Chapter 6

6

Bea

A s dinner time grew closer, the knots in her stomach became tighter. She wished she could stay in bed, but that wasn’t an option. Her uncle wouldn’t like it.

The whole afternoon, she’d tensed each and every time she’d heard a noise out in the corridor, wondering if it was her uncle coming to see her. Rogue had certainly had enough time to speak to Emiliano about what he’d seen earlier that day.

There was no excusing what she’d done—no way she could claim ignorance. Emiliano had been crystal clear with her the last time he’d caught her out by the staff quarters. She wasn’t to approach the staff outside the house ever again unless she wanted to spend another week alone in the cellar.

The mere thought of another week like that made her throat go dry. The hunger, the thirst, the hallucinations—instead of conjuring up an oasis, like a reasonable person might have done, she’d conjured up fire-breathing dragons that had huffed and puffed by the cellar stairs, as real as anything she’d ever seen. By the time her uncle had opened the door, Bea had been sure her uncle was going to leave her there to die. She shook her head to clear away the memory.

She understood why her uncle didn’t want her teaching Manuel, or any of the other kids. Not English, and not anything else. Because, while Emiliano was not an intelligent man, he was smart enough to understand that knowledge gave you options. That teaching Manuel things would make him—and his parents—realize there might be a better life waiting for him outside the walls of the hacienda .

Bea wanted that for Manuel. She wanted that for all the children whose parents worked for her uncle.

Options.

She didn’t have many options herself—she knew if she ever tried to leave her uncle would drag her back by her hair, that he’d never let her go, no matter what—but she’d be damned if she’d stand by and watch Manuel grow up to join her uncle’s crew of drug-addled zombies. Not if she could help it.

And she could. She would . Manuel was one of the smartest kids she’d ever met. He loved adventure stories—had practically inhaled The Count of Monte Cristo , and she had no doubt he’d finish The Three Musketeers by the time she saw him the following week. They were only meeting once a week because Bea was a coward, and because it wasn’t just herself she was risking. She knew her uncle and knew he wouldn’t reserve his punishment for her alone. He would hurt Manuel and his parents, too, if he ever found out. He might already have done so since Rogue had had all day to tell her uncle about what he’d seen.

Hope and fear warred inside her. Fear, because her uncle’s wrath would be fierce, and there was no way she could plead ignorance this time around. Hope, because there’d been something in Rogue’s eyes—something that made her think perhaps he had not said anything to her uncle. She knew he wasn’t a good man—for God’s sake, he was working with her uncle, doing something to make his business more efficient.

Efficient . Such a clean, innocent word, when what it really meant in this case, was deadly because every dollar of efficiency meant more drugs out in the streets, which meant more people dead, more blood on her family’s hands.

No, Rogue wasn’t a good man, but she’d looked into his eyes and had seen nothing evil inside them.

She finished changing into her evening dress, a gown with pale peach undertones—not that she believed for a second that wearing a dress in her uncle’s favorite color would protect her if Rogue had ratted her out.