.
In the commotion, most of the girls had emerged from their apartments.
None of them spoke.
Nor did any of them step up on Chrissy’s behalf.
The few I could see on the bottom floor were huddled together like a team in pajamas, their hair up, their faces clean of makeup.
All fights were momentarily forgiven.
Problems forgotten.
Enemies becoming sisters.
And as the car kicked up a cloud of dust, we’d lost one of our own, but we were stronger than ever.
Or at least they were.
“Cora,” someone called.
“Cora,” came another voice.
And then another. “Cora.”
With my head spinning in a million different directions, I ignored them and walked back to my apartment, making a beeline straight to my bedroom.
Calmly, I shut the door, locked all three locks, and then—careful not to let Savannah hear me—slid the rocking chair over and propped it under the doorknob.
No sooner than I nabbed a pillow off the bed and brought it to my face, the floodgates opened.
I sank down the wall, my shoulders shaking violently as sobs overtook me. They were skillfully silent. Wild, yet perfectly controlled from far too many years of practice. The sudden emotional release was agony when all I truly needed was a single second of relief.
Every tear was earth shattering, all-consuming, and torn from my soul.
And still, after all this time, they changed absolutely nothing.
But then again, nothing ever would.
Penn
“Penn,” Drew called from the other side of the door. “You ready?”
I blinked at the cheap commercial carpet beneath my bare feet.
It was a different hotel in what felt like a different lifetime. God knew, I was a different man. But the carpet was always the same.
Ugly. Dingy. Coarse.
Beautiful, heartbreaking…
Her.
Wiping the sweat beading on my forehead, I yelled, “It’s open!” I got busy pulling on my socks as the door cracked open, and Drew’s lanky frame appeared in my peripheral vision, holding two cups of coffee.
He propped his shoulder against the jamb. “You get any sleep?”
I shoved off the bed and walked to the dimly lit bathroom to grab my boots. “Few hours in the truck.”
“Mm,” he replied. “She was gone by midnight. You could have come back—”
“Can’t sleep in a hotel room. Not new information.” After sinking down on the corner of the bed, I slipped my brown leather boots on without allowing my gaze to stray to the carpet again. “Besides, me sleeping in here might hinder your ability to fuck your way through the female population of Chicago.”
He laughed and walked inside, using his foot to shut the door. “I spent the last two years behind bars where the only tits I saw were on a three-hundred-pound man named Bubba. I have some making up to do.”
I took the offered coffee and set it on the nightstand. “Should I be concerned that you were checking out Bubba in the shower?”
His cup stopped halfway to his mouth. “Jesus Christ. Was that a joke?”
I finished with my laces and then sat up, resting my elbows on my thighs and allowing my hands to dangle between my legs. “I don’t know. I guess that depends on how n
ice you thought his tits were.”
He stared at me in awe for several seconds, and then a slow Drew Walker smile split his face, but his eyes turned dark. “Shit, it’s good to see you again, brother,” he choked out through the emotion.
I cut my gaze to the side to hide the way his happiness wrecked me. It sure as fuck didn’t feel good to see myself when I looked in the mirror. “Listen, I’m going to grab some breakfast. What time do we have to be there?”
I felt his presence close in on me, but I gathered my wallet and keys to avoid eye contact.
“You don’t have to do this, Penn.”
My head snapped up. “You know I do.”
He stepped into my path, forcing me to pull up short. “Go home. You still have the house, right?”
Drew was younger than I was by two years, but that little shit had me in height.
I had him everywhere else.
Pressing a palm to his chest, I gave him a hard shove. “Move, asshole.”
He shook his head. “I appreciate you coming to pick me up, but you should go back. Start a new company.”
“You mean like the one I lost? Yeah, spectacular idea.”
“No. I mean like the one you gave up the day she died.”
My hand on his chest became a fist around his T-shirt. “Shut your damn mouth.”
“You know it’s true.”
