TEN
Luce
Shit changed.
Don't ask me exactly when.
I was pretty sure it started in stages.
Stage one, kissing her in the basement.
Two, agreeing to go on a trip with her.
Three, feeling shitty about shutting her out, then giving her an evasive answer about why I was doing so. That shit was new for me.
Four, relaxing on that bed, minding my own business, when I heard her come from behind the closed door. The surge I felt inside was different. Sexual? Sure. But it was more than that as well. It was primal and possessive, something that made me want to be the only reason she ever made those sounds again.
Five, actually getting to make her make those sounds, feeling the warmth and wetness of her sweet pussy, feeling her warm breath catch and exhale on my neck, her fingers digging into me to hold her up, crying out my name as she came... yeah, that shit was unexpectedly overwhelming.
Six, well, six was a whole new territory entirely. Six was her seeing something no one, not a single person had seen in years. The scars on my arm, I knew they weren't always hiding, that my sleeve slipped up and showed them occasionally. But no one got to see my back and chest. No one got to speculate how those marks got onto my skin. Hearing the horror in her voice when she said my name after seeing them made a coil of dread fill my stomach. Because I couldn't go there. I never went there. I wasn't sure I could come back intact if I even tried. Everything within me screamed to shut down. That was exactly what I had tried to do.
Then she had come over to me, touched me, and said the one thing that could have made the situation better.
She wasn't going to ask.
She was never going to ask.
The relief was of a strength I had never experienced before. If I had been standing, it might have brought me to my knees. As it was, it made me want to at least give her some sign of how much that vow meant to me.
So I pulled her down on the bed with me, I tucked her into my side, I felt her head rest over the shriveled, dark, broken thing that was my heart.
And me?
I slept like a goddamn baby.
I was pretty sure I had never had a night of such dreamless sleep.
I even woke up before her, finding her almost completely sprawled across me. Her leg was thrown over my hips, her knee resting on the mattress on my other side, which put her torso covering me like a blanket. Her face was buried in my neck, her arm resting casually on my shoulder.
I was a grown ass man, but this was something I had never experienced before- waking up with a woman.
Hell, most of the sexual encounters I had had barely involved getting undressed. Usually, if we could just hike a skirt and drop my pants, I was a happy fucking guy. It wasn't worth it to have to answer questions about my scars just for a fuck.
I certainly never stuck around afterward.
I never opened up to the point where things like my past could matter.
There was the distinct, heavy feeling in my chest that said it was already far too late with Evan.
Somehow, though, I wasn't overcome with the desire to slide out from under her, and run the fuck away.
No, instead, I felt my hands start to roam, across her shoulders, her back, the flare of her hips, her plump ass, where my hands stopped to squeeze, making her grumble and wiggle in her sleep.
Apparently, she slept like the dead.
My cock was half-hard from running my hands over her body before she finally stretched, her body doing a quivering sensation that brought another stab of desire through my system. Then there was a long sigh.
"Are your hands on my ass?" she asked, sleep-groggy.
"What? These hands?" I asked, giving her another squeeze that made her giggle into my neck. "Nope. Not on your ass at all. You are a hard woman to wake up."
"Nuh-uh. I'm a light sleeper," she insisted, doing another stretch, then rolling off of me to go onto her back, staring at the ceiling.
"Bull fucking shit. Whoever told you that is a liar. Not only did I get to feel you up, but the door slammed so hard next door that it shook the bed, and what seemed like twenty rowdy kids tore down that hall five minutes ago. A coma patient would be easier to wake up."
She made some sort of noncommittal grunting. "What time is it?"
"Almost ten," I said as I folded up to reach for my cell, something that was foreign to me. I never had a cell that required checking. It was always my pager. But I had left that at home figuring that I was due for a vacation away from all that. Also, I knew there would be no secure ways to check on things like there were in Navesink Bank.
"And breakfast is over at eleven," she said, practically throwing herself down the bed to pop off of it. "We gotta hustle," she declared, grabbing her bag, and disappearing into the bathroom.
I smiled at her retreating body, thinking that a woman that excited for breakfast was the kind of woman I could get behind.
I stretched, found my hoodie, and slipped it on, as well as my shoes. I was rational enough to realize that once we were out in the heat, there would be no more hoodie, but I was going to avoid curious looks as long as possible.
