Blood to Dust (7 page)

“Pea.” Her voice carries from behind the curtain. “Call me Pea. It sounds like a nickname I can get behind. Country Club and Silver Spoon are plain annoying. And don’t ‘God’s girl’ me, either. I’m no more his girl than you are his soldier.”

She turns off the faucet and draws the curtain open. I pull my towel from the rack and hand it to her, looking the other way and hoping
my
soldier ain’t saluting in her direction.

Luckily she can’t see shit.

“Dry up. I’ll hang your dress in the backyard. Fair warning: If you try and pull any more stupid shit, you will not be fed for three days.”

I throw her dress over the clothesline and walk to my small bedroom—it’s half a room, actually, Irv took the master bedroom before I moved in—and readjust myself in my jeans.

Yeah, sergeant Vela definitely saluted to our new tenant.

I sift through my stuff. I don’t have many shirts and most of them are in poor condition. I pull out the newest one that I bought for my job interview with Mrs. H and walk back to the bathroom. Prescott awaits, silent, naked but dry. Her back is arched seductively, her ass round and her tits just the perfect size for my palm.

The minute I walk in, she parts those full lips into a shy smile. Every single move is deliberate. The little bitch is trying to seduce me, and it’s working. I really do want to strangle her.

“Hi,” she says softly.

“Bye.” I throw the shirt into her hands and turn my back to her.

I catch her pulling my shirt over her head. It’s so big on her small, curvy body, she could probably use it as a fucking blanket. I take her hand and guide her out of the bathroom. I’m eager to throw her in the basement so I can go back up and see if the smell of her spicy, sweet pussy stuck to my towel. Yeah, grinding my cock against a towel is just another low I might stoop to today.

“Beat, let’s do dinner tomorrow.”

“Pea, let’s not,” I snap.

“Please? Solitude is the kiss of death to the spirit.” She wiggles her words at me like they’re her curvy ass, and my cock jumps to attention again. Where’s
that
quote from?

“No.”

“We can exchange notes on Godfrey. I’m sure he screwed you over, too. That’s his trade, and that’s why you’re holding me against my will. . .and against yours.”

I don’t answer her, but I pull my shirt up to cover my face and take off the bandage covering her eyes. Tonight, her hands won’t be tied, either.

“Wait, Beat!”

“Bye, Felicia.” I kick her little ass into the basement and slam the door behind her.

Good fucking riddance.

I see everything.

The basement must’ve leaked for years. Mold blooms on every corner of the ceiling, smeared on the walls like a horrific scream. The air is wet and smells of despair. Everything is bare. Gray bricks dotted with black filth. No amount of scraping and washing will bring this floor back to good condition.

Other than a small wooden table and some saggy carton boxes, there’s no furniture.

No electricity.

Not even a dangling bulb hanging by exposed wire for comfort.

No. Light.

A part of me is woeful that he didn’t leave the blindfold on. Then, at least, I could have convinced myself that this place was livable.

I see everything.

There’s a row of windows high up on the walls, boarded from the inside by rotting wood. I will try and peel it off the minute I get my hands on something sharp.

Shaking violently, I rub my arms and light jog in a patterned circle to raise my body temperature. The mold makes everything cold. I circle the room, wishing I had a stress ball, before I hear it.

Boom.

I strain my ears, somehow knowing that another one will follow.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

It’s steady, angry. I press one ear against the wall, squinting and pressing my lips together.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Whoever it is upstairs that’s doing it, is tearing the place down. Ripping it apart. Furniture crashing, walls banging, wallpapers stripped raw. Whoever it is is angry as hell.

Beat.

I see everything, and I hear everything.

He’s frustrated. Mad. Pissed.

Just like me.

He’s handicapped by Godfrey just as much as I am. We shouldn’t be enemies, we should be allies. A coalition of revenge against these men.

The need to pull him to my side is so overwhelming, I even tried to seduce him in the bathroom. I don’t know what came over me. I usually avoid sex. I usually avoid
men
.

I scrape the wall with my fingernail as I think about how I got here in the first place.

Camden.

Beat needs to know. He
has
to know that we’re on the same team. He can’t let them kill me.

“I met him at a charity event seven years ago. I was eighteen and he was thirty, and I basked in this powerful man’s attention, like a lazy cat under the sun. Posh English accent, sharp suit—he wore Dior—and manners to die for. I’d never met a man like him before.”

Beat’s furniture-crashing stops, and I continue into the dusk, my voice hoarse but bold.

“I remember eyeing Camden behind my dad’s shoulder. Howard Burlington-Smyth was talking to Godfrey Archer, and this was a big deal. Archer had a shady reputation, and my dad was the mayor of Manor Hill, a small, affluent town near Blackhawk. He had aspirations of becoming governor, and he needed money to kick-start his campaign.”

Money Godfrey Archer had in spades.

Money Camden Archer wiped his ass with every morning.

