The Isle Of Sin And Shadows - Keri Lake Page 0,129
me curling in on myself, breathing shallow.
“Cállate, gavacho.”
“I’m not going to ask you again, puta. You tell me where he is, or I’m going to cut your son’s balls off and feed them to you.”
Tears blur her face, and I’m glad for one brief moment when I don’t have to see the pain and fear in her eyes. “I haven’t heard from him in t’ree months. He left wit’out a word.”
Exhaling a sigh, the man crouches in front of my mother, and when he taps a blade to her knee, she flinches.
“She doesn’t fucking know! They haven’t talked in years!” My shouts seem to draw the man’s attention to me, and he twists on his heel, just enough to face me.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m talking to the wrong one.” With a nod, he signals to the third guy, who’s been standing off to the side this whole time.
From out of my periphery, he strides up to my mother, wrenches her head back, and knocks the chair out from under her. With blond hair and pale white skin, he doesn’t look anything like the rest of them, and the slight contortion in his back speaks of some deformity. Perhaps a fresh-faced recruit of their little gang, trying to earn his way in with some fucked-up initiation.
Muscles tight, I twist my arm to get it loose from the binds, but the man sitting on them shifts his weight just enough that it feels as if my ribs are collapsing.
“Where’s your father, cabrón?” tank top asks, tapping the blade against his palm.
Beyond him, the pale kid manages to wrestle my mother to the floor, onto her stomach, mirroring my prone position. He turns her head so she faces me.
At the unbuckling of his belt, my insides turn to ice. A bellow of rage explodes from my chest as I break into a fit, wriggling and bucking.
Cold steel presses into my temple where the leader holds the blade. “Ever try to push a blade through a man’s skull?” he asks over my mother’s screams. “Not easy with that bone. You have to jab it in with some force. And sometimes the blade sticks. Thickheaded motherfuckers.” The chuckle that follows grates on my nerves, an irritating distraction to the struggle taking place behind him, as the other stranger tries to cut away my mother’s pants.
“Three months ago, my father left with some whore. Didn’t say where he was going. Didn’t say a word. I went to his house, and everything was there. Like he just left everything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Behind him, the stranger works his way inside my mother, and at her first scream, I screw my eyes shut.
“No, please! Don’t do this! Please don’t do this!” She sobs, over the sound of slapping skin and the kid grunting like some kind of fucking pig as he ruts against her.
Rage twists and curls inside of me, a black, toxic fury rising up from the pit of my gut. I take hold of what feels like a set of nuts belonging to the fat prick with his knee in my neck, and I squeeze so tight, it’s a wonder my nails don’t bust off.
The man on top of me screams out a curse and moves abruptly. The weight lifts just enough that I lurch toward my mother, her eyes now vacant while the kid continues to rock into her, and a piercing pain hits my left flank.
I reach out to her.
Another agonizing flare has my hand drawing back and against the white-hot burn branching across my ribs like ice crystals.
I collapse to the floor, my palm wet, where I cover the pain with my hand. When I lift it, my eyes are greeted by dark red blood. Fighting the agony, I drag myself toward my mother, pulling myself along the tiles.
My whole body turns cold. Too fucking cold.
Coughing sends a new rush of pain to the place that’s begun to feel numb.
I reach out for her again.
Blackness.
32
Céleste
Thierry’s white button-down shirt, speckled with blood, hangs loose off me, as I sit with my back pressed against the tree branch, rubbing the ligature marks on my wrists. The burn of tears stings my eyes, a cold, numbing shock settling over me, as he tells me the story of what those men did to him and his mother.
“We changed our name to Bergeron and moved out here to the swamps,” he goes on. “Nine months later, my sister, Frannie, was born.”