Blood to Dust

“By the time she left London, eighteen-year-old Prescott thought she was madly in love with Camden Archer, the flashy, English hot-shot with charming manners and a fine taste in music and films.”

I hear his tender chuckle. “But let me tell you, Beat, it all went downhill from there.”

“Whatever,” he murmurs. The first time he’s acknowledged my story directly.

“Let’s do dinner tomorrow.”

“No.”

“I’ll be good to you. Maybe even bad, if it’s your type of thing,” my raspy voice suggests through a smirk. “We’ll both pretend that we have someone who cares. Everyone needs a friend.”

I roll my stress ball in my hands, squeezing it until my fingers hurt.

I need.

I need my family back, and hugs, and to count my happy places every now and again. I need to be acknowledged and, as much as I hate to admit it, I need him.

My traitorous cock has betrayed me again.

I’m starting to think Godfrey deliberately put this girl under my supervision because he wants me to go fucking nuts. Never, in my entire life have I lusted after a woman. Women were low-hanging fruit for me to pick, sink my teeth into and toss after one bite. Prescott is no different. She’s offering herself to me on a silver platter, with a side of grapes. But with her, I want it.

Why do I want it? Because she’s broken like me.

Why do I need someone broken? Because she understands, never judges, and doesn’t back down.

Broken people do things better; we learned how to make it in life without the missing parts other people have. Because when you’re in the dark, you appreciate everything that shines.

She’s not the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She ain’t the cutest or funniest. But she’s shrewd and cunning. A chameleon changing her colors to adjust to the situation she’s been thrown into. I know she’s trying to manipulate me, and to some extent, she’s succeeding.

It’s fun watching her sweat for me, especially because in the outside world, I’d be her slave, polishing her expensive tiles in swim trunks and listening to her ramblings about Tahoe vacations.

Flashbacks of grinding against her like a fucking pervert have me walking around with a crimson red face all day. I’ll never live this shit down.

I go about my usual routine, showing up at work. Thank fuck Mrs. Hathaway’s still in Tahoe, because this dancing monkey is not in the mood to walk around half-naked just for her amusement. My body is humming with quiet rage, and I know exactly what will set it free, but I can’t have it.

Godfrey would kill me if I touch her.

Throwing the Smiths vinyl record onto the gramophone—if there’s one thing I love about this job, it’s Stan Hathaway’s record collection—I start working. Scrubbing, washing, vacuuming and dusting to the sound of Morrissey wording my misery ever so sweetly. My sorry ass would lick every inch of these Italian granite floors if I had to, just to save some money to run out of Cali-fucking-fornia.

I pick up my dirty backpack when I’m done and check my phone out of habit. I have four missed calls. Weird. No one ever calls me, other than the occasional fraud. I frown at my phone and redial the number on the screen, my pulse kicking up. The area code reads San Rafael.

I’m not ready for this phone call, and as the other line clicks alive, I know that my favorite person in the world is now dead.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I jump into Stella and call Irvin, telling him he needs to feed Pea and give her her fifteen minutes of bathroom time. I don’t call her Pea, sticking instead with “God’s girl.”

I don’t trust the bastard with her, but I need to drive to San Rafael to identify the body of Frank Donald Dixon. Dead, after four years in a coma.

Because of me.

Because of Hefner.

Because of God.

Because of the Aryan Brotherhood.

They’re still after me.

I show up at the forensic laboratory and a grief counselor immediately greets me. A woman in her mid-thirties, thin with perfectly applied makeup and a haircut from the magazines. She shakes my hand, the grin that graces her face confirms blue blood runs in her veins. She explains that I’ll need to identify him by a photograph. I was his only contact person. Me. How sad is that?

The last time I saw him was the day shit went down, and I dread the idea of seeing how he spent the last few years while I was eating four bangers and trying (yet failing) to stay out of trouble.

She sits me down and shows me a picture, and I nod, my face blank. It’s him, all right. The last person who resembled family in my life is dead. No mom. No dad. No neighbor who showed me the ropes in prison. No one.