Page 10 of The Slayer
But fuck it, what did he care if it killed him?
At least it would save Alaine from this bullshit.
He found the glass where they had left it and filled it up. He downed the whole damn thing, reminding himself what happened to the people he loved. The ones whose lives became so irreversibly entangled with his that the darkness he was born from stained them too.
The soft ones died, like his brother andtía.
The others, like his cousin Marcos, simply let the darkness consume them. They turned into something they were never meant to be to stand by Chuito, and in a way that was so much worse.
He had no doubt his brother was in a better place, because this world hadn’t been kind to any of their family. His tía too. There’d never been a mean bone in her body. If there was a heaven, Tía Camila and Juan were in it.
However, his cousin Marcos and even Chuito’s own mother, they had both done things in the name of love and loyalty to Chuito that haunted them.
He couldn’t go through it again, not with Alaine.
He’d drink until he died before he let that happen.
And so he started working on it, with gusto, until he ended up lying on the floor in his small kitchen, looking at the popcorn ceiling and cursing fate. He had left Miami to run away from the demons that were eating him alive and found something a thousand times worse.
Fate caught up with everyone eventually.
Even a devil wasn’t immune to it.
He wasstilltrying to escape, desperate for some small reprieve, but it didn’t work. It never did. The memories surged up and haunted him like they always did when he closed his eyes. Only this time the dreams weren’t about loss and bloodshed.
For the first time ever, his dreams put him in Garnet instead of Miami, back to where things first went bad. Where he picked the wrong town to punish himself in, with the wrong sexy neighbor and the wrong group of rednecks to work for. One of whom would start out as an enemy but would eventually become a close enough friend that Chuito wasn’t only willing to die for him.
He had actually ended up killing for him.
Not that Wyatt Conner would ever know Chuito had done it.
Like so many other sins, he planned to take that knowledge to the grave with him.
Chapter Four
Garnet County
November 2009
“No belts. No professional training.” Sheriff Wyatt Conner stood there looking down at Chuito as he sat in a plastic chair in a hollowed-out room with construction blaring all around them. “I don’t fucking get it, Clay. Why did you invite him here?”
“You ain’t seen him fight yet,” Clay argued. “This boy—”
“What does that mean?” Wyatt gestured to Chuito’sLos Corredoresink on his forearm. “Those look like gang tattoos.”
Chuito smacked Wyatt’s arm away before he could actually touch him. “No me toques.”
Wyatt pulled back and looked to his friend. “What’d he say to me?”
Clay Powers, current reigning UFC Heavyweight champion, shrugged at his best friend, who, as far as Chuito could see, was an enormous asshole along with being a cop. Two huge strikes against him in Chuito’s world. He was just sitting there trying to keep his cool, because he really didn’t need to get locked up in Garnet.
If he was going to go down, he’d prefer to be in Miami.
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Clay gestured to Chuito. “Ask him what it means.”
“Does he speak English? Is he a citizen?”
“¡Vete pa’l carajo!” Chuito cursed at him when he lost his temper and dropped the act. “Puerto Rico is a US territory!”
