SOFIA SOL

The back screen door clatters behind me as I walk into the Ciphers’ kitchen, alone, bearing no signs of the secret we gave birth to. It won’t come crying into the world in nine months but it, too, will last a lifetime.

My mother glances over, her dark beauty shimmering even in her older years. Sophia Loren had nothing on Luna Cocker. Raquel Welch maybe could compare. Mom’s been likened to Penelope Cruz more times than she cares to know about. To me all of those old screen beauties don’t hold a candle to the fire that blazes from this woman’s heart after all the good she’s done for a society who doesn’t even know she exists.

But she can be a real bitch sometimes.

“You didn’t hear me call, or were you just ignoring me?” she demands, fists propped on her hips.

“I’m not wearing a leash, am I? Give me a fuckin’ break.” I mount a stool beside the industrial-sized kitchen island so I can eye the ravaged platters better. “Looks like you all did fine without me.”

My father ambles in, huge shoulders swaying as he smacks Mom’s ass, throws his arm around her and kisses her grey-streaked, long black hair. It shuts her up for a second, and he takes over, locking onto my matching grey eyes that he passed down to me, his sharp as he barks, “Talk to your mother like that, and I’ll take your bike apart and hide the pieces.”

A half-grin tugs at my mouth. “Fine.”

Removing herself from his side to come face me, her nostrils flare. I feel my heart quicken as she nears. Even as an adult she’s the only person who makes me nervous. I care way too much about what Luna Cocker thinks. “Lose the smirk. Don’t let your father’s charm make you forget who is boss around here. He is. Show respect to him and to me, or I’ll make him follow through with that threat and you won’t join us on the next mission, understood?”

My eyes widen.

She hit me where it hurts.

I live for our work. Just like she does.

“I’m sorry.”

“Where were you?”

“Taking a walk.”

Her dark eyelashes narrow. “You smell like sex.”

My lips part, and I flick a worried glance to Dad. The look on his face is horrible. He had no idea that was a possible reason for my absence…and now he’s ready to kill.

I mumble, “Just one of the neighbor’s ranch hands. I was celebrating.”

But Ciphers tsunami into the room, changing the air in an instant with loud laughter and shouts of victory. It appears that Honey Badger, Atlas’ father, just got his ass handed to him in a pool game by Tonk.

Before Dad can demand a name, Honey Badger smacks his shoulder. “You lost fifty bucks, Jett.”

Dad digs out his tattered-by-time, brown leather wallet, then embeds two twenties and a ten into Tonk’s chest with a hard slap. “How the fuck did ya beat the Badge?” He looks over, finally letting me out of jail. My father can stare harder than any man I’ve ever met.

Tonk grins, “He scratched the eight ball!” while his wife, Carmen, beams at him like he invented the game. He wraps an arm around her and plants a quick, rough kiss to those smiling lips of hers. Nobody here is as sickeningly sweet as those two. My best friend, Celia, was born from a love so true and filled with gratitude I’ve never heard her parents argue once. Her brother Tonk Jr. is a sad disappointment, however. Not sure how they’re even related. Barely even look alike.

Scythe’s deep baritone chortles as he razzes Honey Badger, “You cleared the table, then scratched the eight ball next shot!”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

“That’s like riding to—”

“Ah shut up!”

Fuse grabbed a chicken wing while they were going on, and he waves it. “I miss Scratch. Gotta give him a call. Last I heard he had the flu, anyone know if he got better? Wife, you call Mona and check on that?”

“I did,” Melodi nods, wringing a rag out and tossing it by the sink. “He came out of it okay, but she was worried there for a second. He’s no spring chicken.”

“Winter chicken is more like it.”

Dad points at me to demand the name of who I messed around with, but again he’s interrupted. This time by Meg as she hurries into the room with Denita by her side. “Jett, the police are coming up the drive!” She looks at her husband, Honey Badger, who she always calls by his birth name. “Antonio, it’s the same ones who pulled us over last Monday.”

Denita tells her husband, Scythe, both dark as the sky at midnight, “I checked to see if either one of them was that racist bastard we ran into last month, but it’s not.”

We’re a wide range of colors in this house, and never give it any thought until we’re faced with some idiot who hasn’t learned that judging someone by the color of their skin is just plain odd.

Skin color you have no control over.

And really who gives a fuck about things you have no control over?

In this house we judge people by their actions, and how they treat other people. That’s what people can control.

When someone acts like an asshole, it’s by choice. That deserves my judgment.

Curious and wary, the older crew barrels out of the kitchen, all behind my father, Ciphers President. The women go last, and not because we’re weak. We’re not. But it’s a fact of nature that men need to protect women in order to feel like men, and we like them that way. Mom taught me this when I was a young girl.