"Alright, all yours," she declared, rushing back out, tying her hair into a messy knot at the top of her head. She didn't have a stitch of makeup on, but she was still stupidly gorgeous. "Come on, go brush your teeth. I have a sudden urge for pancakes," she declared, making me smile big.
"That was supposed to be pancakes at midnight, but at least you are trying to acclimate to American culture," I said, moving past her to go through my quick morning ritual.
We had breakfast, talking about the food (which she loved, though made sure she told me that food like pancakes were a treat).
"Dollars to donuts, doll, you'll be eating pancakes at least twice a week from now on."
"Hardly," she said, rolling her eyes as she cleared her plate. "You ready?" she asked, standing.
"Nervous," I remarked as I followed her out toward the lobby.
"I'm not..."
"You're nervous," I cut her off, touching her hip as we squeezed together to fit through the door. "It's normal," I assured her as we got into the car, and I finally gave up on the hoodie, and pulled it off. "You didn't even know there were questions that needed answers until a few days ago."
"I just... want to get this part over with," she said, and I could feel the palpable tension moving through her the whole drive to the church which was a surprisingly large structure of old stucco, curved stained glass windows, and huge wooden doors. To the left, surrounded by seemingly freshly painted white picket fencing, was a small, ancient-looking cemetery with crumbling headstones, the words on them long washed away by time.
"Come on," I said, reaching for my door, knowing that sitting and trying to 'prepare' was only going to make her life more difficult. "Let's hope for old nuns and priests or whatever the fuck they are called."
Religion, as a whole, went over my head.
There was too much evil in the world for there to be some kind of supreme, loving being out there supposedly looking out for us.
I had spent too much time as a kid crying, screaming, begging for some higher power to intervene.
But none came.
So I had to get myself out of it.
Any faith I had died that day.
The first time I took a life.
"What? Afraid you'll burst into flames?" she teased, making me realize she was a few steps above me as I stared up at the cross on the roof.
"Doing 'God's' work, taking out these bastards. I think the carvings of angels will sing when I walk in there," I quipped, trying to cover my dark mood.
"Can I help you?" a voice greeted us when we were halfway down the aisle.
"Hi, I'm Evan. This is Luce. We actually just have a question about an immigrant who might have been here." She paused at that, looking back at me, waiting for me to hand her the newspaper article she knew I had on me. "It was a long time ago, I'm afraid," she explained, handing the young man the paper.
"Oh, yeah, this was before my time," he explained unnecessarily since I was pretty sure he wasn't even legal drinking age yet. "Let me get Sister Maria. She has been here longer than I've been alive. She might remember."
He handed us back the article, and retreated back behind the doors situated to the sides of the altar, leaving us almost uncomfortably alone for several long minutes.
As such, it made us both jump when a female voice declared. "Gabriela?" she gasped, immediately crossing herself, her eyes huge.
I was apparently a bit outdated in my nun-knowledge because I was expecting the long black robes and that box-type thing on her head. But this nun was dressed in a long blue skirt with a blue vest over a white long-sleeve button-up. A cross hung from her neck, and a blue veil covered most of her hair, showing only a small amount of white at the top of her forehead.
She was what you expected from a nun who had been at a church for almost thirty years- older, a bit wrinkled, with green eyes framed in metal glasses, and a general air of kindness, but firmness as well.
"But no," she said immediately, squinting at Evan. "My eyes must be playing tricks on me. What can I help you with today, my dear?"
"Hi, sister," Evan said, giving her a warm smile. "My name is Evangeline. This is Luce. We actually just have some questions about a female immigrant who may or may not have been here twenty some-odd years ago." Hell, even I could hear the defeat already in her tone. But she handed her the paper regardless.
Sister Maria barely even glanced at the article before she looked back up at Evan, recognition plain on her face. "No wonder," she said, shaking her head. "No wonder I thought it was she," she explained, curling up the paper like it offended her. If she was left to deal with the aftermath of Alejandro's rape of the poor woman, it likely did. "You are Evangeline," she declared, sure as if you asked her if God existed. "Gabriela's daughter. Oh, you look just like her."
"You knew her? Gabriela? The woman from the article."
