Inked in Lies: The Fallen Men #5 Read online

  She was holding my hand tight one moment.

  And the next, it was limp.

  I let go to stare up at her, my vision blurred with tears, throat raw because I’d been screaming for them to stop and hadn’t even known it.

  Her expression was blank in that moment before death. Pale as a sheet of untouched paper, empty of thought as shock overtook her and blood poured from a circular entry wound in her cheek.

  And then she fell.

  I guess I tried to catch her because her torso landed awkwardly on my folded legs, and something inside my left knee snapped on impact.

  I cried out, but I didn’t really feel the pain.

  I could only feel Mamá, so heavy in my arms.

  In the movies, people always die right away.

  Pop. Thunk. Dead.

  But Mamá didn’t die so quick.

  She lay looking up at me like a fish out of water, mouth working slightly, blood pooling on her tongue, eyes glassy.

  I didn’t know how to help her, and I didn’t try.

  I just held her.

  I held her as Ignacio lurched up from the floor and launched himself at the biker.

  They fought brutally, guns abandoned, hands their weapons because passion called for physical blows, and both of them were passionate about Mamá.

  Ignacio carved a massive gash into the biker’s chest with a piece of glass, but it was the biker who knocked Papá out by shoving him into the edge of our dining room table.

  The biker disappeared after that, and no one was ever sure who he was.

  But I didn’t notice any of that.

  I only noticed Mamá, and then when he crawled through the glass over to me, Jonathon.

  He sat behind me and curled around my small form so that I was cocooned by him.

  Protecting me.

  It was only then that I noted I was trembling fiercely and keening like a wounded animal as I looked down at Mamá.

  As she died in my arms.

  It didn’t take long, but it was long enough.

  When Mamá took her last breath, Ignacio was out cold on the floor, and the biker was gone.

  It was just the boy next door and me, sitting on glass, sticky with drying blood, holding a dead body.

  The Booths had called 9-1-1, and they were already on their way.

  That was how they found us, Diogo racing in just as the cop cars pulled up with their flashing lights cutting coloured shapes across the yard.

  He stood in the doorway, staring blankly at his son and me on the floor in the middle of a war-torn home, and he started to cry.

  I’d never seen a grown man cry before, and it shocked me out of my stupor enough to notice that I was crying too.

  And so was Jonathon.

  His cheek was wet against mine as he curled me closer and then carefully stood up with me in his arms, my legs over one arm and my neck braced by his other.

  I stared mutely up into his brown eyes, caught like an insect in wet amber.

  “You’re comin’ with me,” he said in a voice as raw as an open wound. Involuntarily, his hands squeezed me tighter to his chest, and I hissed as he pressed into the open cuts filled with glass on the backs of my legs. “You’re comin’ home with me.”

  Diogo was there then, too, his hulking, inelegant form shading us from the blue, the red, and the white lights splashing through the house. He slowly lifted a big hand, watching me as he did it, then he carefully, gentle as a petal landing on grass, placed it on my head and ran a rough thumb over my brow.

  It felt like an anointment.

  “You’re coming home with us,” he echoed.

  And it was funny.

  Not in a laugh out loud kind of way because nothing about the nightmare of my life in that moment was worthy of laughter.

  It was funny as in ironic, though, I didn’t know how to explain the emotion until many years later.

  Ellie had been fighting for me to be hers.

  Then she was dead.

  Ignacio had claimed I was his.

  Then, after an open and shut trial, he was incarcerated for life for manslaughter.

  And then, I was no one’s.

  But the Booths… the Booths tried to make me theirs.

  NOVA

  I’d been awake for hours, but then again, I couldn’t ever sleep for shit. Insomnia had plagued me since I was fresh outta the womb. Though lately, I had real reasons not to sleep. The loss of Dane and Lila hovered over the Booth home like a mushroom cloud of toxicity. We moved slower, talked lower, smiled less. After the calamity of Ellie Davalos’s murder, social services had pried them right outta our hands and placed them separately in cities hours apart from each other by car. They were away from us and away from each other in a way not one’a us could stand.

