I quickly explained to her what had happened, leaving out all the violence, guns, and threats. So basically I censored everything and then dropped the bomb. “You and Chase need to pretend to be together. People will be watching you, they’ll be following you.”
Tracey swallowed and licked her lips. “And you’ll what? Pretend you hate me again?”
“Hell no!” I snapped, grabbing her ass and lifting her until her body was firmly pressed against mine midair. “I’ll just be the friend. Basically, Chase and I are switching parts. He gets to play the boyfriend, I get to play the jackass.”
That earned an eye roll and a laugh from her. I dropped her to the ground and kissed her nose. “If they find out how much you mean to me, they’ll use that against our family and against your grandfather.”
She was silent for a moment. Her hands traced circles around the tattoo peeking out from underneath my white t-shirt. The writing was in Sicilian, but it said, “Every Saint has a past, every sinner has a future.” I had always wondered which I was. The saint or the sinner?
It was Trace’s favorite tattoo, even though I had several down my left arm and a few on my stomach and back. Her favorite had always been that one, on the left side of my chest. She said it gave her comfort. I guess she was using it for comfort right now.
“Okay,” she whispered, “I’ll do it.”
I was waiting to feel relieved, but all I felt was tense. My muscles literally tightened underneath her touch the minute the word “okay” had fallen from her perfectly pouted lips.
“I’m going to apologize in advance, though.” Tracey sniffed as a tear ran down her cheek.
“Why are you apologizing?”
Her eyes met mine. “Because I’m going to break your heart.”
Chapter Twelve
Nixon
Break? It was already broken! Horrified, I watched her look down at the ground, her shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Nixon.” She placed her hands against my chest. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Anything.” My voice was hoarse with emotion.
“Trust me. Trust in us. No matter what I say, no matter what I do—and I’ll do some terrible things—know that I love you. No matter what.”
“Kind of sounds like the speech I gave you a few weeks ago.” I sighed.
“Sucks huh?” She laughed a bit and leaned her head on my chest where her hands had just been. “Regardless of what I do, you have to know, I love you, Nixon. I choose you and only you. I’m going to break your heart every day I hold his hand instead of yours. It’s going to kill me to laugh at his jokes knowing you’re dying just a little bit inside. And if he kisses me—I’ll kiss him back, Nixon. I’m going to break your heart—because you’ve given me no other option.”
“I know.” Damn if I wasn’t ready to burst into tears myself. I knew it would be hard—not this hard. “Just do me a favor, Trace?”
“Anything.”
“Think of me…”—I smirked—“not him. When you’re kissing him, do me a favor and just keep your eyes closed so you can imagine it isn’t my best friend and yours. And I swear to all that is holy that if he puts his tongue in your mouth I will cut it the hell off.”
Tracey laughed against my chest. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Godfather.”
“Heard about that… Wanted to give some of the men some entertainment?”
“It was more of a history lesson for me.” I tensed as she kept talking. “Mo said that the writers of the movies had to actually talk to real mafia members in order to keep it realistic. They even had to ask permission to make the movie. Crazy, right?”
Nope, not crazy at all. It was a world people rarely got to see, and if they did they either went blind afterward or wished that God would strike them dead. Living in a constant state of fear wasn’t living—it was hell on earth.
“Don’t pollute your mind with Hollywood’s version of our reality, okay, Trace?” I kissed her head. “Now, let’s go get some of those cookies before Chase eats them all.”
She pulled back from me and linked her arm through mine. “Nixon.” She stopped walking and looked up at me. “Tell me there’s a happy ending.”
“Trace, I—”
“Lie,” Tracey ordered. “Lie if you have to. I just need to hear you say it.”
“Trace.” I twirled a piece of her hair around my fingers. “For us? There will always be a happy ending. Always.”
She squared her shoulders and gave me one silent nod before dragging me out of the room. Hell if I didn’t feel like the world was literally resting on my shoulders—her world, to be exact.
Chapter Thirteen
Phoenix
The room was cold and dark. Hell, I had every crevice, every plane of the wall memorized. Ironic that the very room I used to play in when I was a kid had been turned into my own personal chamber of Hell.
I deserved it.
All of it.
I was too selfish to kill myself, although the thought had crossed my mind more times than I’d ever admit to anyone, let alone Nixon.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness and focused on the door. I knew it was only a matter of time before Nixon came bursting through, guns blazing. At least I was dealing with Nixon instead of Chase. There was a melodrama I didn’t want to deal with—two guys both in love with the same girl—and lucky me, I was the object of both of their hatred.