"Your mother," Sister Maria corrected. "You might not know her, dear, but she was your mother. You are her mirror image from the day she came here, so skinny from the journey that all her bones were poking out of her dress, with a three-year-old chubby baby girl strapped to her back. Evangeline Luana Santos."
This wasn't the moment to say it aloud, but I fucking knew it.
Evan fumbled to find words, swallowing hard, shaking her head.
"Can you tell us what happened on the night she was assaulted?" I asked, knowing we needed the answers, even if it sucked to have to ask a goddamn nun those kinds of questions.
Sister Maria's face went pale, looking somehow both sad and enraged simultaneously. "She went out to work, as she always did, at a local motel. She brought you," she said, nodding at Evan. "She used to let you come and watch TV while she cleaned. Her boss looked the other way, knowing it is hard around here for single immigrant mothers." When she continued, her tone went sour. "When it happened, she was in the bathroom. The man came back, turned the TV louder for you, and followed her in. That savage," she growled, closing her eyes tight, shaking her head, trying to clear the image. "The things he did to her."
"I can't," Evan said, shaking her head, turning, and running outside.
A part of me, maybe even the larger part of me, wanted to follow her, wanted to comfort her. The other part, however, knew one of us needed all the answers.
"Let me guess, when she returned, Evan was nowhere to be found."
"She could barely walk, but she searched everywhere for weeks, begging everyone she came across on the streets for information about her missing daughter. No one ever found out what happened to her."
"What happened was, her mother's rapist took her, raised her like she was his own, and unbeknownst to Evan, raped women across several continents. He recently died..."
"I know I am not supposed to say this, but good riddance."
"May he rot in hell," I agreed, though I didn't believe in it personally. "And she finally learned the truth of him. We found some information linking her to McAllen, so we came here for answers. Whatever happened to Gabriela?"
"After two years, so broken, just a shell of a woman, she went back."
"Back to where? Mexico?"
"Brazil."
"Do you have any reason to believe she is still alive?"
Sister Maria gave me a small smile. "We bonded. While she recovered. While she raged at God for the loss of her daughter, we became close. She still sends letters occasionally, asking for updates, or simply saying hello."
"Is there any chance we can have the address?"
"Twenty-four years of suffering and wondering?" she asked, shaking her head. "Of course you can have that to unburden her of the misery of uncertainty. She will be beside herself."
With that, she moved to go retrieve a letter, pressing it into my hands. "Evangeline," she said, holding my gaze. "Will she be alright? This can not be an easy time for her."
"She's a lot stronger than she seems. She just needs to process it in her own time. Thank you for this. It means a lot."
"For a change," she said, smiling kindly, "I will be looking forward to Gabriela's letter. She will be so happy."
"We will make sure we mention your help," I said, giving her a smile, then moving back down the aisle to go back outside.
I found Evangeline sitting on the lowest step, knees to chest, elbows on knees, face buried in her hands.
I dropped down next to her, our bodies pressing from shoulder to shoes, not caring about the oppressive heat.
"I have her address," I told her, tapping her bare knee with the letter from Sister Maria.
"I was there," she said back, voice thick. "I was in the other room."
"Ev, you were three years old. It's not like you could have known..."
"I was in the other room, and that fucking bastard did that to my mother? And then took me? For what? Some goddamn souvenir? Like some teeth from a corpse? How, Luce?" she asked, looking at me, eyes pleading. "How could I have not known how evil he was? How?"
"Listen to me," I said, tucking away the letter, and turning fully to face her. "If there is one thing I have learned doing what I do, it is that it doesn't matter how evil someone is, without fail, everyone around them is shocked when they learned what they did. They have to adapt. They have to put on a good show."
"For twenty-four years?" she snapped, swatting at a tear that slipped down her cheek. "He never once let it slip in front of me in all that time?"
"Even if he did, Ev, you wouldn't have had any context to put it in. You would have shrugged it off as him having a hard day with his job, knowing that brought some level of darkness into his life. This isn't on you. It's really fucked that you are feeling even a tiny bit of guilt about this. You were three. Of course you don't remember any of this shit, and he could create any story he wanted to. And, I hate to say this because I think rapists are pretty much the vilest of shitheads, and I know my shitheads," I added, shrugging. "But the fact that you never did see that side of him did show that there was some goodness in him. You grew up loved. You loved him enough to want to murder me for killing him."
