Chapter
18

“Caesar, this guy, he’s gonna save us from this corner.”

I rolled my eyes at my sister and shook my head. “Your head is always in the clouds behind a boy. Ain’t nobody gonna take you off this corner but me. I’ve got some things lined up,” I told her, puffing out my chest. She pushed her dark hair behind her ears and shook her head. Yolanda always looked like Mom, with the same narrow nose, bow mouth, and too-big eyes. She was the prettiest girl in the whole world, and she always hung out with me when I asked.

She cocked her head to the side and looked at me. “You’re thirteen, bro. No one is going to deal with a thirteen-year-old for that much dough. I’m your big sister, and I’m supposed to protect you.”

I hated when she said that. She didn’t play the game right. She never did.

“I call game over. You aren’t helping this at all,” I told her with a laugh.

“Well, stop arguing with me. I say I’m making us rich first.”

“And I said let me be the one to do it.” She and Mom deserved the best in life. Dad might not have been around, but we grew up good, and I learned from my sister how to open doors, listen, and be kind to a woman. It was sort of mushy, but she liked showing me, and I didn’t say no to her.

“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” she asked.

The sudden change of subject confused me. I tilted my head, and my hair—too long on top—fell into my eyes. She smiled softly at me and brushed it back. I liked when she did that, just like Mom.

“You need to ask Mom for another appointment,” she said.

I shook her hand off. “I like it like that. But I would take us all to Florida. It never gets cold there. Where would you take us?”

She sighed, the three-year difference between us showing when she gave me an indulgent smile. “You get used to the temperature and then you will feel cold when it drops a bit.”

“Are you going to answer me, or argue with me?” I shot back.

“Okay, okay. I’d take us to England, or maybe Scotland. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Uh, no. Why would we go that far away?”

“To escape.”

She looked down the street, her eyes filled with sadness. She did that a lot since Dad left. I jumped in front of her and grabbed her arms. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Mom is going to be fine, and so are we,” I promised her.

Yeah, our parents had divorced, but it wasn’t nearly as nasty as some of the kids I went to school with had experience with their parents. Our dad hadn’t beaten our mom or cheated. They just grew apart, Mom said, and it had been time to walk away. No fighting, no screaming, and we didn’t lose our house. We woke up every day and things were the same. But Yolanda? She kept looking for Dad to come back. To be Daddy’s Little Girl. But he changed, stayed away. And it messed with her differently than Mom and me.

“Come on, we can pick more places to move to tomorrow. I’m hungry,” I prompted.

“In a bit. I just want to sit outside and watch the sunset.”

“Girls are weird,” I said, and she ruffled my hair.

I grunted and pushed her hands away before I fixed the strands so they were slicked back.

“You won’t always think that way. Besides, haven’t you been looking at Megan all dopey lately?”

“Screw you!” I yelled, and stomped inside. She laughed behind me, a light sound that made me chuckle where she couldn’t hear it.

I never saw my sister again. That night after we argued, while I sat inside and played video games and Mom was at work. Her picture taunted me on the mantel, drew me to it. I held the silver frame in my fingers so tight I thought I’d break it. Gold, I should have framed her in gold. That was what she was worth. Fucking gold, and that bastard had tarnished her. Why? Because she was some cheap tart who thought getting pregnant would mean he’d take care of us all.

Bastard. Fucking bastard.

Yolanda had been dating an older man to get money. He’d told her he loved her, that he wanted to marry her and take her away. But he never did. Instead, when she got pregnant, he chose to remove the problem entirely. I went to jail for him. At seventeen, I’d found him. After my mother died, and I didn’t have anyone in the world to care for, I found him—in his big mansion, surrounded by half-naked women. I walked in with death in my eyes and coldness in my heart. Losing Yolanda and my mother had hardened me in a way that a bad life never would have. I didn’t care what happened to me.

The lawyers said I snapped. That in a moment of weakness just a day after my mother’s death, I’d found the man who’d taken my sister and took my pain out on him. Yeah, the fuck I did. On every fucking scrap of skin. Every pint of fucking blood. Everything, until he wasn’t recognizable.

I was covered in him by time the cops got there, and I laughed the entire way to the jail. I felt better. That ever-present anger dissipated for just those few seconds when I’d been violent. And the switch was flipped. The judge and the prosecution knew they’d have a hard case and agreed to allow me a guilty plea to a lesser charge of manslaughter. I took seven years and allowed prison to morph me. I sucked in the hell until nothing fazed me. By the time I walked out the doors, I had a business acumen out of this world, connections and favors to start me off right, and a plan. I’d never be that weak again, and I’d find ways to release that anger.

Murdering people caused an amount of heat I couldn’t handle, so I turned to pets. Pretty little women the world had forgotten about, ones who wouldn’t be missed. I acted out my pain on them. Part of me hated girls like Yolanda … I was fucking livid my sister had been so stupid. That she’d looked to a man to save her from the world. I needed to remind them the world didn’t work that way. That pretty dreams and desperation only landed them in a hell of their own creating. I clenched Yolanda’s picture in my hands. Maybe I was punishing her, too. For leaving me behind, for believing in a knight in shining armor. Just for thinking they did, I gave them me instead. A warning, a punishment.

