"Lee," he repeated, whispering this time, his face pale except where a splatter of blood had smeared across his chin, and his usually stormy-gray eyes washed out by the unforgiving sun.
"Love... you..." he gasped. His body slid down until he lay face up, staring into the bright sky. "Love..." Then his eyes fixed, as if on some distant sight. I watched in horror as his pupils dilated wide.
"No!" I moaned as his hands went slack, falling backward against the ground. The heart that I loved above all others stuttered and went still beneath my touch.
"No!"I screamed, beginning chest compressions on his prone form. I felt my heart breaking in my own chest, knowing he was gone, but unable to give up. My heartache didn't last long. I felt more than heard another loud thud as artillery shells landed nearby and the world exploded around us. First a roaring and searing white light, then, blessedly, blackness and silence.
Prologue 2
Mason
Eight years ago
Ricky and Dreyvenhad my life by the balls, and we all knew it.
Ricky Taylor was my uncle, or that’s what the harried social worker claimed as she dumped me off at his apartment with a backpack and a trash bag half filled with dirty clothes. Mom had died chasing her next high, and the cops had busted me a few weeks ago lifting some candy bars and a bag of chips from a Supermart after the landlord had kicked me out of our tiny apartment when they found her body.
A couple of weeks on the streets, and I thought I knew how bad things could get. I was cold, hungry, and scared, but I didn’t understand that no matter how bad you thought things already were, that they could always get worse. As I’d stood in the hallway of the run-down apartment building, I’d been terrified at first, afraid Ricky would turn me out, and that I’d end up back at juvie, or stuck in the foster system somewhere.
Sometimes I wondered what he’d seen when he’d looked at me that first time. I was a short, skinny twelve-year-old boy, half-starved even when my momhadbeen alive, because every cent she got herfingers on ended up going into her arm, not groceries. My long, curly black hair was a matted mess. Child Protective Services had tried to cut it, but I’d fought them tooth and nail. In the end it was a small victory, but I’d kept my hair. It had always been important to me, because it was the one thing that still linked me to Mom... I didn’t even have any pictures of her. Before she had gotten so deep into drugs that she didn’t even know I was there, she would brush it out for me at night, her fingers moving through my hair, working out any knots or tangles.
So I’d stood outside my uncle’s door, gripping my meager belongings tightly and staying as far away from the CPS worker who had tracked him down as I could manage.
It seemed to be my hair he’d stared at most, standing in the doorway of his trashy apartment, his paunch overlapping his belt, pants dirty and worn, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. I tried to brush it back from my face, but it kept falling forward into my eyes.
“You look just like Navi,” he growled, eying me warily, but finally opening the door. I’d had a flash of hope when he said that. Navi – Navarette – Malone had been my mom. She’d told me the only one who had called her Navi was her brother. She had never told me why she had run away from home so young, but it didn’t take me long to figure out.
The words the CPS lady said hadn’t stayed in my brain, but whatever she’d said seemed to convince Ricky I was his blood. I remembered thinking maybe a couch and a blanket or even the floor and food in the kitchen was heaven after surviving on the streets. Heaven had quickly turned to hell as Ricky began molesting me almost as soon as the door shut on the CPS worker.
At first, I’d been so relieved when he let me stay, I was grateful. I remember throwing my arms around him and hugging him after the CPS worker left, promising to do anything he told me to, promising I’d be good. I didn’t know enough then to realize that the smile that crossed his face hadn’t been a good one. He just told me I needed to wash the stink of the street off me and to go take a shower. I couldn’t really argue with him – I smelled, and I knew it.
He led me into his bathroom and showed me where everything was, then said he’d be back in a minute with some towels. Washing the dirt and grime of the last few weeks off me had felt like heaven. I hadn’t realized how much of a luxury being clean was. This was a new beginning. I’d have another chance at a family, even if he was an uncle.
When Ricky came back, he brought more than just towels, he also brought his buddy, Dreyven, and his video camera.
Ricky, it turned out, was the reason my mother had run away from home so young. He had started molesting her when she was thirteen. He laughed and held me down as he and Dreyven took turns fucking me that first time, telling me how his mother hadn’t believed Navi when she tried to tell her he was sneaking into her room at night and called her a trouble-making whore.
Ricky and Dreyven were pimps who ran a stable of prostitutes whose looks ran to the exotic. Asian women, beautiful men, and now, me.
Where Ricky enjoyed fucking beautiful things, Dreyven just liked inflicting pain.
Once Ricky got over the novelty of raping his nephew, he began pimping me out to any pedo with a buck he could find. He also enjoyed making videos, something Dreyven had gotten him into. Dreyven had taped everything he put me through, and, apparently, the two of them made quite the living from me. We ended up moving to a nicer apartment in a slightly better area of Milwaukee.
Neither tears, nor pleas, nor whatever small fight I was able to put up, did anything more than amuse or irritate them. I was eleven years old and maybe sixty pounds soaking wet. I knew my only chance was to run.
I found my first chance within a week. Ricky wasn’t used to having a kid in the house, or keeping someone locked up, so it didn’t take long to find the opportunity. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore, then found an alley to sleep in, curling up behind a dumpster. I woke in the middle of the night to a sharp pain in my ankle and screamed at the rat that had sunk its teeth into my leg. I jumped up and ran from the alleyway, across the street and right into a beat cop.
The cop had short, dark hair, tanned skin, and kind grey eyes, but I was in no mental place to appreciate that. I screamed and writhed in his grasp, desperate to escape, begging him not to send me back to Ricky and Dreyven, but he outlasted me, and after a while, I just hung in his arms, distraught, tears running down my face.
The cop’s name was Jarreau, and he was a nice guy. He took me to the hospital to get my leg looked at where the rat had bitten me, but when he heard my stomach growling in the car, he stopped at a fast food place to get me something to eat on the way. He tried to draw me out, to get me to talk, but I knew better than to talk to a cop. Dreyven had made a point of introducing me to his friends who were cops, and some of them liked little boys.
Jarreau stayed with me at the hospital while they treated me. I still had bruises on my face, from my last beating from Dreyven. Ricky yelled a lot, and would occasionally fuck me, but Dreyven was into pain and power.
They checked me for a lot of things at the hospital... but I was only twelve, and some damage didn’t show up on an x-ray. During the intake, the busy nurse had run through her checklist by rote, asking me if anyone had ever touched me anywhere private, but I couldn’t answer. I just mumbled, but I’d seen something in Jarreau’s eyes when she automatically ticked “No” on her form. After she and her clipboard left, he started talking to me, but I couldn’t listen.
I ignored him, huddling in on myself. Dreyven had beaten a prostitute almost to death just for talking to a cop. I knew better than to answer any questions. He said all the right things, the things I should have believed, the things that might have saved me years of hell if I could have responded, but I couldn’t bring myself to trust him. So when the case worker from CPS showed up, Jarreau let me leave. And the case worker took me right back to Ricky and Dreyven.
Ricky let Dreyven keep me for an entire week. Those were the longest seven days of my life. It was while Dreyven was working me over during that punishment for running that I discovered the gray place in my head.
