"Don't worry about Wayne," I said, instead of fretting about it. "He's just ridiculous."
"He doesn't get to touch you without permission. That's not cool," Hugo scoffed. He looked down at me, twisting his lips thoughtfully. "No boyfriend?"
"No," I said, hoping to all that was holy that we weren't going there. I didn't have an interest in dating after the last douche canoe of an ex.
"Good. Keep it that way, because guys just aren't worth the time, honestly," he said, slinging an arm over my shoulder in a very friendly gesture. "And now you've got someone to look out for you and keep the assholes away."
We walked into the history room just before the bell rang, and I couldn't shake the feeling that he meant that literally.
Wayne came to school with a broken wrist and black eye the next day.
I didn't ask, and he didn't smack my ass.
7 Rafael
One day later
A handful of pages scattered the desk in front of me in the office of the Chicago home we'd rented to accommodate us during our stay. A life reduced to a dozen pages, my notes were strewn all over the information in front of me.
Isa deserved a life of luxury, not tutoring students who most often were forced into studying with her. Not babysitting the brats of wealthy families in the area who didn't pay her anywhere near enough money to walk home with baby food in her hair. She most certainly shouldn't have had to give most of the money she earned to her grandmother's medical expenses.
All of that would change very soon.
My hands gripped the edge of the desk as I stared at the miscellaneous pages in front of me as I thought over my plan. Something was missing. The key to Isa's personality hovered at the edge like something I couldn't grasp. The workaholic tendencies seemed illogical, given her age and station in life. Where many of the teens in her neighborhood were much like Odina, finding thrills wherever they could, Isa had never so much as taken a step off the path her parents had laid out for her.
The question was why?
Nothing on paper gave any reason for it, and her behavior when she was alone didn't appear to change, either. I'd listened to her in her room at night, the silence deafening.
She rarely listened to music. She didn't touch herself at night when nobody was watching.
Nothing.
It was as if she was already dead. Like the moment eyes stopped watching her, she ceased to exist.
It made her dangerous. It made her unpredictable, and things I couldn't predict, I couldn't control. If I didn't understand her, I wouldn't know how much of a fight to expect when I took her after her graduation.
Would she scream and rage? Would she bleed me to save herself? Or would she take it all with the quiet acceptance that she seemed to move through the motions of her life with?
My cell phone vibrated on the desk, rattling over the papers as it moved closer to me. "Yeah?" I asked, hitting the button to answer the call. It stayed on the table while I turned on the speakerphone, and Alejandro's voice filled the space.
"Are you still staring at them?" he asked, referring to the collection of pictures that accompanied the materials Joaquin had gathered for me. An empty smile, hollow, as if she didn't even realize that her life was nothing more than a series of duties and responsibilities that should never have been hers. Next to the blinding beam of her sister's overly bright, intoxicated smile, it only seemed even more fragile.
The two girls standing side by side were almost exact replicas of one another if you took away the different tastes in clothing, but something lurked in Isa's eyes that wasn't there in Odina's gaze. I couldn't explain it, and the knowledge that, even after my infiltrating every part of her life, she still maintained her secrets drove me to the point of desperation.
"No," I grunted instead of answering with the truth of the maelstrom inside of me. I needed to keep my distance from Isa until she was mine, lest I drive myself mad with the need to understand her secrets.
"Liar," Alejandro chuckled. "She's pretty, in a sad sort of way," he said, echoing my own thoughts.
"But why is she so sad?" I asked him, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. Music pounded in the living room as my men enjoyed the slew of women and booze that welcomed them to Chicago, but I had no interest in any of it. Much like my Isa, I rarely indulged in alcohol.
And the women weren't her, with her haunted eyes and the sectoral heterochromia that called to me on a level I couldn't understand. Never in my life had I met someone with multi-colored eyes besides myself and my mother, and finding it in the woman who captivated me from a distance?
The odds must have been impossible.
"There's nothing in the files?" he asked, his voice contemplative.
"Nada," I agreed. "When she was young, she fell into the river and nearly drowned. It explains her fear of water, yes, but not this."
He chuckled. "Maybe she just needs you to bring her to life."
I scoffed in return to his sappy sentiment that neither of us believed. The reality of my life and the way Isa would have little choice in our relationship meant that I'd be far more likely to drive her further into herself. I needed to know what lines she wouldn't tolerate me crossing. "Que te folle un pez," I spat with a chuckle. I hope you get fucked by a fish.
His laughter faded as he quieted. "If she really is as fragile as she sounds, have you considered going about it in a way that's not so traumatic?" he asked.
"Like what?"
"If she loved you, finding