I would hate me, too. I did hate me. I hated what I was, I hated what I did, I hated what I represented; but most of all, I hated that the legacy I would leave behind as a De Lange was that of an attempted r**ist and a rat.
I would hang. And I would deserve every damn second the noose tightened around my neck. Some things can’t be undone—or unseen—and my eyes, they’d seen and experienced it all. My dad had made sure of that. He’d wanted to expose me to the darkness of our family—I prayed for the first time in years, the day they sent Mil away. She was only my stepsister but I would have done anything to save her—anything to protect her from the ugliness that my father was a part of. Because I knew it was only a matter of time before she was brought into his circle. I’d only been sixteen when it happened to me, and I could still see the blood on my hands.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “You want me to…”—I swallowed back the tears—“hurt her.”
“It won’t hurt.” My dad chuckled. “I imagine she’ll like it.”
I licked my lips and glanced back at the door. It was hard to see because the lights kept flickering on and off—as if they couldn’t decide whether or not to shine light on the hell I was experiencing, or darken—allowing me to forget what was right in front of me.
My dad slapped the girl across the face. She had two faint bruises on her right cheek and a bloody lip. Her blond hair was matted to her head, and I could see cuts and scrapes all over her body, as if someone had used her as his personal sharpening tool.
“Do what needs to be done, son.” My dad slapped my back. “It’s easier this way. This way, you won’t feel, do you understand?”
I shook my head as the girl’s eyes pleaded with mine. I wanted to shout, to cry, to do anything. Instead I just stood there as my dad explained again.
“Money, son. We need it, our family needs it. Sometimes we have to do bad things in order to get to the good.”
I nodded my agreement and stuffed my hands in my pockets to keep from choking the life from his body.
“So, we sell the girls.” Dad shrugged. “Truly, it is not as bad as it looks. They are sold to very wealthy men who are willing to pay immensely for someone so—young.”
“Young?” I nearly whispered.
“Underage,” he clarified. “Lucky for you, this particular girl doesn’t need to be… pure, if you get my meaning. The sooner you remedy the situation the better you’ll feel about everything. After all, it’s just sex.”
Just sex? I’d never had sex. I was the only one of my friends who hadn’t. They thought it was because I was waiting—never would they guess it was because I envisioned it as rape. I could never see it as any different, because my entire life I’d watched my dad rape my mom over and over again, and now, he was asking me to do the same thing.
I wiped a stray tear and looked away. “Can’t we just get someone else to do it?”
The slap came so fast I didn’t have time to duck. It stung like hell as I fell against the concrete next to the very girl I was trying to save.
“You want in the business? You want to be boss someday?” Dad threw a knife onto the floor. The clatter may as well have been a bomb going off for as loud as it was. “You either do this”—he nodded down toward the knife—“or I’ll kill her. The blood will be on your hands and you’ll get to tell our client exactly why we were not able to deliver as promised. Think of your mother, your sister, and make your choice.” He looked down at his watch and scowled. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
The minute the door shut, I let a few more tears escape before looking at the girl shivering next to me.
“I’m—” I croaked and closed my eyes.
“Do it.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Just make it fast, please just make it fast.”
“I can’t…”
She grabbed my hand. The nameless girl that was getting sold into slavery grabbed my hand to comfort me. “If you don’t we’ll all die anyway.”
I nodded and numbly worked the buttons on my shirt, pulling it off, and following with my jeans.
The minute I touched her, the light that had once been in her eyes, the very last shred of dignity that had remained in her possession—disappeared. All I saw was black, all I felt was evil, and Dad was right. Because when everything was over—I felt nothing.
Headlights shone through the tiny window above the door. My hands gripped the chair and I waited, but nobody came to the door.
Exhaling in relief, I tried to focus on something, anything, to make the memories of my childhood go away. But in the end, I knew nothing would work. I had no soul. And people who had no souls? They didn’t—couldn’t—feel anything but darkness, and that’s what I was—Lucifer himself.
Chapter Fourteen
Chase
“It’s staring at me.” I sipped my coffee and handed Trace back her phone. “I don’t like it when things stare.”
Trace rolled her eyes. “It’s a cow, Chase. What do you expect it to do? Talk to you through the phone?”
“Moo. Aren’t cows supposed to moo? It looks weird just standing there eating.”
“You were the one who said you wanted to see what my home was like.”
I laughed. “ ‘Home’ as in ‘house.’ I didn’t think you’d give me a half hour speech on farm life and how to breed cattle. Thanks for the pictures and video, by the way. I’d always wanted to know why farmers stuck their hands up the cows’ asses—”