“Officially, they were businessmen with properties all over northern California. Officially, this was all legit.”

Swallowing painfully, I look up. I know why the commotion above me has stopped.
He can hear me
. Thin walls, thin floors. This paper house will crumble under the weight of my truth.

I’m going to rewrite my destiny by luring Beat to my side.

“That night, Camden took my hand in his and we sat underneath the stars, talking. Laughing. Falling. I was studying in Los Angeles and he was going back to England the next day. His dad let him run some of his London-based businesses. You know, keep the kid busy.

“Camden was an average looking guy. Plain, bland even. Ink blue eyes, thin lips and a bony nose. He had a lanky long frame with a hint of a beer belly poking out.

“I was young and impressionable and thought frat boys and college brats were beneath me. I wanted something different.
Something dangerous
.”

“The day after the charity event, I flew back to Los Angeles, disappointed with the loss of Camden. I thought our encounter would be forever shelved under ‘What If?’

“What if he lived in California?

“What if I’d been bold enough to ask for his number?

“What if he was the love of my life and I let him slip between my fingers?”

Sighing at the young, juvenile Prescott, I squeeze my eyes shut and continue.

“But I soon learned that the Archers don’t live well with ‘if’s’. They are more of ‘when’ kind of people. A first-class plane ticket to London waited at my dorm, along with a warm designer coat for the valley girl who has never had to brave English storms.

“I should’ve seen the red flags back then. They were flipping in the wind of an impending storm, but I was too young to understand what I was doing.

“I’d never been to London, but always wanted to visit. I thought I was falling for a bad boy, when in fact, I got caught in the web of an evil man. The thing about cold-hearted monsters is that in the dark, Beat, their touch is just as warm as any other person’s.

“This was the beginning of my fall.”

I bang my head against the wall behind my bed in a systematic tempo.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

I took it hard when she
made
me hard. I took it hard and I took it out on my walls and bed and stereo and laptop. It was unfair, yet made uncannily perfect sense that I’d want to fuck the only person who I shouldn’t.

Finally, I was physically attracted to someone. But having her meant getting killed, and with all due respect to my cock and Silver Spoon, I’m sure she’s a good lay, but not worthy of my head.

Then she started talking and my lame reason to keep her captive became even lamer.

She’s hurt and broken in her own, fancy-ass country club way.

And I’m hurt and broken in my own, broke-ass ghetto way.

I know what she’s feeling, but I shouldn’t.

“Shut the fuck up, or I’m sending Ink to shut you up for me,” I grunt when I hear her shuffling downstairs, muttering something about the moment she got on the plane to London to meet Godfrey’s son. Irv’s not even here. He works night shifts at a local fast food joint, but she doesn’t need to know that.

Prescott zips it.

I sigh in relief, raking my bloody palms through my face and hair, leaving red stripes like war paint. God’s girl. Country Club. Silver Spoon. All these nicknames won’t do justice to the dancing flame that’s trying to blaze her way out of my basement.

Pea
.

Another day of nothingness eats at my soul.

Another day of trying to figure out how to break away or how to break Beat. Both will grant me my wish—freedom.

Like everything else, this is a numbers game. What are the odds of me running away without his help? Right now, with no weapon, slim. And what are the odds of him cracking for me? Perhaps they will get better tonight, with a little push from Mother Nature.

Time moves too slow and too fast, as it does in desperate situations. Sometimes, when I fall asleep on the cold floor, I wake up with a sharp inhale. My hair is slick with sweat and my throat burns after his hourglasses haunt me in my dreams.
Hourglasses
. I can’t bear them anymore. I once slammed my fist into the new TV in my living room because I saw the opening to
Days of Our Lives
. Spent the night in the ER.

Time
.

I’m running out of it.

Today I’ve decided that since I’m not blindfolded and tied anymore, I should go treasure hunting in the carton boxes under the table. There are some old clothes and family albums from one of the guys, but I don’t know which, and they’re so dated, the people in the photos are either too old or too young to be recognized.

Shoving my hand again into the damp box, I retrieve a simple-looking red book. When I open it, warmth flutters in my chest, taking over, making my heart beat faster.

THIS DIARY BELONGS TO

NATE THOMAS VELA

INMATE #21593

SAN DIMAS STATE PRISON, CALIFORNIA

No. Way.

There’s no question it belongs to Beat and not to Ink. I’ll bet anything I have that Ink barely knows how to spell his own name. Beat, on the other hand. . .the first time I saw him, he had a paperback rolled into his back pocket.

His nickname is homage to the literature movement.

I flip a page and read the first entry, my back pressed to the boarded windows, slivers of light licking at the yellow, crusty paper.

OCTOBER 23RD, 2010

IF YOU’RE GOING THROUGH HELL – KEEP GOING (WINSTON CHURCHILL)

Cafeteria. Red-rimmed eyes. Prepackaged meal. Still untouched.