The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(18)

She reached out before he could. “If you need anything—”

“I don’t need anything,” he assured her as he pushed her hand out of the way.

“But if you do.” She tilted her head, following the narrowing space between them. “I’m right here. I have baking supplies and measuring cups and—”

Chuito closed the door in her face.

He stood there afterward, listening.

She huffed on the other side, sounding hurt. “That didn’t go well,” she whispered, obviously to herself.

He just waited rather than answer her.

When he heard the other door open and close, he turned around and searched for a telephone. He needed a landline, and he found a portable in the kitchen.

Thank God.

He called his cell phone, getting the number. He texted it to his mother, telling her to make sure Marcos had it. He couldn’t beg her and tell her to make sure he had it right now because he needed something normal in this crazy place.

He would just have to wait.

Then he grabbed the coffee tin before he could change his mind and dug the plastic bags out of it. He dumped it all in the toilet, and it was like standing there having a funeral in a cloud of cocaine that was billowing up around him and sinking to the bottom faster than he could save it.

He broke out in a sweat when he flushed it and had to sit down on the bathroom floor next to the small shower with his head in his hands and the room swimming.

There was nowhere in this town to buy blow.

He was certain of it.

He’d done it.

Those stupid gringos all thought they were giving him a chance of a lifetime. They didn’t know he’d just put himself in prison instead. A gringo prison, with scary cop guards and jack shit to do but work out and look at the walls around him.

And it was f*cking snowing.

He’d been trying to get caught for the past six months. Stealing cars in broad daylight. Fighting in the most deadly underground rings possible. Dealing in the gringo neighborhoods, the ones with extra heat.

He had done absolutely everything save drive up to the Miami PD and turn himself in, because he couldn’t handle the remorse anymore. He couldn’t stand that his cousin was in prison for being caught chopping cars Chuito had stolen. The guilt was too much, and he already had a f*ckload weighing heavy on his soul.

Then Clay Powers showed up and offered him something worse than getting arrested.

At least there was blow in prison.





Chapter Eight


“Are you okay?”

Chuito nodded and sat down on the mat in the center of the cage. The construction in the old rec center was making his head throb worse, and he was sweating like crazy. He took a deep breath and mumbled, “I need another cup of coffee.”

“You’ve had like eight cups of coffee today,” Clay said as he sat next to him. “I guess everyone has their vices.”

Chuito laughed, a horrible, pained laugh that he couldn’t hide even if he wanted to. God, he almost told him. He really did, because he felt like shit. The crash was a thousand times harder than he’d anticipated, and he had known it was going to be difficult.

He could barely keep his eyes open, and that wasn’t the worst of it.

It was as if the blow had simply been borrowed happiness from a nasty, vindictive loan shark who was taking it all back with triple the interest. He’d been living in an alternate reality, hiding behind a cloud of anger and cocaine, and now that the cloud was gone…he was just really sad. Horribly, unbearably, want-to-eat-his-Glock sad.

He’d never mourned his brother and Tiá Camila. He’d hidden from all those emotions because he couldn’t afford them. In their family weakness wasn’t an option. Even now, sitting there with agony crushing in on him so intensely he could barely breathe, he didn’t know how to express it.

Motherf*ckers with as many demons as Chuito were not supposed to come down off cocaine. They were supposed to snort that shit until life took them out.

Fuck, maybe he should eat a bullet. Just because he’d left his guns at home didn’t mean he couldn’t find one. Jules Conner had told him several times she packed heat.

If his mother hadn’t brainwashed him with all that weakness bullshit, he would have. No crying. Don’t let the world hurt you. It had been pounded into his head since the day he was born. Someone should give his mother a clue. The reason the world hurt him wasn’t for being soft. It hurt him because he’d been born hard. That was the reason it hurt all of them.

The soft ones were dead.

God spared the good ones and left Chuito, his mother, and Marcos behind to pay for their combined sins. It was like the apocalypse, Latino style.

“Is there a Catholic church anywhere in this place?” Chuito found himself asking Clay, because he couldn’t decide if he was pissed off at God or desperate for his help. “Anywhere?”

Clay frowned at him. “Why?”

“I’m Catholic.” Chuito gestured to himself, pointing to the cross tattoo over his heart that had the names of his brother and aunt branded in his skin along with the date they had been taken from him.

“You go to church?” Clay looked thunderstruck.

“Sometimes.” It was essentially a lie. Chuito hadn’t gone since the day they’d buried his brother and aunt. “I’m thinking of picking it back up. Don’t you go?”