5. Taking Pictures

Seven days before Luís Castillo’s murder

Leonie

“Dom’s last exam was today,” Issy said, her glasses on as she blinked at the chunky computer screen. “He might finally hang out with us again.”

She said it as if I hadn’t been counting down the days until the 29th of June. Despite his natural academic talent and ability to charm a slice of bread, he worked hard. So hard that I hadn’t seen much of him for the last three weeks, other than glances or waves across the playground between our two schools.

And I missed him.

She was peering at my computer with narrowed eyes as she replied to a boy on instant messenger. “I need a stronger prescription,” she muttered, forcing her glasses further up her nose.

“If he’s not too busy with Rebecca,” I grumbled.

She laughed and moaned, “Ugh, Rebecca.”

“He’s too good for her.”

She stopped typing and, painfully slowly, turned to face me, pulling her glasses down her nose to scrutinise me. “He’s gross, Leo. You don’t… you don’t like him, do you?” Her laugh was awkward and strained as she begged me with her eyes to deny it.

“Like Dom?”

Her face fell, brows too.

“No, of course not.”

She lifted her pinky finger. “Promise me you will only ever be friends.”

My pinky finger was weakly separated from the others, but it gripped hers tight as the promise was made.

“Good, because I’d never forgive you. Could you imagine how awkward it would be when you broke up?” She shook her head and released a strained, high-pitched sigh. “You’re family.”

She pushed back her glasses as there was a knock at my bedroom door. She quickly closed down the chat, clicking on our backup tab of ‘homework’ on the Russian Revolution.

Anton, her uncle, peered around the door. “What are you two troubles up to?”

“Oh, you know, planning the downfall of all men,” she mused. “The Castillo-Belov empire.”

He looked down at her with a fondness my father often gave me. Since we were taken those months ago, he had softened.

He ruffled both of our hair. “I’m going now. Your mum and dad will stay a bit longer. Did you want to come back with me?”

Issy always left early as she would be at the beach every morning at 5 am to surf.

“Yeah,” she said and grabbed her school bag.

Anton gave me a salute and said, “See ya, lion.”

I returned the salute and he left us. Is was hot on his heels but at my door, she paused and leaned back into the room. She hissed, “Text lover boy, yeah?”

“Fine,” I said and threw the cushion from the chair she had vacated at her head. My aim was rarely off.

“Bye, bitch!”

“Bye, sis!”

Issy had dared me to save Sam Yun’s number as ‘Sammy Yun X’ and I had. Because I wanted Dom to see. Sometimes, I made the calculated move of texting him while Dom was in the room, hoping he would reply and Dom would notice.

LEONIE: What are you up to tonight?

The moment I sent the text, I threw it on my bed and balled my hands into fists, scared to touch it, scared to see his response.

The reply was immediate. I peered over and, with a quick index finger, opened the message.

SAMMY YUN X: Waiting for you to text me.

And I squealed.

Because Sam Yun was one of the boys all the girls wanted. He was muscular, tanned, athletic and smart. His parents had come over from Korea last year, and with the air of mystery as to who the new family on the block were, everyone wanted to be in with him, to know the most about him.

It didn’t hurt that he was in Dom’s year and ran in his social circle.

I climbed into bed, pulling the sheet over me and grinning. Boys were never interested in me.

LEONIE: Are you not celebrating your last exam with Dom?

My heart raced as I waited for his response. I wanted him to tell me about Dom. I wanted him to flirt with me.

I wanted to put my hands between my legs.

SAMMY YUN X: I may have had a few drinks. I’d rather celebrate with you.

Damn, he was smooth. I could celebrate with him.

My thumbs hovered over the send button as I bit my lip, rereading my penned reply. And I sent it.

LEONIE: And how would we celebrate?

This time, there was a minute before my phone buzzed in my hand. I’d tried to busy myself with the book on my bedside table, but my fingers itched to do something other than flip the page.

SAMMY YUN X: In very little clothing.

LEONIE: Surprised there’ll be any clothing at all.

Something within me felt very bad. Naughty. And fucking free.

I should not be texting this man. But the only texts I’d got from the person I really wanted had been variations of, ‘see you soon’ and ‘my exam went well.’

And I was proud of him, but we weren’t going in any direction even before his exam season.

SAMMY YUN X: Why don’t you show me what that would look like?

My chest tightened as I read his message again and again. I wasn’t exactly innocent. I was a virgin, but I’d bought saucy underwear with my mum.

She’d got me condoms. A bullet vibrator. I had the implant.

At least she thought I was beautiful and ready to be sexually active.

LEONIE: It’s for your eyes only.

SAMMY YUN X: Babe, no one else sees what’s mine.

Butterflies were choking, flapping in my stomach.

LEONIE: What of yours do you want to see first?

SAMMY YUN X: Tits xx

Yep, such a man. Such a teenager.

I threw off my crop top, pulled off my leggings and pushed up my bra until my tits swelled out of the cups.

I flipped my camera to selfie mode and swallowed when I saw myself in the black lace bra.

I reached over to my desk and painted my lips with red lipstick. When I shuffled back to my space on the bed against the headboard, I readjusted myself and took the picture. And sent it.

The reply was immediate.

SAMMY YUN X: Damn. I haven’t had too much to drink. I’ll come over now xx

LEONIE: I’m just teasing you, Sammy. You’ve got to work for this.

LEONIE: What should I tease you with next?

SAMMY YUN X: I want to see you touch yourself. I’m gonna go jerk off xx

The power was euphoric. And I wanted him on his knees. I needed him to beg me to take my clothes off, and some romantic part of me wanted him to spout poetic phrases of lust.

Not love.