  In the short seven months since we’d moved to Entrance and met the kids next door, we’d fallen hook, line, and fuckin’ sinker for Dane and Lila Davalos.

  Dane was my boy, the best friend I’d ever had. I was the kinda guy who’d always had lots’a friends, but I was also the kid who didn’t feel for anyone, not much and not really.

  My parents and brothers were good people, salt of the earth kinda people, or maybe more fittingly, salt of the sea. They had love and affection to give stray cats, lost kids, family and friends galore.

  I wasn’t born that way. Easy with a smile, free with a laugh, I could entertain the best of ’em, but I didn’t get in for bondin’. People didn’t interest me much because most people were easy. I could see their needs and desires like florescent lights at the back’a their eyes, and it was borin’.

  Dane wasn’t borin’. He was the farthest fuckin’ thing from borin’, and not only because he was the son’a Entrance’s premier drug dealer, but because he was cut from bad cloth yet somehow constructed into a good man. He was stand-up, the guy who stuck by your side through thick and thin. He didn’t judge, and he couldn’t be swayed from his own ethical standards.

  Between the two’a us, I was the fuck up. The one who got arrested graffitiin’ the side’a Evergreen Gas Station for the seventh time, the one that got chased off a property by a father and his shot gun for sleepin’ with both his daughters. The one that didn’t give a fuck about anythin’ unless it was fun or interestin’, unless it would push me to feel more alive.

  And Dane was there through it all, drivin’ his shit ass Honda Civic as the getaway car, takin’ a punch that was meant for me straight to the gut and then dishin’ out his own to beat down the motherfucker who was jealous of me flirtin’ with his girl.

  We were opposites, you get me? Me from good stock, kind, solid people, but I was skewed, wrong and rebel in a way I could never ignore. And Dane? He was good straight through, even if his blood shoulda made him mean.

  So at first, takin’ an interest in Lila was purely for Dane. There was nothin’ he loved more in the world than his sister. He was knighted to her, a champion to the death. I reasoned, if Dane was my boy, Lila was just as much my responsibility. We were brothers, so she was my sister.

  I had three brothers already, and truth be told, they were all varyin’ degrees of fuckin’ annoyin’, so I wasn’t into babysittin’ a girl.

  But Lila was different.

  She followed Dane around without complaint, doin’ everythin’ he did and doin’ it with a smile because she was with her brother, and that was her favourite place to be.

  When Dane decided to try his hand at skateboardin’ ’cause of me, Lila did too, and honest to Christ, she took to it like a duck to water. It made sense to get her a pink, child-sized skateboard of her own for her sixth birthday, and I pretended that big smile on her awkwardly constructed face didn’t hit me right in the chest.

  When Dane started fuckin’ Anne Munn, the hottest girl in our grade at Entrance High, I looked out for Lila so he could sneak out to be with her. Didn’t think anythin’ of it, just kept an eye on the front door of the Davalos house from my bedroom window. Creeps and fuckin’ pervs were in and outt
a that house like gnats, and none of us liked the fact that Lila had to live under that roof.

  There was nothin’ we could do, my parents or me, but watch out for them. Dad even looked into it, reportin’ them to Child Protective Services, but the odds’a them bein’ split up and sent away were huge, and we didn’t have anythin’ concrete.

  That night, Ellie Davalos dead on the floor between Lila’s spindly legs, we got somethin’ concrete.

  So, I didn’t get what the fuckin’ hold up was on getting’ the two of them back where they belonged.

  With us.

  It haunted me. The thought’a them alone and apart, achin’ with loss and fear. I tried to chase the ghosts away with alcohol and sex––God knew there was enough high school pussy available to me––but nothin’ worked. Not even the sweet heat of a woman or the tight grip of my fingers around a pen.

  The pen I was holdin’ exploded in my hand, the second one that night. I flexed my fingers to work the tension outta them, ignorin’ the wet, black stain sinkin’ into my fingers.

  I liked the ink. Always had. It reminded me that I could change the way people viewed me. That I could construct my self-image into somethin’ I could be proud of, and maybe one day, help others do the same.

