"Relax," she groaned, rolling her eyes. "It's just something to take the edge off. Losing your virginity hurts like a bitch. You'll thank me in the morning. I wish someone had roofied me my first time."
"You fucking—" I paused, swallowing around my tongue as the words didn't want to form, and I clenched my eyes closed to shut out the spinning room. "Roofied me."
"Technically, I did," a male said, stepping up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist. I shoved him off, falling forward, and it was only his grip that stopped me from crashing to the floor. "Easy, baby."
"Off," I protested, turning to face Wayne when he didn't take his hands off my waist. He used his grip to guide me to the dance floor, his hips swaying side to side as he moved to the beat of the music that made my brain pound against my skull with every pulse.
A vaguely familiar voice protested, calling my name from the haze that I couldn't quite grasp. "Let's get you home," Hugo said as his face filled my vision out of nowhere, but my weight sagged, my body feeling a hundred pounds heavier as the drugs hit my system and I lost all sense of who I was.
Of who I'd be when I woke up in the morning.
"Isa doesn't want to go home. Do you, baby? We're having fun dancing," Wayne said. The side of my face hit his shirt, breathing in the scent of sweat and teenage boy that I never wanted to smell again.
"Shit, what the fuck did you give her?" Hugo asked as his hands touched my face and he pried my eyes open to look at him. As my eyes drifted closed once again, I heard nothing else as a few moments passed. Only the soft sway of my body as Wayne moved us to the music lulled me to sleep.
"I didn't give her anything she didn't take all on her own. She's a big girl. Isa can make her own choices."
Hugo laughed, the sound far more menacing than anything I'd ever heard as his voice filled my ears. "Man, you have no fucking clue the shitstorm you just unleashed on yourself. Bad fucking move."
Vaguely aware of moving, of being spun around and my legs being shuffled forward by force, I flinched back when my sneakers touched the base of the bottom stair and hands wrapped around my thigh to guide me up the step. "Not such a prude now, is she?" someone asked with a dark chuckle that made the hair raise up on my arms.
Someone murmured something in warning, but everything went silent as my vision went dark around the edges.
Until my body wasn't mine anymore.
9 Rafael
The phone vibrating on the coffee table shouldn't have startled me. Given it was midnight on a Friday, Bellandi business was at its peak hour. But even so, I answered the phone with the instincts of a panther, jumping to my feet with my keys in my hand the second I saw Joaquin's name fill my screen.
"What?" I barked.
"We have a problem," Joaquin said. "She went after her sister to a party. From what I've seen, that's not abnormal for her."
"Get to the fucking point," I ordered, pulling open my front door and making my way out to the Ferrari waiting for me.
"Hugo said she's on something. Some punk is trying to take her upstairs, and he's having trouble intervening in a way that doesn't raise suspicions, since Isa isn't asking for help. Does he risk his cover?" Joaquin asked, as I started the Ferrari and peeled out of the driveway.
"Give me the fucking address. Now," I growled, throwing the car into gear as I punched the address into the GPS and swerved through traffic.
God fucking help any cop who tried to pull me over.
High school parties were nothing like in the movies. There was no massive house owned by some rich kid whose parents were gone for the weekend. Nothing valuable to be destroyed that would end up in the kid getting caught.
Just a shitty house in a shitty neighborhood with no parental supervision on the entire block. I stalked past the teens lingering in the yard, storming through the open front door. The smell of booze and weed was too familiar to me as it invaded my senses, my eyes scanning the room to catch a glimpse of Hugo. Isa was far too short for me to find quickly, and I didn't have the time or the patience to struggle to find her, knowing she was at risk. He stood on the stairs, blocking the coño who tried to guide Isa up them. The boy had his arms wrapped around Isa's waist, with her slumped in his grip and looking barely conscious.
So unlike the girl who didn't take any risks, and my blood instantly boiled with the possibilities. From what Joaquin had said, she hadn't been inside long enough to get drunk off her ass, even if she had been so inclined. "You're not taking her upstairs. She's going home," Hugo said, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes connected with mine over the boy's shoulder, and he puff up his chest, knowing that he had all the support he'd need in whatever happened.
"Yeah, and who's going to stop me? You aren't her fucking boyfriend, so why do you care?" the kid asked Hugo, posturing like he wasn't a pathetic excuse for a wanna-be man.
I stepped up behind him slowly, keeping my steps as quiet as I could. Hugo didn't move a muscle, didn't speak to give me away. I waited, willing back the need to kill. Certain that taking the life of a minor would be a new low for me.
Even if he was a dirtbag, until I knew the truth of whether he'd drugged Isa, he'd live to see another day.
Time slowed as he