LEONIE: I don’t grant ‘wants.’

My phone rang, and I held it for a second, chewing the inside of my cheek. If I didn’t pick up, would I look like I was trying to play hard to get? Or would I look weak? If I did pick up, would my voice give away how nervous I felt?

Phone at my ear, I got up to close my bedroom door. By now, Mum and Dad would be a bottle of wine deep on the other side of the house in the game room. With Dom and Issy’s parents still around, they would be far too busy to pay me any attention.

“I need to see you touch yourself,” Sam begged. “I have to. If you don’t send me a picture, I’ll come over to see you in action.”

“Aw, baby,” I said in a mockingly sympathetic voice, “and you think you’d be invited in? That’s cute.”

“I’ll break in,” he said, voice desperate as I put him on speaker and attached my phone to the standing selfie stick. “I’ll come through your window.”

Like Dom did some nights.

“We have a new and very sensitive security system,” I said with a dramatic sigh as I sat on my heels, legs spread. The lighting wasn’t perfect; my camera was a bit grainy with just the lamp on, but the darkness added to my own sex appeal. “Doesn’t look like you’re going to get what you want.”

Photo taken in 3…2…

I pushed out my chest and dived my fingers into my underwear. They weren’t matching my bra, but he couldn’t tell in the lighting.

“What are you doing?” he asked. The party seemed to die down around him as if he was walking away from it.

“Just taking some pictures,” I said innocently.

I heard him gulp and grinned as I took another, stroking myself and throwing my head back for dramatic value.

That’s what girls did in porn, right? The girls in magazines that Dom had in his bedroom.

“Send me,” he demanded. “Send them to me now, Leonie.”

“And what do I get in return?” I mused, scrolling through the ones I had taken and cropping my face out from the mouth up.

“Anything you want. Anything.”

He couldn’t give me what I wanted. Or… or maybe he could.

I sent one.

“Fuck,” he swore. “Fuck, Leonie. Fuck.”

“Mmmm,” I moaned, loading the camera app up again and starting to play with myself. “Do you like it?”

“Leonie, see me. Come over tonight. I’ll come to you. This weekend.” His breaths quickened as his words rushed from his mouth. His pleas made everything so much sweeter. He wanted me. “Oh my god, I’m here in a fucking forest with my cock out needing to see you. Leonie, tell me you’ll see me.”

“Do you think you deserve to—”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

I yelped, pulled the cover over me and kicked the stand that held my phone. It crashed to the floor. Sam’s voice was still shouting, “Leonie, are you okay? Leonie!” proving I hadn’t succeeded in smashing it to shit.

“Dom!” I screeched as his furious face took in the scene before him. He was standing at my open window, his strong jaw ticking, his nasty glare on the phone.

He climbed into my room with one movement. I clutched the sheet to my chest and leaned over to hang up on Sam with my other hand. Dom grabbed it in his fist. “Don’t move.”

The force within those two words had me cringing. He was to one day take over his father’s businesses — legal and illegal — and I’d known my gentle Dom was capable of cruelty, but I’d never seen it before.

He swooped up my phone and put it to his ear. “Who the fuck is this?” he growled.

It beeped, and he looked down at it with disgust before opening up my texts.

“No, Dom!”

But he’d already seen. His grip on my phone was so tight that his knuckles were white. His face reddened and, for the first of many times, he gave me that disgusted snarl. “Sam Fucking Yun? You’re fingering yourself, taking pictures of yourself for Sam Yun?”

Tears were streaming down my cheeks, but he didn’t care.

“I cropped out my face.”

“Because that makes it okay!” he roared and shoved the phone in my face, showing me the picture of my hands down my knickers.

I didn’t cower away. I took in my half-naked self and then looked up at him.

“He is eighteen, Leonie.”

“So?” I shouted. All I wanted were my clothes. I just wanted my clothes.

He picked up the crop top and threw it at me, turning around to ironically give me some privacy. “I can’t even look at you. You are a child.”

Pulling on my top, I tried not to audibly sob, all of my courage gone. He saw me as just a child. A younger sister.

There was nothing between us and there never would be.

“Maybe I want someone experienced.”

He snorted, tapping away on my phone, his back still to me. “He’s experienced alright.”

“Good,” I snapped and wiped away my tears with the back of my hand. “I can’t wait for him to teach me.”

He whipped around and I stood, just in my knickers and crop top. He’d seen me in bikinis all the time. I didn’t care what he saw me in, but I really cared about what he had seen me do.

I lay my palm flat before him, requesting my phone.

He bent down to my level, his eyes hooded in anger. “If he touches you, fucks you, I will kill him with my bare hands.”

Is that how he had killed the man that had touched me? Strangled the life out of him? Now that he’d killed one person, had he got a taste for it?

“Makes it more exciting,” I remarked and snatched my phone back.

He looked me up and down, assessing me through narrowed eyes. “What has happened to you?”

“I got impatient waiting.”

“Waiting?” he asked, seeming genuinely confused as his pitch heightened.

He had no idea. He was completely oblivious to the fact I yearned for him, that I didn’t want to just be his friend anymore.

“What are you doing here!” I said and heaved at his chest, the tears threatening to fall again. “You’re not meant to be here!”

“I was… I wanted to see you. I haven’t seen you in weeks,” he said softly, catching my elbow as I shoved at him again.

“Well, I don’t want to see you!” I shouted.

“Oh, but you want to see Sam Yun? You want to see a lot of Sam Yun?”

“Yeah, maybe I do!”

He pulled back, stepping towards the window. “Stop being so desperate,” he sneered. “It’s embarrassing.”

I choked on the air. “Get out! I don’t want to see you! Get out!”

And that was the last time we were friends.