Inspiration takes over immediately, and I’m running down the hall before I can think to leave Zane a note or text about the date with me and Mercy.
Because we’re fucking going.
There’s no way in hell that Sam is winning my Siren’s heartorpussy before me or Zane. In fact, we’re already winning. She watched me come for her today, and then Zane finished her off after I turned her on. She’s wet right this very second because of us, too, likely shoving her fingers as deep inside her pussy as they’ll go.
If that’s not winning, I don’t know what the fuck is.
Chapter 14
Sam
Alejandro Carerra disappeared on Wednesday,September 16th. He finished his shift at his family’s auto shop and walked home, but according to his roommates, he never made it. To the casual observer, this seems like your everyday crime against people of color. A story to briefly mention before the local news channels move on to something else. It doesn’t look like anyone has fought for Alejandro or helped his family find peace.
It’s a goddamn injustice.
I stare at pictures of Alejandro with his family—smiling parents, two younger brothers, and a darling youngest sister. This specific picture of them at the beach is a few years old, before their daughter was taken from them, too.
Drunk driver.
The blow hits me square in the chest, and I have to take a deep, steadying breath. It’s fucked up—everything about the situation. Their auto shop is still in business, but the weariness in the father’s eyes has easily aged him by a few decades. The two remaining sons, older now, smile stiffly at the camera.
It doesn’t take long to transfer an anonymous donation from the Wright Foundation to their banking institution, but even that feels like mediocre compensation for their hardship.
I could, instead, bring Alejandro’s killers to justice.
My gaze lingers on Alejandro’s Missing Persons flyer on my computer monitor. I’m not home in the frat, having spent the past few nights at my father’s house. He’s never home, making a collision with him low risk, but he keeps his web browsing encrypted and all outgoing calls routed through proxies. Doing research here is better for my psyche in terms of hiding my search history, but everything else about the experience is a drain on my mental stamina. This office is pure white and sterile, kept immaculately clean by the staff, and I absolutely fucking hate it. But what I hate more is knowing that people like my father don’t give a fuck about anyone outside of the upper echelons of society. They don’t bat an eye when a man like Alejandro goes missing. He was twenty-five with dreams of taking over the family business someday. Now, he’s dead.
And I know who killed him.
I rub my tired eyes and glance at the clock. Two-thirty A.M.. Way past my bedtime if I’m going to make it through my eight o’clock practice. Sighing, I drag my body down the hall to my bedroom. This, too, is in pristine condition. If my father could have cleaned me up like this house, he would have turned me into a perfect replica of himself no matter the amount of anti-depressants and hair dye it would take. I’ve been to every top-tier shrink in the city, and they all say the same thing.
He’s not broken, Samuel, he’s just human.
Human and grieving.
As I lay in bed, my mind inevitably drifts back to the day I met Mercy. It was a last-ditch effort to “fix” me. Grief counseling with the general population. He attended the adult group and met Mr. Morningstar while I attended the youth group and met Mercy.
If there’s one thing I’m grateful to the bastard for, it’s that he inadvertently introduced me to Mercy… or I guess we could say that my mom did.
Thinking of her doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, but not having a mom doesn’t suck any less. She never got to meet Mercy.
“I think you’d like her.” I stare up at the tiered ceiling and rub the ache brewing inside my chest. “She’s got pretty eyes and a killer smile. A lot of things don’t bother her. Like how I only eat hot dogs with relish or can’t watch scary movies. She likes the gory ones more than the ghost ones. I think it’s because of her family’s affinity for dead things.” Grandma Star offered to conduct a seance for me once, but I could never muster the courage to go through with it. I’d rather speak with my mom like this, where I don’t have to wonder what she’ll say back.
I tuck my hands behind my head and wonder, like I do every night, if Mercy is having trouble sleeping. Staying the night to hold her is purely selfish, however, no matter how much it helps her dream sweetly. It helps me, too. Sighing, I close my eyes and allow my mind to wander, but all it does is spiral around Mercy. Her infectious laugh. The way her eyes sparkle in certain slants of light. How skilled she is with her artwork. Inevitably, my thoughts drift back to the first night I kissed her.
If I could do things differently, I would. I’d tell her that I’m not kissing her just because I think she’s pretty or we’ve been friends for a long time. She isn’t a convenient hookup or a means to pass the time.
“I messed up,” I admit aloud. “I know that. But I’m going to make it up to her.” We lost a year that we could have spent together because I didn’t have the balls to admit how I felt. I let her slip through my fingers.
But I won’t make that mistake twice.
Sitting up, I rummage through the nightstand drawer for the burner phone my father insists I keep in case ofspecialemergencies. When I turn it on, it’s fully charged and ready to use. I roll my eyes despite how convenient it is to have it ready and waiting for me. I stall for a few minutes, playing around with the burner, checking my phone for texts I know aren’t there, before finally dialing the number for my dad’s “fix it” guy.
I don’t know the extent he goes to take care of things, but from what I’ve gleaned over the years under my father’s roof, if you need a job done and have the money to pay for it, you call Grey.
“Yo,” he answers on the first ring. “What’s up, Wright?”
I hesitate for so long that Grey shuffles on the other end of the line. “Hello?”