Born Sinner by Cora Kenborn

Chapter One

Thalia

Ten Years Ago

It started snowing an hour ago.

Thick, swirling mists of white fell upon our stolen car like hungry animals with soft teeth. Edier switched the wipers on, then turned them off again when the curtains in the old house opposite started twitching.

Fast forward, and the storm is a never-ending eddy as we sit and wait—though what we’re waiting for hasn’t been explained to me, yet. The flakes on the glass are as big as my fist. Drifts are forming against the line of big black cars parked outside the abandoned church, a little way up the street. Our windows keep getting fogged up, but nothing much else seems to be happening out there anyway.

“Do you think they’re praying?” I ask doubtfully.

“Not unless they’re praying for their lives,” Sam jokes from the back seat.

“Zip it, shithead,” Edier mutters, folding a new piece of Juicy Fruit gum into his mouth. “Thalia’s nine, not nineteen. Don’t go giving her nightmares, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else you can find your own way back to New York.”

“They’ve been in there for ages,” I say, screwing up my face. “We watched them go in an hour ago.”

Edier shoots me a sideways glance. “You worried, bug?”

I shake my head. “I never worry about papá. He’s indestructible.” I-n-d-e-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-b-l-e. I spell the word out a couple of times under my breath. I heard a man say it about him once, and it stuck in my head like a piece of Edier’s gum.

“Me either,” he mutters.

It’s not just my papá in there; it’s his and Sam’s, too.

I’m tempted to tell him that I don’t really care what’s happening, and that I’m only here because sleep is boring. I saw them sneaking out of the apartment earlier and I made them take me. Otherwise, I told them I’d squeal.

I never would. These boys are my brothers by a different kind of blood.

Cartel blood.

C-a-r-t-e-l.

I didn’t understand what that meant until I saw our papás beat a man to death last year—until I saw the same shade of crimson smearing their knuckles.

Ours are clean, but it’s only a matter of time.

I know that in the same way I know my sister, Ella, is really sick, and she might not be getting better.

Glancing out of the car window again, I watch the gargoyles on the outside walls of the church turn from stone-gray to white. They’re starting to look like angry angels. I guess papá was right. Some monsters can be beautiful at night.

“Why the hell is it so cold in New Jersey?”

Edier yanks his gray beanie down lower over his face until it’s hugging his eyelashes. He’s nine years older than me, but he never treats me like a little kid. He once told me he did most of his growing up when he was my age. I know bad things happened to him before he was adopted by one of papá’s friends, but I don’t know what. Sometimes you only need to look into a boy’s eyes to see their truth, and his are swimming in it.

He’s slouched in the driver’s seat, chewing his gum. There’s a notebook balancing on his knee, and he’s pencil-sketching the church. His drawings are unreal. My bedroom walls back home are covered in them. In another life, he might have been an artist, but he’s stuck in this one now, and there’s only one job description.

“Anywhere is cold outside of Colombia, numbnuts.” Sam appears in the gap between the two front seats again, scraping his scruffy brown hair out of his eyes. “This weather is so chilly…it’s ‘snow’ joke,” he says, grinning goofily at me.

“Ugh, Sam, you’re so lame.”

“Lame-o, same-o.” He laughs. He’s only happy when he’s breaking rules, and we’ve broken a lot of them tonight. Sneaking out of papá’s apartment after a family party… Stealing Edier’s bodyguard’s car… Driving across state lines to a place that’s forbidden…

Edier wouldn’t let it go. After our fathers left during dessert, he’d wanted to follow, and nothing was stopping him.

“Cut it out,” I say crossly, as Sam tries to ruffle my hair.

“Where do sheep go to get a haircut? The baa baa shop.” He collapses with laughter again, so I smack his shoulder a couple of times with my glove. “Ouch! Stop! Thalia, that hurts!”

I hate it when he takes our age gap and stuffs it full of bad jokes. He thinks he’s funny, but he’s nowhere near as funny as his stepdad is.

“What’s that?” he says suddenly, his face turning serious.

“What’s what?”

He jabs a finger between us. “That.”

Edier leans forward in the driver’s seat to swipe his sleeve across the fogged-up glass. One of the black car doors has opened up. As we watch, a dark shape climbs out and walks slowly in our direction. His head is braced against the storm, his arms wrapped tight around his body. Meanwhile, the black car has zoomed off down the street and disappeared into the night.

He stops under a streetlight that’s more mellow yellow than amber, a couple of feet away from us. He looks both ways, and then he’s raising a cell phone to his ear.

