Playlist recommendation:
I’m No Angel - Dido
I hated that she trembled in my arms.
I hated that Martinez had terrified her.
As much as I wished I could have stopped this vacation before it had a chance to happen, I had already learned that Kitty didn’t allow fear to conquer her, tostopher. Yet, here she was. Trembling.
My hindbrain might have roared with glee at her finding shelter in my arms, butIraged at the fact she had to.
“I think that the Martinezes do nothing without a reason.”
“Doesn’t sound like an answer to me.”
“There would be repercussions for hurting you,” I attempted to appease, giving her the honor of the truth and not sugarcoating it in anyway. “But Idobelieve that you must have come to their attention somehow.”
Stroking the back of her head, the calluses on my fingers catchingthe silk of her hair, I stared at the pool and tried to make sense of the night’s mess, but nothing computed.
“When Neev was sixteen, her Spanish teacher slept with her.”
My brows lifted at the whispered, out-of-the-blue, and seemingly irrelevant confession. “Your brothers dealt with him?”
“No. We didn’t tell them. I love them but… Neev didn’t see anything wrong with it. She said she loved him. He’d been grooming her for months.”
“What did you do?” As little as I knew about this woman’s past, I knew enough to recognize she wouldn’t let anyone hurt her family.
“Neev only told us because she was happy. Fuckinghappy.” Her fist flexed into a tight ball. “When she shared her ‘special secret’ with us, somehow, and I have no idea how, we contained our reaction.” She exhaled and her words became a whisper. “You’ve probably noticed how different Raisin and I are. Who am I kidding? Of course, you’ve noticed. But on this, we were in complete agreement.
“We had to handle him, put him on a permanent registry, and Neev could never know.” A shudder traveled down her spine. “On the ride to the school that night, neither of us even tried to talk our way out of it. He’d betrayed our sister. Messed with her head. Made her think helovedher and that they’d be together after she graduated. He needed to be erased from her life so she could move on.
“So, we waited for him after school. Tied him up and put him in the trunk of his car.”
I paused my hand mid-stroke, dumbfounded by the admission. “How the hell did you do that?”
“Raisin came onto him and I hit him over the head with a tire iron.”
Both aghast and fascinated, I prompted, “Then what did you do?”
“Perverts don’t stop, do they?”
“No. They don’t.”
Watery eyes peered at me. “Neev told us it started after she turned fifteen, Stan. I had to put a stop to it. Sowedid. Róisínand I.”
“Why didn’t you tell your brothers? Or the Five Points? Surely they’d have handled it for you.”
“Maybe. Those years were chaotic. We lost my da and brother so close together and the family struggled to find a semblance of normality afterward.
“I should have gone to them but I wanted vengeance for her. They’d have made it about them.What did they do wrong? Shit like that. They already policed us. I wasn’t about to punish her for being targeted by a pedophile.Now, I’d make different choices, but then…”
“But what,duci?”
“Neev reacted poorly to Da’s death.”
“I’m sure you did too.”
“And losing my brother?—”