"I know!" she snapped, swiping both her hands under her eyes. "That's the worst part! I loved him. I loved him, and he violently raped my mother with me in the next room watching cartoons! Then he stole me. And I loved him!"
Her voice cracked hard at that as my arm moved out across her lower back, pulling her against my chest.
I had a feeling it was going to go along these lines, but it was clear Evan hadn't been quite convinced when we started on the journey. She wasn't as prepared for this inevitability as she could have been if she considered the possibilities sometime between Jersey and Texas.
"I hate him," she told my neck, body shaking with silent sobs.
I knew she wanted to believe that down to her marrow. And maybe it was true for ninety-nine percent of her, but no matter what, I was pretty sure there would always be one-percent that still had feelings toward him that weren't blind hatred.
Because he had taken care of her. He had protected, fed, educated, exposed her to the world, and provided for her even upon his death.
Did that make him a good man? No. Of fucking course not.
But he had learned to be, it appeared, a decent father.
And that was going to be a hard reality for her to come to terms with eventually.
"Well," she said, pulling away, self-consciously scrubbing at her face, keeping her head ducked. "At least I know I don't have his evil in my DNA."
"I coulda told you that," I agreed, moving to stand when she did. "The nun told me that your mother still writes a couple times a year to check in, and ask if anyone had heard anything about you."
Evan stopped walking, took a deep breath, and looked over at me. "From where?"
"Brazil."
"Brazil?" she asked, eyes squinting like that didn't make sense.
"Yeah. Makes perfect sense to me. Brazilian women are hot as fuck."
She laughed at that, shaking her head. "Thanks, I think?"
"So, what now? Are you going to write her? Go visit her? What?" I asked when she looked sharply away at the tail-end of that.
"I'd like to visit her," she confessed.
"That's great. I'm sure she would be excited to..."
"But I don't think I am going to go."
"Now, that makes no fucking sense. Why not? I'm sure you've been to Brazil before. You've been everywhere." And that's when it hit me. She had been everywhere with her father. "What's up, Ev? Parts of Brazil are rough, but it's no more unsafe than walking around Mexico on your own."
"That's just the thing though, isn't it? I've never walked around... anywhere alone. Except for a couple places in the US after my fath... after Alejandro went missing. There was always the bubble that his protection provided. I mean... I can't even smuggle in any of my own poisons or anything to protect myself with. He was the one who knew how to pull all that off, pay off the right guys, or hide it in plain sight. He taught me a lot, but not that."
"You're afraid to travel alone," I guessed, surprised.
She turned back at my tone, giving me a hard look. "If you have seen the underbelly like I have in all these countries, you wouldn't feel safe going alone either."
"You do know that the underbelly in the States isn't really any better, right?"
"It's not as blatant. I've seen men gunned down in Columbia right in front of the police. Sure, people get gunned down in the US too, but I have never seen the police laugh and walk away."
I took a breath, wondering how Barrett was getting on with the bird, if he was cool with taking him for another week or so. Knowing Barrett, he probably wouldn't give a shit.
"You want me to take you to Brazil, Ev?" I asked.
I could feel the area around my eyes and jaw loosen when she shot me a look full of hope. "Really?"
"Really," I agreed, nodding.
"Like... now?"
"Like once we get back to the hotel, and look into flights and shit, yeah. No point in putting it off. What?" I asked after a long silence where she was just... looking at me.
"You're a really good guy, Luce," she surprised me by saying. "It's really a shame you don't let people see that."
Affected perhaps more deeply than was appropriate, I covered by snorting. "Doll, I think the heat is getting to your weak lady-brain. Did you forget that I kill people for a living?"
"My weak lady-brain?" she said, smiling big because she knew I didn't mean it.
"How the fuck else would you explain that asinine idea?"
"Objectivity," she said with a shrug before turning, and walking back to the car.
Lord fucking help me.
I had at least another handful of days with the woman.
It was bound to get messy, I decided as I climbed in the car and we drove back to the hotel.
At the time, though, I had no idea just how fucking messy it was going to get.
And soon.