It’s the shortest conversation ever. Before I can blink, he’s pocketing it again.

“Do you think he’s part of the meeting, Sam?” I whisper.

“He’d be inside the church if he was.”

“Can he see us?”

“I doubt it.” Even so, Edier leans across and shoves his notebook in the glove box—just in case we need to make a quick getaway.

“What if he’s cold?” I muse out loud. “He looks cold. It’s so cold out there.”

“You can’t tell from this distance if a person’s cold or not, dummy,” Sam mutters.

“But his ride went and left him!”

Just then, a violent gust of wind divides the driving snow like curtains. At the same time, the hunched figure turns in our direction, and our eyes meet in the darkness.

“He’s a boy,” I gasp in surprise. “He’s the same age as you, Sam.”

“I am not a boy,” he huffs out, sounding offended.

“Twelve is not a man,” I retort, tossing him a look.

“Thirteen last month, actually.”

“Quiet,” Edier hisses. “I’m the oldest here, I’m driving, so it’s my rules.”

I watch the boy in the snow jerk his head left and right again. It’s almost like he’s waiting for something.

Well, he can’t wait out there. It’s freezing.

Before Edier can stop me, I’m opening the passenger door. The bad weather muffles the sound, but the movement catches the boy’s attention.

“Bug, come back,” Edier hisses again, swiping for the back of my jacket, but all I give him is sliding fingertips.

I kick my boots through the fallen snow. It’s nearly up to my knees.

“Are you waiting for someone?” I call out. “Do you want to come sit with us?”

The boy doesn’t move. He’s watching me with deep, dark eyes like distant planets.

“Did you hear what I—?”

“Go,” he snarls, leaping toward me suddenly. “Get out of here. It’s not safe!”

His English is hesitant, his accent oozy like soup.

“Go!” he says again, pushing me backward.

The force makes me stumble. His words are confusing me.

“Leave her alone!” I hear Edier shout as the squealing of tires cuts through the storm. Seconds later, the sound of gunfire inside the church explodes into the night like the flames from a bonfire.

The next few minutes happen loud and fast.

I see Sam yanking Edier back into the driver seat as another two black cars scream past us out of nowhere.

I feel something vicious whiz past my woolly red toboggan.

I taste ice in my mouth as the boy grabs me by the waist and drives me down into the ground—the heat of his body pushing me deeper into the snow as he curls around me, protecting me like a brave knight would.

More gunfire from the church.

More shouts.

Edier’s yelling out my nickname again. He’s spun the stolen car away from the curb, swung it around, and skidded to a stop by the sidewalk I’m now sprawled across.

“Bug—”

His next words are cut short as a bullet hits the trunk.

“Shit!”

Sam kicks open the back door. I feel his hand dragging me toward the car, with the boy still attached to me, but he rolls away at the last second, leaving me free to be yanked to warmth and safety.

“Go,” I hear him croak in his strange accent from the white ground. “You don’t belong here, muñequita… Go!”

“Shut the door! We need to get out of here!” Sam sounds scared as he reaches around me for the handle.

“We can’t leave him!”

“He’s a Carrera.” He spits out the word as if it were poison. “He’s their look-out. He gave the signal. Don’t you see? This whole meeting was a trap. He deserves to die like a dog for that.”

The boy in the snow unleashes a rush of angry Spanish at him.

He doesn’t look scared. Not like us. Maybe he’s a knight, after all.

Another bullet bounces off the trunk. A hundred feet away, men are still fighting and killing.

Men including papá.

But he’s invincible, right?

Are the Carreras invincible, too?

Carrera.

I spell out the word under my breath: C-a-r-r-e-r-a.

Sam’s wrong. He doesn’t deserve to die. He tried to warn me. He tried to save me.

“Come with us!” I reach out my hand to him as Edier revs the engine in warning.

The boy shakes his head, his dark eyes blinking something unreadable into mine. “I can’t. I won’t… This isn’t our war yet. But it will be soon.”

I open my mouth to ask for more, but he swings his foot out and kicks my door shut. Sam pulls me back just in time. Edier hits the gas with the sound of police cars rising above the gunfire flames.

No one speaks until we reach the bridge.

We plot our alibis before Manhattan.

All the while, I’m thinking about a knight in the snow and a war that’s coming for me.

* * *

^{Want more? Get Bad Blood, book 1 of the Corrupt Gods duet, on Amazon now! Preorder Tainted Blood, book 2, releasing July 7th.}