Delgano: A Dark Contemporary Interracial Romance

“Do you remember anything about your mother?” he asked.

Ahmed squeezed his fingers. “I’m not allowed.”

“To tell me? What else aren’t you allowed to tell me?”

“A lot of things.”

“Are they bad things? Things that could get you hurt?”

“No.” Ahmed shook his head and dropped his gaze to the dirt. “If I tell, me and Qas can be hurt.”

“By me? Did somebody tell you that I would hurt you?”

“Not you. The bad men.”

“Did you know I used to catch bad men as my job before I came to Morocco?” If white lies were supposed to be harmless, he didn’t know what color that one was. Demon-black, perhaps. “Ahmed, I like having your sister work for me, so if there’s anything I can ever do to help, let me know.”

Ahmed’s small head bobbed.

To ease the sudden discomfort between them, Adrían pointed to something slithering in the dirt. “There’s one.”

Ahmed grabbed for the gecko, but it slinked between his fingers and ran off. “They’re too fast,” he said, balling his hands into fists. “I have tried everything.”

“You know, in the job I did before, whenever somebody was too fast, we used traps. Have you tried traps?” Adrían pretended to set imaginary pieces of bait on the ground in a straight line. “We can try using bait that leads to the trap, but we have to make sure it’s far off so they don’t sense us.”

Ahmed cocked his head to the side. “We need a plan. I’ll be right back.”

He raced to the house and disappeared inside. Adrían watched him go, then he spotted Sayeda through the kitchen window. She waved, and he waved back, studying her for a moment.

He wasn’t a hero.

He didn’t rescue people, and the only time he would save someone in the past was to harm them later.

But, with her, it was different.

When it came to Sayeda, he wanted to be a warrior, a protector—especially in a world where evil chewed people like her like tobacco, spit them out, and then carried on like those people were never destined for anything more than to be someone else’s trash.

If, one day, he found himself in the middle of a square where she lay broken, bruised, and dying, knowing he could have done something to prevent it, it would rip his heart out. Pain didn’t need love to fester, and the last decade of his life had demonstrated that with disgusting finesse.

CHAPTER

NINE

In ten minutes, both boys came up with concepts he could barely come up with now, never mind when he’d been their ages. While he explained the trap, Ahmed and Qasim drew the “blueprint,” and he’d expected something rudimentary.

Basic but usable.

However, what they came up with could have been submitted to a corporation that catered to innovative inventions.

“We don’t want to kill them,” Qasim explained. “If we learn how to trap them, we can catch the ones inside. They drive Sayeda crazy.”

“One time,” Ahmed began, giggling, “she woke up, and one was on top of her face. She screamed and screamed. At first, Qas and I thought it was because the bad men came again.”

Adrían quickly scanned both boys for bruises, wounds, bumps—anything that might suggest there was more going on than he was being told. Whether she wanted to or not, Sayeda would eventually tell him who these bad men were, what they wanted, and why the boys said her name like they were using it for the first time.

“We should start,” Qasim said, darting a warning look at his brother. “Stop making up stories, Ahmed. Mr. Delgano, my brother has a big imagination.”

Or a childish inability to keep up a lie.