Alluring - Suzanne Steele Page 0,1
and fear was a companion she had grown accustomed to. She hated the little imp that followed her around, terrorizing her in her head. She was wise enough to know we all have ghosts who visit us in the midnight hour. The voices of fear, dread, and the intrusive thoughts of death. All the things you tried to reason with to no avail. The things that slithered around on the floor of our hearts. The parts of ourselves we never shared with others.
For those with the absence of insight, Rum was just another street whore. Had they taken the time to get to know her, they would see she was a jewel—perhaps a diamond in the rough—but a precious jewel with the heart of a lion.
Rum Deval Guerrero had been born to an alcoholic mother and an unknown father. She was the result of a one-night stand, and from an early age, she was determined to not be like her mother. She grew up going to an inner-city school where being a geek was a target for bullies. It didn’t take long for Rum to learn getting A’s was worth fighting for—literally. Her surname meant ‘warrior’ in the Latin language, and it was a name she lived up to. She learned to fight physically to protect herself, but the warrior’s spirit she possessed was innate. It shined through every area of her life and personality. She had a way of fighting her battles that was shrewd. Unlike her counterparts, she wasn’t loud and abrasive. She spoke slang when she was working, and no one was the wiser to the fact she was a brilliant, classy lady, who was well educated. She was a chameleon and could read a room and its occupants in a matter of moments. The streets had taught her what the classroom couldn’t. Hustling had only added to her knowledge of the business.
Later, when she gave birth to her son was when temptation and the lure of easy money had been presented to her. All her education and common sense gave way to a dream. The desire to do better for herself and her son was the perfect avenue for deception to sink its talons into her belief system. Any thought of how degrading it would be was pushed back into the dark corners of denial.
A friend had been the one to suggest selling her body when her bills became too overwhelming to pay. Rum didn’t live an extravagant lifestyle. The cost of living was high for everyone. Factor in a newborn and her bills had skyrocketed. She was an independent woman who had no intention of counting on anyone to support her.
The tipping point had been when her son was born. The first time she laid eyes on Saint Azulo Guerreo, her life was forever changed. Because his eyes were a smokey grey/blue, she had given him the middle name Azulo. His first name was a given as far as she was concerned because he was the purest form of innocence she had ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
Rum had kept her Mother’s last name. What choice was there when her father could be any number of strangers her mother had met in a bar. The woman she referred to as ‘an incubator’ had disappeared when she was thirteen, and Rum had been forced to sleep on people’s couches and avoid social services at all costs. She’d heard the horror stories of girls who had been placed in homes and used by the men who presented the facade of being loving foster fathers. There were also the single women who did foster care for an extra check; with them, there was always the threat of being passed around by their revolving-door boyfriends. Of course, there were the few and far between who did it for the love of children, but it wasn’t a gamble a thirteen-year-old abandoned girl could take a chance on. Rum was leery by nature, and more than once, it had saved her life.
Her short-term career had turned into a yearlong nightmare. She was tired of having to jump out of cars, escape ass kicking’s, and being robbed. Factor in the dick heads who wanted to bargain or try to steal their money back, and she was fed up. It was time for a change. She would formulate a plan and do what she always did: survive. Her first priority was to have the kind of job her son could be proud of.