CHAPTER FIFTEEN

JASIEL

While they were busy talking about the plan in the safe house, I took a couple whatever money I found in Daddy's pocket from the bedroom floor, and decided it was time I went to go buy myself my blue raspberry slushie.

Dressed in my short overalls and an oversized light blue t-shirt, I only needed one more thing to complete the look and to stay out of trouble. A baseball cap and shades. I also needed my knives, so I took two with me and slipped them into the front pocket of the overalls.

Nobody even noticed me leave, but I was a master escapist, so that wasn't a surprise. I looked behind myself a couple times to wonder if they were following me too.

I had always loved slushies, ever since I was super little. After school, we would walked past one of those big convenience stores, my mom would be a couple scratch off tickets and something for the lottery, and I'd get a slushie. The flavors were always different, and some of them were bad, but most of them were delicious because of all that sugar.

When my mom died, I was only eight. My grandma took me in, which made sense because we'd been living with her for as long as I could remember anyway. She had to, if she didn't, I had nobody and nowhere else to go. The only other family member was my father, but he was abusive, not toward me, my mom had left Colombia with me in her belly to get away from him.

Walking around the store, the freedom of being able to exist was nice. I never wanted to end up in prison, even when I was robbing people, I had never wanted to end up on the inside. The last place I had expected to ever find myself was in a cell. But I did, and I made it work for me. If it came down to going back inside again, I knew I could get out again—I think.

I filled my slushie cup, drinking it as I poured, making sure I was fill on sugar and my lips were all blue before paying at the register. The attendant didn't seem to care that I'd probably drank three cups before I'd gone to pay for it, and good too, because I'd just sharpened my knives, and I was desperate to use them.

Something didn't feel right, from the moment I stepped into the store, I almost felt like there was something off in the energy of the place. I was good at reading situations and people, to the point where I knew if something bad was going to happen.

And something bad was going to happen.

Nobody had come in the store since I'd been there, that was the first clue.

The second clue was the attendant at the register. The shifty bastard couldn't have kept a secret if his life depended on it. Scratching up his arms and tensing his fingers before cracking his knuckles like an anxious reflex. I knew, even with my disguise, that someone knew I was in here.

And I was right.

Three men were outside, trying to hide near parked cars. Black balaclava masks covering their faces.

"Come on then," I said, walking out of the store. I sucked deep from the straw, getting as much of the slushie inside me as possible. It was a hot day, and this was cooling the deep pool of intense fire burning inside me.

My slushie cup was knocked from my hand, thrown across the stone paving outside the store.

A light grumble came from the back of my throat. "You shouldn't have done that." My hand slipped inside the pocket of my overalls. "You don't want to try me."

"Jasiel?" one of them asked.

"You'd have more luck trying a bag of cheap coke than you'd have trying me," I said, wrapping my hand around the handle of the knife. I was poised and ready for the attack. "So?"

One of them pulled out a gun, aiming it at me, close range. I didn't know much about guns, but I knew they didn't come with orange tips. These men were boys, and they were playing, because that wasn't a real gun.

"Who do you work for?" I asked, the hold on knife handle loosening.

"Come with us."

"No," I scoffed. "You're lucky I don't kill you."

The three of them laughed at the comment.

I didn't take laughter lightly. In a swift motion, I pulled my hand out of my pocket and threw the knife at the man furthest away. The blade went through his throat. He collapsed as the rich red blood gushed out from his neck on the stone.

"You pushed your luck," I said.

The other brought out a gun, this one looked a little more real. "Dead or alive they said!" He stepped closer, waving his gun in the air.

"Don't make me do it again," I said.

The sound of two bullets fired, colliding with the two men.

Up on a building opposite the store, Daddy, in his cartoon mask waved down at me.

So, maybe he had followed me. "I told you we'd get slushies later," he said.

On the sidewalk, our large black SUV parked up. Midas was in the driving seat. "Get in," he said.

Folding my arms, I huffed. I didn't want to. My slushie was on the ground now. I wasn't going anywhere without another.

Daddy appeared at my side, in his black shirt and trousers, he wrapped an arm around my side. "Come on, baby," he said. "We'll get you another one later."

I suppose I had slurped up several cups in the store, and my mouth was adequately blue, like I'd just been giving head to Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin.

Before being hauled into the back of the car, I grabbed my knife and wiped off the blood on Daddy's nice, black shirt. I'd also swiped one of their wallets, which was a trick I learned from my carnie days, not all of them did that, but it was a skill I'd wanted to learn, putting your hand in a pocket and going unnoticed. But I don't think it mattered much when they were dead.

"You guys were busy talking about plans," I said as Midas left a screeching tire mark impression on the road. "Plus, when have I ever waited for someone to tell me I could do something?" It was their fault really. They knew me, and they should've known I hated to wait around. It was boring to live that way.

"You didn't think we wouldn't notice you sneak out?" he asked, stroking a hand through my hair. He pulled my head back, stretching my neck out. "I know where you are, all the time, if you sneak out, sneak in. I always know baby."

I returned the favor, grabbing his hair with a fist and yanking the cartoon mask from his face. "Maybe I wanted you to come with me," I said, yanking harder. "I just want to spend time with you. But you're just talking about the plan all the time. And you said—" I yanked his hair harder, but he didn't flinch, and he barely moved. "You told me we could go to the zoo."

"We can go to the zoo once the mission is complete," he said through clenched teeth. "You know we don't get the reward until after the job is done."

Letting go of his hair, I sighed. "I hate waiting." In a huff, I folded my arms.

"Did I see you grab a wallet before?" he asked, stroking my face and hair from where he might've caused me any pain. "I want to know if they were working for Benicio."

In the wallet, there were a couple hundred dollars in bills. A small plastic bag with tablets, and a couple of IDs. Although unless their last name was part of the family name, I'd have to hand them over to Trojan for him to run. When we did jobs, Daddy always had people at the house who would run information like IDs and faces, so it was nice we had someone who could do that, but it sucked because it made me feel useless.

"Marco Powell," I said, reading his name. "Twenty-four years old."

Daddy sighed. "Could be either family."

The Coronado family and the Agosti family weren't the only families, there were more, smaller families around, but it was those two who ran most of the crime in the city. Although until recently, the Coronado family had built a monopoly on that crime, it was no wonder they didn't want me or Daddy leaving them. It opened them up to stuff like this, and having their criminal enterprises attacked.

When we got back to the safe house, Daddy insisted on boarding up the windows. He said they hadn't done it already because they didn't think it was necessary, but now that more people are after Jasiel, the windows needed to be boarded from the inside.

I hated living in the dark like they had at the last place, the idea of all that light being kept out was borderline depressing.

"I'm not helping," I said, leaving them to it as I went to the bedroom and snuggled in bed with Blubby. I told Blubby all about what had happened today and why I didn't have a slushie with me. My stuffie made everything better. He was always there for me, and sometimes the stories he told me were just as wild as the stories I told him. I couldn't quite believe that he'd been able to survive at the bottom of a bag for months without cuddles, even after Daddy promised me he cuddled with him while I wasn't around.