Delgano: A Dark Contemporary Interracial Romance

He tuned out her rambling.

While he recognized most of the guns on the table, his only experience was with handguns, knives, and the shivs he’d fashioned out of wood, chicken bones, and utensils smuggled from the cafeteria during a stint in a São Paulo jail. Some of these guns had attached scopes or a pump-action fore-end underneath the barrel, but he’d never needed more than a pistol.

The Chamas lieutenant, the tenente, had often referred to him as “trigger happy” and claimed he didn’t need more than a handgun because he fired so “cavalierly.”

But he wasn’t a special agent.

As an enforcer, his job wasn’t to interrogate. It was to get results and dole out consequences, both of which he’d done with what the same man had referred to as “startling efficiency.”

“Adrían?”

He spared Hannah a glance.

“Pick one,” she said.

“What’s my target?”

“I know you wish it was me, but,” she pointed to a wooden circle covered in chalky blue paint several yards away, “your target’s that guy right there.”

He chose a pistol and tested its weight. Then he slid the hammer back to load the chamber and removed the safety.

“Wait.” She slipped a pair of earmuffs over his head, stepped back, and stuck her index fingers in her ears.

He aimed for the blue circle and considered using her as his target, but one of the large-armed, rifle-toting men would drop him if he pivoted even slightly. Also, his initial anger was gone. Had she admitted to fondling him, he would have taken his chances at being plant food if it had meant landing a kill shot.

He pulled the trigger.

The target went down before popping back up again.

“Not bad,” she said, removing her fingers from her ears. “You’re only about six millimeters off the center.”

She aimed her handgun at the target, squeezed the trigger three times, and all three bullets traveled unimpeded through the bullseye.

“You want me to trust you?” he asked, removing the earmuffs. “You know so much about me. Tell me about you.”

“The story of Hannah?” She tilted her head and shrugged a single shoulder. “There’s not much to tell. My mother sent me to live with her sister when I was a baby to keep me away from my father, but he found me in Virginia. He took me with him, and we were on the run for about two years before I was found in Hawaii.”

She set down the pistol and reached for a shotgun. He attempted four more shots, only to miss the center all four times.

“My aunt raised me alongside my cousin,” she continued. “And she did a good job where my mother just…didn’t really try, but I was noticeably different. The thing is, when you go through shit like that, you need fucking Mary Poppins to get back right.”

When he was eight, he remembered watching Mary Poppins with his classmates. They showed it to the students with the hope of demonstrating how goodness positively affected one’s life, and at that age, it had been easy to believe. However, goodness guaranteed nothing except for one day being taken advantage of by those who consumed the blood of the weak with their evening meal.

“How old are you now?” he asked.

“I recently turned twenty-five.” She grinned. “For the fourth time.”

“Would’ve put you around my age.”

“What do you mean? I am around your age.”

He didn’t smile, but he came close.

“You’re not picking any heavy artillery,” she pointed out. “You didn’t use rifles in Chamas?”

“Didn’t need to.”

“Do you want to learn?”