  “You should be asleep.”

  I looked up from the kitchen table where I’d been inkin’ new words into the wood grain to see my mum standin’ at the mouth of the stairs, wrapped loosely in her blue linen robe. She was sleep rumpled, but those eye–– the only blue ones in the family––were alert.

  Molly Booth didn’t miss anythin’.

  I tossed the ruined pen on the table and smeared my inked hand against my black sweats as I leaned back in the chair. “So should you.”

  “I’m the mother here, Jonathon,” she noted mildly as she went to the kettle and filled it at the sink. “Sometimes, you forget that.”

  I shrugged a shoulder, tryin’ not to be moved by the fact that my mother was alive and so beautiful in the anemic moonlight filterin’ through the big window over the sink she nearly took my breath away. It was a stark reminder that Dane and Lila’s mum was dead. That they’d never have their mother’s comfort again.

  “Nearly eighteen now,” I reasoned.

  She snorted softly as she set the kettle over the burner and took the wooden chair across from me. “Honey, you’ve been raising yourself since you could cogitate.”

  This was true. There was a disconnect between me and my folks, between me my brothers too. It was complicated, but easy to summarize: they were better people than me.

  I liked chaos and askin’ hard questions that created discomfort.

  I liked fuckin’ with authority because it was fun, and I was arrogant enough to think I was better than my teachers and the cops, that what I wanted to do was in the spirit’a fun and growth, so if it didn’t hurt anyone who the fuck should care?

  I’d stopped goin’ to my parent’s church when I was seven, tyin’ myself to the tree in our old backyard with lengths of my dad’s fishin’ line so I wouldn’t have to leave with them. It had taken hours for Dad to cut me free of the transparent fibres with his pocket knife.

  The apple didn’t just fall far from the fuckin’ tree.

  In my case, it wasn’t an apple at all.

  But I was blessed because they got it. They got that I was painted in different strokes and contrary colours, and they just let me be.

  My heart burned in my chest as I thought of Dane and Lila again, parentless and so fuckin’ alone.

  “We gotta do somethin’ about this, Mum.”

  She sighed gustily, restin’ her head in her hands as she stared at me. My fingers itched to draw the curve of her cheek and the three lines fannin’ out delicately from her wide eyes. “I know you’re feeling this hard. I know…” She struggled to find the words, reachin’ for my ink stained hand to hold even though it was still streaked with black. “I know witnessing what happened isn’t something you’re ever going to get over, even with Dr. Canterbury’s help.”

  I tried not to flinch at the mention of Meredith’s name. She was helpin’ plenty, just not in the way Mum mighta thought.

  “But we have four kids on a fisherman’s salary,” she continued, face twisted with shame. “I’m sorry to say it, but we have to be frugal as it is. How would we possibly care for two more kids?”

  “You and dad always say money doesn’t matter. Love and family do,” I reminded her, my voice as hard as the edge of a blade.

  I was bein’ an asshole. If anyone would want to take in the less fortunate, it was my mum. But the painful weight of my privilege compared to Dane and Lila ached like a lance struck through my ribcage.

  Mum winced and looked down at my hand in hers, tracin’ her thumbnail through the black pigment until it formed a misshapen heart. “I know what we said, and we meant it. You know, your dad’s parents disowned him for marrying me? I was pregnant out of wedlock, Canadian, and disrespectful of their customs.” Her laugh was uncharacteristically hard, chewed off, and discordant. “I thought for sure Diogo would stay in the Algarve, and I’d go home to Ontario to raise you by myself, nineteen and alone.”

  “But Dad wouldn’t let that happen.”

  Her smile was small and tender, an expression of some memory I couldn’t see. “No, he wouldn’t.”

  “So he won’t let this happen now,” I surmised. “He won’t abandon them. Because, Mum, you can bet sure as fuck I’m not goin’ to.”

  She laughed lightly as she studied me, eyes gentle against my face. When she cupped my cheek, I let her, because I was too old for affection like that, but I knew she needed it then.

  And maybe I did too.

