No such luck.
Like always, he had plans for me.
Horrible ones.
“Don’t you move,” he commanded before swinging his narrowed gaze to his hopefully soon-to-be-dead lackey. “You touch her, Emilio?”
The man’s jaw ticked. Clutching his punctured arm, he shot a glare my way.
“Fuckin’ look at me, not my girl!”
His girl.
The two-worded sentence made me sick.
One day, I’ll no longer be his.
One day, I’ll belong only to me.
One day, I’ll find peace.
“I touched her,” Emilio replied honestly, surprising me. “Fuckin’ puta didn’t want cash though.”
Fear iced my insides.
Tossing the bag of dope onto the table beside him, he smirked. “Bitch begged me to pay her in junk instead.”
The untruth enraged me. “You lying piece—”
Bang!
Droplets of blood landed on my cheekbone as a bullet slammed into Emilio’s head, embedding itself deep in his skull. Blinded by anger, I hadn’t seen Dominic pull a gun from his waistband, just as I hadn’t seen him point it at the man whose body lay unmoving on the floor, his eyes devoid of life.
Wiping the red stains from my swelling cheek, I stumbled backward. My shoulders slammed into the wall, knocking my dazed mind nearly senseless.
“You broke one of the rules, Miss Colombia,” El Diablo taunted as he tucked the gun back into his pants. “Now I’ll have to punish you.”
Scared out of my mind, I froze in place, the pounding of my thumping heart filling my ears. “I d-didn’t—”
“Darcy!” he hollered, cutting off the plea I was about to make. “Bring me what you’ve got, baby.” His eyes found me. “I need it for the greedy bitch I’m about to teach a lesson.”
Head spinning, I couldn’t decipher what he was yelling about, but I wondered what Darcy, who was nothing but a psycho, had, and why did Dominic want it?
It was a question I’d soon have the answer to.
Smiling like the evil perra she was, Darcy strutted into the kitchen and slipped something I couldn’t see into El Diablo’s hand.
Wasting no time, he stormed forward and captured my wrist, just as Emilio had done minutes before. Twisting it hard, he slammed his forearm into my throat, cutting off my ability to breathe.
Dropping the knife I still held, I clawed at his skin, drawing blood for the second time in one night. I would’ve liked to have drawn a lot more, but knowing he’d kill the girls if I stabbed him yet failed to end his life, I didn’t dare attempt it.
“You want to get high?”
His harsh voice drew my eyes to his evil ones. They were so unlike the whiskey-colored ones that haunted my dreams each night.
Though James’s were filled with darkness as well, an observation I’d made during the brief seconds he’d held me in his powerful arms, they were filled with something else too. And that something? It was secrets and pain, both of which I wanted to explore and soothe.
It was a compulsion I didn’t understand.
My feelings made no sense.
But it didn’t matter.
Nothing could ever come from them.
“Don’t worry,” El Diablo continued, pulling me from my thoughts, along with the man who’d occupied nearly all of them since my body first collided with his. “I’m goin’ to give you exactly what you want.”
Smiling, he dropped his arm.
My burning lungs expanded as I sucked in breath after breath. Eyes welling with tears, I dropped my head back, banging it against the wall once more. “I don’t want…” Throat throbbing, my vocal cords seized, killing my ability to speak.
“After the shit you just pulled”—he lifted the needle into the air—“I’m goin’ to send Jade to Clyde as punishment.”
His words both enraged and terrified me more than the smack-filled needle he clutched between his fingers ever could because Clyde Jacobs was a scumbag.
A degenerate gambler possessing a badge, he was addicted to underage girls, something Dominic supplied him with in exchange for help with the local police.
If that wasn’t bad enough, he’d developed a fascination with Jade, one which always left her both physically and mentally scarred after being forced to spend time with him. No way in hell was Dominic sending her to that puta madre.
I’d kill him first.
“You are not sending Little One to him,” I snapped, uncaring if he ripped my head off my shoulders. He could kill me after I stabbed him in the throat, something I intended to do as soon as I could reach my knife. “He hurts her.”
A vile smirk played on his lips. “I know.”
At that, I lost it.
A scream tore from deep inside me as I struck out at him using my free hand. Knuckles meeting his jaw, he staggered back the slightest bit, yet he still didn’t release my arm.
His grip tightened, causing pain to steak up my limb, but I didn’t care. Prepared to fight to the death, I would not allow him to hurt mi Little One to punish me.
“Stupid fuckin’ whore!” he yelled, enraged.
In full fight mode, I dropped to my knees, my fingers searching for my knife. Finding it right away, I clutched it in my trembling fist, ready to strike.
I never got the chance.
His hold relentless, Dominic jabbed the needle Darcy had given him into my skin, hitting the vein in the bend of my arm on the first try.
Bliss followed.
Muscles relaxing, my eyes slid closed as warmth rushed through me. Demons and painful memories quieted, euphoria cloaked me, wrapping me in its comforting embrace.
Weightless, I slid down the wall, my butt hitting the floor when he released my arm. Head turning to the side, peace invaded my heart, erasing the agony that lived there.
“Bring me Jade!”
Though I heard Dominic’s shout, the words he spoke, along with their meaning, failed to penetrate the substance-induced high shielding me from the outside world.
Shoulders slumping, I began to fall. Boneless as a tub of Jell-O, my lax side found the floor and pressed into the cold linoleum.
And it was there, on that floor, that the dope flowing through my veins stole me away from the nightmare in which I lived.
Soon, the world faded.
And
