There’s that smile again. It’s hazy now — Granddad is really doing a fucking number on me — but still beautiful. Breathtaking, even. Every time I pull air into my lungs, it feels a little harder. Maybe this is what dying feels like. Maybe I’ve finally done it. I smile back.
“I’m glad you did, too,” I say. “Though this is a strange fucking place to find some answers.”
“It is, Ricky,” she says.
“There are no good people here,” I murmur. “Just people that… people that you don’t want to meet. People like me.” Every syllable feels stuck to my tongue with superglue. I frown at my glass.
“I wanted to meet you, Ricky. It makes me so happy that I’ve found you.”
Her words are cotton balls filling my ears. I take another drink.
“You are?”
Why the fuck would she be glad to have found me? No one should be glad to find me. Finding me only leads to the worst endings. Hell, I’ve been trying to lose me ever since Boise. No one, not even Tank or the rest of my brothers, has been enough to make me want to keep living. They tried, sure, and their brotherhood and love held the pain in check on the long road from Boise to Ironwood Falls, but as soon as I got into my own place, as soon as I encountered the silence at the end of a long day, the silence that would forever be empty ofher, I knew in the depths of my heart I couldn’t take it.
Every day would end the same way — with me alone, carrying her ghost.
So I ran.
Until I came here.
Then I ran in a different way — with booze, with gambling, with everything I could get my hands on except the ache that burns in my veins, the ache I refuse to touch because it’s the same ache that claimed herlife.
And I’d still find myself waiting for me at the end of the day.
Despite everything I do, I can’t lose who I am, and now it’s just a waiting game until something — the gambling, the booze,the debts to people you don’t want to owe money to — finally catches up to me and does what I need it to do.
Adriana hasn’t answered. It’s been nearly a minute and all she’s done is watch me with those bright, burning brown eyes while I sip the pale brown Granddad whiskey and sway in my seat.
“Why are you happy that you’ve found me?” I slur. Granddad’s got a little more kick tonight than usual. Good.
Adriana leans in, fingers making a teepee under her chin, smile still slight, tits pressed together, showing ample cleavage in her deep v-neck blouse.
“Because I’ve been looking for you, Ricky.”
I blink. The world is foggy, faded, like I’m looking at it through a steamed windshield. Granddad doesn’t just have a little kick; he hits like a fucking mule on steroids.
“Why?”
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Ever since her funeral. Vanessa’s. My name is Adriana Ruiz, and Vanessa was my sister. I know you killed her, and I’m going to kill you, too.”
Chapter Two
Adriana
Before the drugs I slipped him take his senses, I want just one thing from him, and it doesn’t matter how it comes — a look, a whisper, a tear — but I want him to beg, to show some fear, some remorse, something that shows that my sister meant something to this fucking degenerate who seems to live the fucking high life, partying and drinking in Sacramento like he didn’t shoot a bunch of fucking heroin into my sister’s veins and leave her to die of an overdose.
I’ve dreamed of this moment. Cried for it. Never thought I’d find it.
Now it’s here.
As the large dose of Rohypnol floods his system along with the acrid-smelling whiskey he likes to guzzle by the glass, Ricky DeMarco sways in his seat, glassy eyes wide and staring, and he licks his sickly cracked and dry lips, smiles, and says, “You want to kill me? Good.”
I blink.
“Good?”
He nods. Slumps forward, barely stops his fall to the floor my smacking his face on the table. His mouth falls ajar, whiskey dribbles forth, and he chuckles. “Yeah. Good. Do it.”