  “My dark horse,” she whispered. “So unique and brave and wild. I didn’t doubt for one second that you would. I don’t know how, but we’ll find a way to make it work, honey. We always do.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Three weeks later and the paperwork was movin’ through the ranks of government like molasses in the cold. There was a permanent itch under my skin, a restlessness I couldn’t fuckin’ curb.

  I needed to do somethin’.

  I was seventeen, man enough to take action myself.

  Dad was workin’ harder than ever tryin’ to expand the business to bring in more money just in case they got approved to foster Dane and Lila. I’d seen Mum at the computer in the den, clickin’ at the keyboard with each pointer finger as she searched for part time jobs online.

  Why did it have to fall to them?

  Short answer? It fuckin’ didn’t.

  Which was why I was walkin’ away from the parkin’ lot of Entrance Bay High instead of goin’ to class, searchin’ down Main Street for job postin’s in windows. There was somethin’ in the kitchen at Stella’s Diner, but I wasn’t hot on the idea of washin’ dishes until my hands were too raw and red to draw.

  Still, I’d gone in and convinced Stella to give me a trial right then and there. If she wasn’t satisfied, she didn’t have to hire me. If she was, she didn’t have to go through the hassle of interviews.

  She’d agreed.

  Mostly, I thought, because a group of college girls had trailed in behind me and stayed the whole time I worked in the back just so one’a them could snag my number.

  So I got a job that would go a long way to help payin’ the bills for a family of six gone to eight soon as we got Dane and Lila back. Like hell I’d tell my parents I quit school to help out, though, and I wouldn’t have to as long as mum kept lettin’ me do the books. She hated numbers somethin’ fierce and had put me in charge at thirteen when I kinda showed a penchant for math.

  When I finished my shift four hours later, my hands were singed from the steaming water and hard, industrial soap, my skin burnin’ like a low-grade buzz of electricity. I hissed as I exited at the back of the diner the handle pokin’ the new blister on my palm as I pushed into the cool night air. Stella’d hire me so I shoulda felt some sense of satisfaction. Instea
d, I flipped open my phone and stared at the photo of the dirty alleyway Dane had captured in Vancouver outside his foster home, then the cluster of indigo berries Lila had sent from her blueberry farm in the Okanagan.

  It’d been a few days since I’d sent them anythin’ myself, and I knew they lived for the glimpses of home. So even though I was tired as fuck and my hands ached, I hefted my backpack over my shoulder and headed out of downtown Entrance to find somethin’ to tag with graffiti.

  I was thinkin’ they’d like a mock-up of The Three Caballeros because it was one’a the only movies they’d had growin’ up, and Lila liked to call us that sometimes, like we were some kinda boxset.

  Who woulda thought, two seventeen-year-old guys and a six-year-old girl they both woulda died for.

  It was weird as fuck, somethin’ I never mentioned at school to the friends there who didn’t matter because they’d never get what family meant to me or mine.

  But they were mine.

  My life, my choice, my family.

  I didn’t give a fuck that I’d known them for less than a year or that they were hours away from me now.

  I could still show them that someone cared about them when it seemed like they didn’t have fuck-all left.

  So I trekked the twenty minutes out of town to get to the industrial neighborhood north on the Sea to Sky Highway where I could graffiti without threat of Entrance PD cruisin’ by. There was a bar I’d been meanin’ to hit up, a long, low, one story buildin’ painted turquoise with a bright pink neon sign that read Eugene’s. There were rows of Harley’s outside and a lot filled with dirt-filmed trucks. A rough man’s hangout.

  I doubted they’d mind more graffiti bein’ added to the edifice, and I was hot shit with a spray can.

  Dumpin’ my bag on the ground, I stepped back with an aerosol can of black and studied the empty left corner of the wall on the far side of the back entrance before gettin’ to work. I wore a bandana over my mouth to keep my throat from gettin’ too raw from the chemical spray and my hood pulled up to obscure my face from any nosy fuckers passin’ by. When I finished, night had settled a dark cloak over the lot, and my design was lit only by the harsh yellow glare of the artificial lights installed at the base of the roof.