I clamped my hand over my mouth again. Time slowed as a fog drifted into my brain, distorting the connection between what I witnessed and what I could process as reality. As my vision swam, one word repeated on a tongue that never moved.
No no no no no.
His face was bloody, broken, and so familiar that I saw it in my own reflection.
Nash.
It took everything inside of me not to call out to him. My brother barely hung on, and I hid behind a chef’s cart like a fucking coward. As I leaned against the metal, it shook with tremors from my body that refused to listen to reason or rationality.
What meaning did those two words hold when my brother lay broken no more than eight feet away from me, and I couldn’t help him?
The platinum blond chunk that always hung in his face lay matted and soaked in his own blood. His eyes were swollen and purple, his lip busted open and bleeding onto his shirt. Open cuts on his cheeks marred his skin. I could see the labored breathing from his chest rattling with each exertion.
Broken ribs.
Terror ate at my soul as I crouched in my confinement, tears rolling down my cheeks. My brain was a jumble of prayers, divided by shuddered breaths.
Please let him go. Please let him go.
“Let’s have some fun, shall we, Lachey?” The steel-toed-boot man knelt beside Nash and in that moment, my world stopped. The voice connected with the face, and the tears rolled harder.
Emilio.
My boss. My friend. The man I trusted everyday as I sat alone with him in a darkened office of a dirty bar had beaten my brother near death.
“Screw you.” Nash coughed, blood creating a splatter pattern on Emilio’s white t-shirt. “I’ve had enough fun for one day, thanks.”
Emilio laughed, seemingly amused. “I have to admit, you put up more of a fight than most of my junkies.” He scratched his chin with the tip of his knife. “I like that, Lachey. You’ve got balls.”
“I’m no junkie, asshole.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“I told you,” Nash wheezed, his breath coming out weaker by the minute. “You’ve got the wrong guy. I never touched your damn drugs.”
“They all say that too.” Emilio chuckled, his laugh hollow with impatience. “But see, Lachey, the problem is that I’m bored with you, and I’ve got other shit to do. So, let’s get this over with so we can both get back home, all right?”
The lump in my throat grew the minute Emilio wrapped a hand around Nash’s wrist as he struggled against him. Garbled curse words fell from my brother’s mouth as his hold on his mask of indifference slipped. The moment Emilio dragged him to the wooden chopping block and held the blade against the tip of Nash’s right forefinger, reality set in his eyes.
This was no mistake.
This was no joke.
This was real, and the only person left to protect him hid in the corner crying for her own pathetic life. I willed my feet to move, but the signal from my brain to my feet short circuited, leaving me paralyzed.
As the blade slammed down on my brother’s fingertip, the cry of intolerable pain filled the kitchen, bouncing from the walls and piercing my already broken heart. I wanted to vomit, but like a coward, I removed my hand from my mouth and covered my ears. His screams shattered me.
“Three digits for three g’s. That’s the trade, Lachey. Think about that next time you decide to arrange a deal for blow and disappear when we collect.” The clank of the knife hit the stark white tile floor, and my eyes popped open as Emilio moved toward the sink to wash the blood off his hands.
He could wash with bleach until his skin peeled off. The stain of my brother’s blood would never leave his fingers. My eyes would never forget.
Chapter Eight
VAL
By the timeI reached the heavy ornate door, it was already technically Sunday morning, and the humidity had me sweating so much I looked like I’d gotten caught in a freak rainstorm. I’d given up a long time ago trying to fight it with undershirts. Somehow mother nature centered a bubble around Houston with a climate siphoned straight from hell. Even as a boy in Monterrey with high temperatures reaching one-hundred degrees, I couldn’t remember anything so sticky and disgusting.
Dios mío.
