Malo: An Age Gap Romance

I wander out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me, and glance around. The place is quiet, light streaming in through a few windows. It’s nice here, feels… almost peaceful, compared to where I was staying before. Every time I tried to sleep back there, it felt like there was a siren tearing past, another screaming fight in the street. Nobody would try to cause that kind of trouble here.

I explore the house a little. There are about a dozen other rooms like mine, some clearly occupied, some empty, as though they’re waiting for new guests to arrive. I wonder if there are a lot of people coming and going here. Do they provide sanctuary, or is this just where they keep their prisoners? I’m not sure which one I fall into. Not sure I want to know, either.

As I reach the small kitchen area, I hear a couple of voices—two women it sounds like. I pull back, listening to what’s being said, hoping I’m not giving myself away.

“I just don’t know what it is.” One woman sighs. “I’ve been feeling like this all week, but it can’t be a stomach bug, otherwise you would have caught it, right?”

“I know,” the other replies, sympathetic. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do, you just tell me, okay, Bella?”

I peep around the door to get a look at what’s going on. There’s a young woman leaning against the sink, clutching onto a glass of water as though for dear life, and another slightly taller woman beside her, her hand on the smaller woman’s back. She looks a little shaky, her face drawn and pale, and I feel the urge to offer help, but I bite it back at once. I know it’s none of my business, and I shouldn’t be putting myself in the middle of anything I don’t have the right to.

I’m about to head back up to my room and leave them to it, when my foot hits a floorboard in just such a way that it lets out a loud creak. The taller woman’s head snaps around, and I offer them a small smile and a wave.

“Hey, sorry to disturb you,” I blurt out. “I was just, uh, looking for something to eat.”

She shifts her weight so she’s standing a little in front of the woman called Bella, as though protecting her from me.

The woman, Bella, smiles at me. “It’s fine,” she assures me, waving me in. “The fridge has just been restocked. Someone should have something, I can’t keep anything down.”

“I’m going to head down to the pharmacy, grab something for your stomach,” the other one woman replies, not taking her eyes off of me as I make my way around the large table in the center of the room and toward the fridge. I’m not exactly hungry, but I don’t want to make it seem like I’ve just been snooping around for no good reason.

“See you in a bit, Harley,” Bella replies, and Harley nods to her, hitting me with one more hard look before she heads out. I can tell she’s not entirely sure of me, and I hope I haven’t given her reason to be pissed. The last thing I need is to make enemies here as soon as I’ve arrived, though I’m sure news of my presence hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Do you want anything to eat?” I suggest to Bella, who shakes her head and groans, planting her hands on her stomach as though she can’t even imagine it. She seems a little less closed-off than everyone else who I’ve met here so far, and I wonder if she’s someone else who had to take advantage of the kindness offered by this questionable group.

I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and crack it open, taking a long sip as Bella watches me. I wonder if she’s trying to figure out what I’m doing here. I wish I could just come clean and blurt out the truth of everything that’s happening inside my head right now, but I know I can’t go spilling that to everyone. I have to be careful, cautious, and consider who I can actually trust. The last thing I need is to let myself get too comfortable, just because I’m out of Rayo’s clutches. I don’t know exactly how this world works yet, far from it, and any wrong move could be enough to condemn me for good.

“You staying here now?” Bella asks, and I nod.

“I’m… I’m Maria,” I tell her. It’s the first time I’ve used my real name to introduce myself in a long time, but I figure they already know enough about me as it is. It’s not going to do me any harm to tell them my name, is it?

“Good to meet you, Maria. As you probably heard my name is Bella and my friend you just saw is Harley,” Bella replies, offering me a warm smile. She has a sweet aura about her, and I feel myself starting to relax slightly. I know being here is going to be far from easy, but at the same time, I at least know I’m not going to be at the beck and call of Rayo in the future, and that has to count for something, right?

I just have to pray I’ve made the right decision coming here, and putting my safety into the hands of the Ruthless Kings. Because if they turn out to be as much a danger to me as Las Rosas, I don’t know how I’m going to make it out in one piece.

CHAPTER 11

MALO

Rook and I pull up outside Rebel’s place, and I climb off my bike, pulling off my helmet to suck in a deep breath of fresh air.

It feels good to have at least some of my secrets out and shared with the rest of the Kings, even though I get the feeling not everyone is on board with having this Rosas double-agent in the house. Beast has made the call, though, and everyone knows better than to go up against him once he’s made a decision. She’s in now, and the information she’s shared with us about Las Rosas could be vital in finally bringing them down for good.

Which is why Rook and I have been sent across the city to meet with Rebel, catch him up on the new information that we’ve been given. The cartel is in the city, we know that for sure now, but what exactly they’re planning to do now they’re back is another thing entirely. I don’t even want to think how dark this could get, or what they were planning when they tried to get Maria close to me—infiltrating our ranks, but for what? To destroy us from the inside out? It worries me that they saw me as enough of a weak link that they were willing to use me as their way in.

Rook heads to the door, glancing this way and that before he goes in, as though he’s worried we might be being watched or followed. Now we know Las Rosas Negras are back in the picture, he’s got reason to be paranoid. He knows what they’ll do if they get their hands on us.

The guy we picked up the other night at the crackhouse, he didn’t give us much in the way of anything useful, and it’s clear he’s not really working with them anymore. His drug habit has likely taken him out of circulation. But that doesn’t mean they’re not still causing serious trouble in Houston, and it’s up to us to do something about it. I know the cops won’t touch El Serpiente and his men, as they’re more trouble than they’re worth, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he’s paying a whole heap of them off, too. Anything to keep his hold on the city as strong as it’s ever been.

Rebel is already waiting for us inside, his mouth set into a hard line as though he knows this is going to be bad news.

“Is this about…” he asks, and I nod before he can get the words out.

“Las Rosas Negras,” I reply. “Sit down, Rebel. We need to fill you in.”

He takes a seat in his small living room, and we fill him in on everything that Maria’s shared with us since she came clean about the reality of her involvement with the cartel. He gets to his feet after a while and begins pacing back and forth, as he takes it all in, as though he’s restless just at the sound of it. I know how hard he’s worked, just like the rest of us, to keep this city safe from the nightmare that the cartel inflicts on the residents here, and this is the last thing we need. A reminder that it’s far from over, just when it was starting to look as though we were free at last.

“Shit,” he mutters when I’m done, rubbing a hand over his face as he wraps his head around it. “I had a feeling they were back, but this…”