Page 91 of The Slayer
“I have a lot of ink, mami,” he said with a shake of his head. “You’ve never asked what any of it means. That’s the one you chose?”
“Does the rest of it have meaning?”
“You think I’d get ink without meaning?” He turned his head and gave her a look. “You think I just got it ’cause I was bored?”
She gave him a smile, making it obvious she knew more than she let on. She reached up, touching the Puerto Rican flag on the back of his neck the way she was apt to do. She swept her thumb over the wordBoricuabeneath it. For the first time he really bothered to notice how she did it, lovingly, with a sense of appreciation he had probably taken for granted.
“Pride,” she said knowingly, still caressing the wordBoricualike it meant something to her too. “Lots of pride.”
“Mmm,” he hummed.
Then she reached around, running her fingers down his chest, finding the cross over his heart. He looked down, seeing her palm spread out over it as she whispered, “Love.”
“Regret,” he corrected her. “Lots of regret.”
She rubbed her thumb over his brother’s name. “And love.”
“Okay,” he agreed, because he couldn’t argue with that.
She reached for his left shoulder next, finding the star that decorated it. She got up on her knees and touched the one that matched on the other side. “And these?”
“They were my first,” he admitted as he turned and gave her a smile. “I was fourteen.”
“That’s very young.” She frowned at him. “What tattoo parlor gave you those at fourteen?”
“I got ’em in the back of a warehouse. Any good gang has a tattoo artist. They mean I’m a thief, mami. They mean I’m bad news.”
“Fourteen was a long time ago.”
He laughed and turned back to her once more. “Yeah, I’ve gotten a lot worse since then.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he said with a wince. “So much worse.” He looked out the window and then glanced around the bedroom he had been imprisoned in for the past five years. “This is all a lie to you. It was a lie to me too.”
“You can stay here, Chu.”
“I cannot stay here,” he said with grim certainty, the pain of it making his chest hurt, because admitting it to her made it true. “Even if my cousin wasn’t in trouble, which he is, I shouldn’t stay.”
Rather than argue, Alaine reached for his forearm, spreading her open palm over the Los Corredores snake on his arm.
He laughed bitterly. “I can’t wait to hear this one.”
“Loyalty?” she suggested.
He nodded. “That too.”
“What else?”
He looked to his arm, seeing the head of the snake peeking out past her spread fingers. “Satisfaction.”
“That’s it?”
“Vindication,” he went on, still staring at the way she touched something so dark with nothing but love. It almost burned him to see her hand on his Los Corredores ink, and he wanted it to burn her too. To make her run away from it as fast as she could. “Revenge.” He let the word bleed out of him like the poison it was. “Hatred.” He closed his eyes, remembering how he had earned all the blood drops that covered the full expanse of the snake’s back. “Murder.”
Her fingers twitched on his arm, and he opened his eyes to look at her hand as the stillness descended on them. He waited for her to pull it away, but she didn’t. She just stayed where she was in the ominous silence after his confession.
“Actual murder?” she whispered.