“No. What I fucking know is I need a goddamn job, Drew. Same as you. And not twenty-four hours ago, you said your buddy on the inside found us one. Don’t start this go home bullshit with me now.”
His brown eyes held my blues, neither of us willing to back down. “You don’t belong here.”
“I don’t fucking belong anywhere!” I roared, giving him a hard shake before releasing him.
Like I’d been shot, anger tore free of the numbness making me feel everything, fresh as the day I’d failed her. My chest heaved, and my heart went to war with my rib cage. Lacing my fingers on the back of my neck, I tucked my chin to my chest and stared down at that fucking carpet.
One in. One out.
“Please!” she’d screamed as the silver blade of his knife disappeared inside her stomach.
One in. One out.
“You’ll never be alone,” she’d whispered in her vows the day we’d gotten married.
One in. One out.
“Just a little longer,” she’d soothed the day I’d watched her drive away for the very last time.
One in. One out.
I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on the emptiness that filled my vision.
One in. One out.
Slowly, the familiar numbness began to creep back over me like a force field rejuvenating my defenses and allowing me to breathe again.
“I need this, Drew.”
“Okay. Shit, man. Relax. It’s just… It’s a maintenance job at a whore house and you’ve got an engineering degree from MIT. I’m thinking you’re a little overqualified.”
Opening my eyes, I shook my head. “I’m not that man anymore. That guy died a long time ago. In a shitty hotel room just like this one.”
“So bring him back to life.” He shot me a crooked grin. “Jesus did it.”
Fucking Drew.
Cracking my neck, I sucked in a shaky breath. “Don’t do this. Not today.”
His cheeks puffed as he blew out a ragged sigh. “All right. I gotchu.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “But, for the record, she’d kick your ass if she saw you like this.”
“I know,” I half choked, half laughed. “I fucking know. And it’s time.”
After nabbing my coffee off the nightstand, he once again passed it my way. Lifting his in the air, he smiled—a true, genuine smile I hadn’t been able to form in years—and toasted, “To new beginnings.”
I tapped my cup with his. “To the end.”
Cora
“So, yeah, Hugo’s officially gone,” I said into the phone wedged between my shoulder and my ear as I started up the steps to my apartment. Grocery sacks dangled off my arms, weighing me down. The third floor was the safest, but, God, it was a pain in the ass—literally and figuratively—to haul groceries up three flights of stairs each week.
“Good,” Catalina replied and then paused awkwardly.
I knew what was coming. It happened every time an unknown number popped up on my phone. I had no way to contact her, just the address and a combination to a storage locker across town where I’d drop her envelopes of cash.
“Look, I hate to ask you this, but Isabel was sick last week and—”
“How much?” I whispered, glancing around as if someone could hear her.
Her voice was thick and shaky as she replied, “Maybe just two hundred bucks or so. Honestly, whatever you can spare.”
I’d give her five hundred.
“Yeah. That’s no problem. I’ll drop it off tonight after the girls go to bed.”
Her breathing shuddered, tears no doubt falling from her russet-brown eyes. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Just stay alive. That’s all I need.”
“I love you, Cora.”
“I love you too.” I didn’t dare say her name.
She’d been on the run since the day she’d testified against her father, Manuel Guerrero. If she was ever found, it would be her death sentence. And not just because her brothers, Dante and Marcos, would never stop looking for her. Her husband, who had once been tight with Manuel—but later, as the district attorney, put him behind bars—was hell-bent on finding her as well.
She was my only lifeline outside of that building. My survival depended on her ability to remain in the shadows. And I would do whatever it took to keep her away from them, including risking my life to bring her money.
Because, one day, she was going to be my only way out of this nightmare.
Catalina severed the call just as I hit the landing to the third floor. Sucking in a breath, I packed down the emotion that accompanied those calls. If I thought about it too long, those moments would destroy me.
