Page 59 of Scars of the Sun
“Candy?” She offered a sucker she’d produced from her pocket. I shook my head, and she popped it into her mouth. “Is that the thanks I get for helping you escape, baby brother?”
I didn’t flinch. Couldn’t give her any ammunition. Yeah, she’d been the one to jostle me awake that night, told me to pack my shit, and occupied our father’s soldiers on my side of the compound so that I could ride off on my bike and finally leave. A few weeks prior, she’d discovered my nest egg when it was just a tiny thing. An account in a different name that my father had no access to that I was using to help Mamá and quietly growing to fund my escape.
Until Mara had found out about it. I’d thought I was dead for sure, but she wasn’t Catalina. Mara had hissed at me to stop giving our mother money, because if she was able to discover it, it was only a manner of time before he used it against the both ofus. I held no illusions that my father was truly done with Mamá. But I’d rather go back to being an enforcer alongside Mara than give her up. I’d be a good little Serafim soldier until the day I died if that meant keeping Mamá and Javier safe.
Cata, Mara, and Pai didn’t know about him, though.
So, I’d left and heeded Mara’s warning. To save myself and keep my real family hidden and safe.
“Buena suerte, hermanito. No seas pendejo.” Mara didn’t hug me, but a rare tinge of emotion shone in her bottomless stare. If I had to guess, as I shoved on my helmet and started up my bike, it was fear and resignation. We weren’t friends, exactly, but she’d been the one to patch me up when my wounds were too extensive to do myself. She was the one who taught me how to beat someone for just enough information while keeping them alive to get or deliver the message. Her long hair fluttered in the soupy Georgia air while this side of the compound was dark. I stopped myself from asking how she was going to explain my absence. She could tell Pai that she killed me, for all I cared. It’d be better that way.
Those had been the last words she’d spoken to me, but this was not the caring version of my sister that’d snuck me extra flan after I cried the first night away from Mamá. Or the one that watched over me after the worst beating I’d fared—the one that took most of my eyesight.
She gestured to the glasses now with a slender finger, “You still wearing those stupid things?”
I stepped closer, skirting around the counter so that no barriers stood between us. I couldn’t show that I was afraid, but I also couldn’t give her too much to spark her interest. Just boring old weak Río working a dead-end job. Nothing worth reporting back to our father about.
“Not all of us are virtually indestructible.”
Mara crossed her arms and scoffed, but the action wasn’t anywhere as cute as when Ramona did the same thing. “Well, if I’d known it’d leave you looking like a fuckingnerdfor the rest of your life, I would’ve just kept it at the broken legs.”
How I had survived living in a house with her was beyond me. And Mara was thesensitiveone. “Whatever. What did you come here for?”
“¿Sabes donde está Benny?” She tilted her head, watching and waiting for me to slip up. It wasn’t phrased as if she actually gave a shit where ourverydistant cousin was.
And I already knew how this went. “Lo maté.”
Mara shrugged, unsurprised by the news but also unsurprised that I’d admitted to it. It’s not like he’d been well-liked. “Boring. Well, I’ll leave you to your poverty,” she took a disdainful sniff and looked around as if the sight of the register and old booths sickened her. Just as randomly, my sister spun on her heel and walked toward the door.
I forced my breaths to stay calm, to watch her put a hand on the door and leave.
She froze, and my heart plummeted all the way to my asshole. The afternoon rays lit her up, casting blues and reds through her hair. If I wasn’t stained with the same darkness that filled her, I would’ve said she looked angelic. Mara snapped her fingers as if shejustremembered something important. “Oh, and I’ll meet you at your place for a beer when you’re done with this shithole for the day. Then you can talk to me about your mate.”
RAMONA
My brother was smoking again.
Sylvie rubbed his back, mouth pursed, while I occupied the kids as best as I could. Dahlia had already told him that what he was doing was unhealthy, and I had to apologize to both him and Sylvie for having the pack hidden in the guest room. In my defense, I thought that O had been so far past his addiction that he wouldn’t be tempted.
But, in regard to the Wolf pack, shit had totally hit the fan.
They couldn’t say too much with the kids around, but those people Orion met with had apparently retaliated violently. Sylvie had done her best to pantomime a literal beheading, and I’d thought she’d been joking before my brother solemnly confirmed.
I took a drag of my own cigarette and watched Ollie and Dahlia play in the little blow-up pool set up beside the garden. Sylvie rolled her eyes at me as I exhaled, but I just gave a helpless shrug. I’d been feeling happily anxious about the progression of my and Río’s relationship, but I didn’t want O to smoke alone.
Good god, the way he’dsmelledwhen I left Tyler’s house. He tried to cover it up, by agreeing that he liked me, too. Which had been embarrassing as hell—how old were we, twelve? But the rich scent from him that’d embraced me at the same time his hands did… it was almost how my brother smelled when he was holding Sylvie.
From Río, it wasn’t as solidified, signaling a newer feeling, but it was fuckingthere. I took another drag and exhale from my cigarette. Could he smell the matching emotion that wafted off of me when I was around him?
“Mo ghrá, I don’t want you to watch me. I know that you don’t like when I do this.” Orion lit up another smoke to replace the one he’d just finished.
And Sylvie went on, caressing him and giving him support. “I don’t, but you need me more than I dislike the cigarettes, baby. How can we help?”
Ollie let loose a happy little screech while he splashed the water around him. Dahlia joined in, and it was at least endearing to see some joy. I watched them while I sat on the edge of the porch, between the two conversations. Originally, Orion had come out here to smoke alone, but the kids had insisted on a pool party outside with their daddy, and it turned into all of us out here.
“You can’t. They delivered the… rest of him by the time we got back from the meeting. I had to notify Jasper’s parents.”
I remembered the Wolf who’d gotten off of some kind of punishment during my first pack meeting who’d also stepped up to scout for the pack to get any extra info on the Serafim Group. It was looking like they weren’t going to take my brother’s refusal for an acceptable answer.