Or maybe I hated them all because they weren’t my sister. They couldn’t give her back to me, but they looked at me with fear and sadness in their eyes, with hope, and I needed to break them, shatter them, the way she was. If she couldn’t live, neither should they. And when I made them fade into someone’s brothel, I made sure their families were provided for through one of my multitude of shell companies as charity. It wouldn’t take the pain away, but I thanked them for giving me some sort of peace.

My ticket to Hell was signed by the Devil himself.

“Caesar?”

I groaned, my knees aching. At some point, I’d dropped to the floor and Yolanda’s picture rested on the ground before me, the frame broken. I gripped the swath of my hair she’d always flipped back in a punishing grip. My scalp stung as I released the strands and acknowledged Sean.

He approached me with hesitant steps. “I’ll get her another frame.”

“Make it gold this time. Gold. And put her up on the wall so it can’t come off.”

He nodded before he put his hand out. “Come on, man. I’ll get you a drink.”

I let him help me up from the floor and sit me on my couch before he left for the kitchen. He came back after a few moments with a sifter full of deep-gold brandy.

“What tripped you?” he asked.

I’d met Sean through a mutual connection after coming out of jail. I needed to make sure I had a businessman to front my companies as I came up. The newly-graduated kid from Harvard Law was the perfect fit. He kept me out of jail, in the dough, and he’d accumulated a pretty penny selling to his peers at school through a double-blind online delivery service. But I provided the brawn and a street cred he didn’t have.

Four years later, he was the only one who knew the truth about my life, about Yolanda, and the need in me. We knew enough dirt about each other we’d never be able to walk away. But Sean was fine with being knight to a king, and I had an ego big enough to let him.

Instead of answering, I took a sip of liquor and let my eyes drift to the ceiling. My loft-style penthouse didn’t let me look directly to the floor of my quarters upstairs, but he got the point.

He sighed hard and unbuttoned his shirt sleeves before rolling them up. “Do I need to make arrangements for her sale?”

I shook my head. “She’s not for sale.”

“Why?”

My gaze swung to his, anger just on the edge. But his confused expression stopped me. He didn’t understand any more than I did. “She reminds me of her,” I said finally.

“You didn’t want to fuck your sister, Caesar.”

“Fuck no. But …” My voice trailed off as I tried to think, to wrap my head around the woman upstairs. The air choked me and I sat up. Brandy sloshed out of the snifter and over my fingers. Alcohol and sweet honey wafted to my nose and burned. I took the rest of the drink in one gulp to wash down my irritation. She reminded me of Yolanda before I found out who my sister really was. Before her image was tarnished in my head with blood and hate.

“I don’t fucking know, Sean.” I rubbed my eyes. “She fucks with my shit, and I fucking don’t like it. But I can’t let her go.”

“You falling in love, Caesar?”

I glared at him before I threw the glass at his face. He caught it, the fucker.

“Do I look like a fucking pansy or some shit?”

Sean scratched his chin. “A bit. Do what you always do, Caesar. She belongs to you until she doesn’t, and then she is someone else’s problem. Clean, simple. Business as usual.”

“You’re right,” I replied.

Sean nodded and headed to the kitchen to wash my glass as I sat in silence. Business as usual was easy to say. Fucking wonderful. I hadn’t done a fucking thing since I’d taken her, and my business never stopped for anyone. Maybe Sean had a point. I fell into fighting back and forth with her. I wished for shit I didn’t want or need.

I shook my head to clear it and let thoughts of Yolanda fade. No, Ash wasn’t Yolanda, and she didn’t deserve that fucking pedestal. She deserved to be under my boot, broken and fucking bloody. And then, when she smiled and asked me for more, I’d give it to her. Just before I kicked her out of my fucking life for good.

Yeah, I liked that idea much better.

Jumping to my feet, I stalked up the stairs to my bedroom. It was silent when I entered. Ash had gone to sleep, the ice still on her back. The medicine must have taken hold. I took the ice pack off her back and pulled out my phone. After a few rings, Dahlia, the best dresser for the rich and famous in Miami, answered.

“Hello, sweetness. What can I do for you today?”

“I want you to change my appointment from two this afternoon to now. And bring a few girls with you.”

“I have a prior engagement.”

“Cancel it. I’ll add twenty thousand to your commission.”

She was silent for a moment, but I already knew her answer. “I’ll make it happen. Any particular type of girl you’re looking for?”

Hook, line, and sinker. Everyone had a price. And Dahlia also ran one of the brothels I sent my used-up pets to. Maybe I needed to show Ash exactly what could happen if she didn’t please me.

“I want Erin and Mindy.”

Another hesitation. “You don’t usually go back for seconds, Caesar.”

“And you’re talking back a bit too much, Dahlia.”

“I’ll get them. See you soon.”

I hung up the phone and slid it back into my pocket. After one last glance at my pet, I headed back downstairs for part two of my plan.

“Sean, get Gleeson here to talk numbers.”

“Yes, sir.”

It felt good to be back.