In my weightlifting exercise of the day, I lifted my hand—and all seven thousand pounds of bags—to remove my phone from my ear and then kicked on the bottom of my apartment door. “Little help!”
All the locks clicked and then Savannah swung the door open.
A blast of mildew assaulted me. “Christ, it stinks in here.”
“You told me not to open the windows while you were gone.” She started grabbing bags from my outstretched arms.
She’d been on her best behavior in the two days since Chrissy had been kicked out. And considering that the water had to be shut off to half the building due to rusted-out pipes, I wasn’t about to complain. With thirty women sharing two bathrooms and the strong possibility of mold from the flooded floors and drywall giving my girls the black lung, I needed all the extra help I could get.
As I passed, River didn’t lift her head from her bowl of cereal. Unlike Savannah, River had been avoiding me since Chrissy’s departure. Or, more accurately, since she had first seen the giant bruise Marcos had left on my cheek.
I knew the silent treatment all too well—including how it would end.
She’d freeze me out for a few days, and then I’d make homemade lasagna and garlic bread. She’d cave and sit in the kitchen while it cooked, not speaking, but no longer avoiding. And then, when our plates were empty and we were both in a carb coma, she’d tell me a truth: how much she hated it when I allowed Marcos to put his hands on me in order to protect the other girls.
And then I’d tell her a lie: that I wouldn’t do it again.
Truth and lies—it was how we worked.
“Hey, Riv,” I called, setting the bags on the counter. “Can you do me a favor and grab the bleach out of my trunk? And leave the door open—this place reeks.”
She didn’t say a word as she rose to her feet, carried her bowl to the sink, dropped it in with a loud crash, and stomped from the apartment.
“Okay, good talk!” I yelled after
her. “We should do that more often.”
Savannah was immediately at my side, helping me unload groceries. “I’ll talk to her tonight. She’ll come around. I promise.”
I barked a laugh and put the milk in the fridge. “I’m not sure you need to be talking to anyone.”
She extended two cans of peas my way and glared, a perfectly penciled in auburn eyebrow arched with familiar attitude. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I continued unloading the cold stuff. “It means we haven’t even talked about the other day.”
“Look, I said I was sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t going to cut it this time,” I replied while hiding the tub of mint chocolate chip behind a bag of frozen broccoli with hopes it might still be there later that night.
She huffed. “What else do you want from me?”
I moved to the pantry and stashed the chocolate chip cookies behind a box of raisin granola that had been there for at least three years. “Well, first, I want you to drop the shitty attitude.”
“I don’t have a shitty attitude!”
With waning patience, I shot her an incredulous glare and snapped my fingers, motioning for the peas.
She slapped them into my hands one at a time. “I don’t know what you want me to say… I didn’t think Chrissy would—”
“And that’s your problem!” I exclaimed.
Her body locked up tight.
I slammed the cans of peas down—another blockade around my secret cookie stash—then gave her my full attention.
Her deep-green eyes were wide and uncharacteristically filled with tears. Short of the day she’d witnessed my argument with Marcos, it was the most emotion I’d ever gotten from her.
So I pounced. “Savannah, you haven’t thought about anyone but yourself since you moved in here. The sneaking out? The arguments with me? The constant fights with River? It’s all been about Savannah.”
“That’s not true! You blame me for everything. I didn’t want to come here in the first place.”
“And you think I did?” I opened my arms out wide and spun in a circle around the tiny kitchen, my fingertips trailing against the counter on either side. “Do you think for a single second that I want to be here? We made choices, Savannah. Maybe not the specific choice to come here, but choices that led us to this moment all the same.” I stabbed a finger in her direction. “You forget I’ve been where you are. The day you got in that car with Dante, a lot of choices were made for you. They were the same choices Nic made for me. And I’m standing here telling you they suck in the worst way. But I am not Dante. I’m not Marcos. I’m not your fucked-up parents. And most of all…I am not your enemy.”
