“No,” I sobbed. “Jack would never—”
The words were barely out of my mouth when he yanked me up and grabbed my face, fingers digging into my cheeks. “You defend that pendejo?” Dark, dark eyes scanned my tear-filled ones. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“You’ve got it wrong.” I choked on the words as air and tears and snot all fought for space. “Not Jack. He wouldn’t.”
Santiago shoved me away from him, his bitter laugh short on my heels. My hands shot up, fingers trembling as I pressed them to the tender skin of my cheeks. He watched me and try as I might, I couldn’t decipher the look in his eyes.
Bending over, he scribbled something on a piece of paper while my brain frantically tried to make sense of everything. Which proved to be a lot more difficult when the only thing I saw was that poor woman’s lifeless body.
Santiago was wrong. There was no way Jack was responsible for that. He’d always been my safe place, the person I could call at 3 am because I had a bad dream. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, hurt anyone.
“Go to this address,” I heard Santiago bark and when I blinked, he was right there in front of me shoving a piece of paper into my hand. “See the man you idolize in action.” He leaned in close, his breath blowing over my lips with every growled word. “Then tell me who’s got it wrong.”
Chapter Nine
Becca
I should’ve ignored everything Santiago had said and gone straight home. Instead, I’d tried to phone Jack and when he didn’t answer, I headed to the address Santiago had shoved into my hand before I fled his house.
My trembling hands stilled on the gate, eyes roaming over the dark house in front of me. The fact that this was one of my uncle’s properties had a strange feeling of foreboding creeping up my spine and settling inside my bones.
What if…
No. He wasn’t in there. There was no way my brother inside that house doing the things Santiago had accused him of. Straightening my spine, I pushed through the gate. Determination to prove my brother’s innocence fueling every step I took.
I reached the porch in no time at all, my heart sinking a little when I found the front door unlocked. Again, my feet refused to move. My heart flip-flopped inside my chest as the sound of skin slapping against skin reached my ears.
This couldn’t be what it sounded like. It just couldn’t.
I stepped inside and the moment I turned to the right; I saw it. The old, worn-out mattress in the middle of the empty room… And the people laying on it.
On instinct my hands came up to cover my eyes, but it was too late. Nothing would ever erase the terrifying scene I’d just walked in on. Jack’s ragged movements. His labored breaths. The girl… oh my goodness, the girl.
I squeezed my lids together but instead of chasing the image away, my brain provided me with an entirely different one. Santiago’s sister. Naked. Lifeless. His words, his accusation, split through my skull.
“No!”
My feet began to move before my eyes were fully open. When I reached the bed, I twisted my body to slam my shoulder straight into Jack. He stumbled to the side before tripping over his feet and landing on his ass on the floor.
I didn’t have time to worry about him; the girl on the bed needed me. In the space of a breath, I was hovering over her with my fingers pressed to the vein in her neck. I swear, the entire world went deathly still while I tried, and prayed, to find a pulse.
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
Never before had I felt the relief that rushed over me when a faint ticking registered against my fingertips. That relief was short-lived when rough hands tangled in my hair and pulled me off the bed.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I hardly recognized the man yelling at me as my brother. And the way he was tugging on my tresses like I was a rag doll hurt my heart more than the physical pain I was feeling.
“What are you doing?” I fired back through the river of tears rolling down my skin. His eyes bore into mine, but his stare was blank. Unrecognizable. My brain barely had time to process when my hand came up and connected with his cheek. Hard.
The sharp sound of the slap reverberated through the musty room and for a split second I saw my brother. Then his eyes glazed over. His big paw returned the smack I’d delivered. The force of it whipping my head to the side.
“Who are you?” I cried.
Instead of answering me, his hand wrapped around my neck and he drove me backward until my back slammed into the wall.
“Jack, please!?”
Fingers still wrapped around my throat, he pulled my head back and smacked it against the wall again. Sharp, stinging pains shot through my skull like a million knifes sinking into my brain at once.
It hurt so much.
“This isn’t you,” I tried a different tactic. “I know you, Jack. This isn’t you.”
“You don’t know shit, Becca.”
The fingers around my throat tightened, blocking the air from coming in or going out. Panicked, I clawed at his hands, the sharp edges of my nails digging into my own skin. “Jack...” I croaked out. “Please… Can’t…”
My world shifted. Everything around me going from focused to blurry. Slowly, a black fog seeped through corners of my vision. I tried to blink. Tried to focus on the words coming out of Jack’s mouth.
But they sounded distant and hollow.
My head lolled to the side; my gaze landing on the blurry figure sprawled out on the bed. I needed her to be alive. To be safe.
I opened my mouth to plead with my brother one more time but instead of words a strangled sound rolled off my tongue right before I was plunged into darkness.
Chapter Ten
Santiago
“Shit!”
I made my feet move
