It was never ending and brutal, but that was life on the wrong side of the tracks.
We didn’t get police protection.
We didn’t have people picketing signs and protesting our way of life.
Eduardo and his dogs were evils we had to live with.
They were our reality.
Our salvation.
Our deaths.
I glanced up at the ceiling overhead, stained a faint yellow from years of my uncles’ chain-smoking during family gatherings. The sitting room was directly under my parent’s bedroom. I knew my father was up there, counting our June pay, making sure every penny was accounted for before Nero and Davien arrived. Mom had already counted it the night before at the dinner table after all the dishes had been cleared and washed. I’d sat across from her, watching quietly as she made neat stacks with stiff, shaky fingers. I could see her biting back every wince just from sitting too long and my heart ached.
“Do you want me to get your pills, mama?” I asked, already pushing to my feet.
She shook her head, face set. “I’m okay, niña. Nearly done.”
Mom had Avascular Necrosis, a bone degenerating disease due to loss of blood flow. It had started gradually around her hips and thighs, but the pain grew worse every year. Though she swore she was fine, I’d seen her struggle to sit or stand. I’d heard her crying in the bathroom because my father had to help her over the tub lip. The pain meds the doctors gave her were expensive but even they didn’t seem to be helping as much, and Mom refused to take time off work to get the marrow injection or even the surgery.
“Mama?” I waited until I had her attention before pressing an argument I knew I would lose. “I was thinking, maybe I could get another job.”
Her brows furrowed as it did every time I mentioned a second job for me, even though she and my dad worked two, sometimes three. “You have a job. What’s wrong with the diner? Is Nestor not giving you more shifts? Is that why you’re not working tomorrow?”
I never worked the first of the month. It was the one day off I requested. Nestor never asked but I suspected he thought I wanted to be with my parents when the collectors came. He wasn’t entirely wrong. The first was the only time I got to see Davien and Nero up close, when I got to talk to them without raising questions and suspicions. Only Liana knew the truth.
“No, Nestor’s great. That isn’t why. I’m going to keep working at the diner, but I thought maybe I could get something on the side. I know we could use the money. Maybe we could save it and use it for that surgery the doctor—”
“Enough.” She didn’t slam her hands on the table, but she may as well have with the sharp crack of her voice. “I told you when you left school that you get one job, but you go back to school. Those were the conditions. Do you think I want this for you forever? You will not fall into this life, Mia. So, you go to school or nothing else.”
It was the same thing she said every time. I knew we’d be less in a hole every month if I could do more. My pay at the diner was fine but it wasn’t enough. If I made more, she and my dad wouldn’t have to work so hard.
But I knew when to drop it. I could see the strain she was under, the pain just from sitting. I saw the way she caught herself trying to get to her feet, the way she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. I rushed to help her, but she waved me back.
“I’m fine. Just got up too quickly.”
Neither of us said a word when gathering the money into a crisp, white envelope. I watched my mom struggle out of the kitchen and climb the stairs. I stood at the bottom, close enough to catch her if she stumbled but careful not to show it.
I considered just getting another job. I was a grown woman. I didn’t need my mom’s permission to do anything. But I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in her eyes, the sadness. I couldn’t stand it if I hurt her more when she was already in so much pain.
The truth was, Nestor would happily give me more hours. I’d been there for almost eight years. I was his only full timer and the only one who came in early and stayed late. I worked every holiday, every long weekend, and the customers loved me. I ran his books, kept his files in order, and basically ran the diner while he took his newest girlfriend on lavish vacations. It was already a full-time job, and if we didn’t have to pay Eduardo every month, it would have been fine. Granted, if we didn’t pay Eduardo, I would never get to see Nero and Davien.
They were my sin, the reason I would sell my soul. It would devastate my family if they ever found out. It would kill my mother and break my father’s heart. It would destroy my family’s trust in me. The very thought paralyzed me with fear, yet the idea of being with them blazed like wildfire through every corner of my being. I loved them and knew I could never have them for more than those few seconds when they came to the door and took the envelope of money my father gave them. That would be it for me. That was all I could ask for.
Maybe it made me someone very stupid, especially knowing everything I knew about them, but there was no going back now.
Not for me.
Not after that night.
It had awakened something in me I didn’t know how to put back to sleep, something primal and overwhelming. I didn’t know how to explain it, not even to Liana, but that night, the things I’d let them do to me, the things I did in return had felt so perfectly wrong and forbidden in every way and, yet I had never wanted it to end.
But it had.
It had all come to an abrupt and crashing halt the moment the door had opened and light spiked into our dark, carnal cocoon. I had never pulled away so fast from anything in my life. I had torn out of there as if the very devil himself were after me and I hadn’t looked back, not the whole way down the stairs, shoving bodies aside and stumbling on discarded debris across the sticky floor. I hadn’t stopped until there was an entire block between me and them, a vacuum of twilight and space. I’d doubled over, gasping, my body a carnival ride of more emotions than I knew how to cope with at eighteen.
Five years later, I still had no idea. If anything, I was more confused than ever, especially when I knew they were the wrong kind of wrong. The unredeemable kind. The kind you stayed away from. These were not men you invited into your home, into your life, definitely never into your bed. They were criminals. Cold, dangerous men loyal to a monster. Men with no moral compass, no decency.
Bad Men.
But I loved them.
I loved all the things about them no one else bothered to see. I loved that they stayed late after every block party, BBQ, and picnic to help clean up and drive people home. I loved that they always dropped a thick envelope into the church’s donation basket every Sunday. I loved that they patrolled the schools and parks, warning away the street soldiers from recruiting the children. I loved that, no matter how dangerous and evil everyone labeled them, they’d been there when old Mrs. McLanery moved in with her son’s family across town and needed help getting her things into storage. They’d arrived at the first splinter of light and didn’t stop until the last item was in the truck.
No one ever mentioned those things.
“Mia?” my dad called from the top of the stairs, my name slightly breathless as if he’d ran out of his room in a panic.
“Here!” I called back up, moving to stand at the foot of the steps and peer up at him.