In Death I Live by Lindsay Becs

 

ZORA

I wasnine the first time they took me from my mom’s trailer.

I hadn’t eaten anything besides condiment packets and crackers I’d stolen from the fast-food place down the road in over a week.

I thought things would be better.

The lady who smelled like flowers told me they would be.

I believed her.

She lied.

They weren’t.

After three months of living in a house with five other kids who took turns beating and ridiculing me for sport, stealing my food and making me sleep under the bed, I went back to my mom’s trailer.

She’d passed her drug tests long enough to

get me back.

It only lasted a short time before I was taken away again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Again.

And again.

And again…

“Zora,” Slater says my name in his lazy drawl. It breaks me out of the rabbit hole of bad memories I was about to be sucked into.

Turning my head, I look at him through a haze of alcohol. “Yeah?” I ask, squinting to try to focus his blurry image.

“I was looking for you for a long time. You know that, right?”

I swallow nervously, because I don’t know if his admission makes me feel better or worse. “It’s okay,” I answer, looking down to the plastic cup in my hand, instantly sobering from his confession.

His hand comes up to the side of my face, his thumb running over my lips. “Are you still my girl?” he asks, a soft smile on his face. A smile I know all too well. A smile that I fell for and trusted too many times for far too long.

Turning to look at him again, I nod. Because there’s no other answer I can give. Anything less and he’ll snap. And when Slater snaps, blood spills and lives are lost.

Pressing his brow to mine, I close my eyes so he can’t see the tears filling them. “I missed you, Zora.” Gripping my wrist, he brings my hand to his lap where I feel his erection straining against his jeans. “You feel how much I missed my girl?” he asks with groan,

forcing my hand to rub up and down his length.

When I first met Slater, I was thirteen. He was five years older than me and the hottest guy I’d ever seen. He was dating another girl in the home I was in at the time, but when he saw me, he never took his eyes off of me.

I used to like that, his sole focus only on me.

He had aged out of the system himself, but there wasn’t a foster kid in the state of Colorado who didn’t know who he was. He was powerful and dangerous before he was even eighteen.

Every time I was moved to another home, he’d show up. He always made sure the other kids in the house knew not to mess with me. That I was his.

At first, I loved it. He seemed to take care of me and love me in a way no one else in my life ever had. He’d buy me anything I needed. Taught me how to defend myself against my enemies—all except for him. I was drunk on the attention he gave me. Starved for the love that I wasn’t getting from anyone else. Or at least I thought it was love.

When I was fifteen, he was locked up for two years for drug possession and intent to sell. I cried for weeks. Devastated. Until I started to realize how wrong everything was that he did. Because it wasn’t love he had for me but a dirty obsession.

When he got out, the first thing he did was find me.

He always found me.

Every time I thought he’d forgotten about me and moved on, he’d show up again.

Which is what happened tonight. It’s the reason I’m sitting on a dirty couch in run-down house in a shady part of the city with a man I wish I’d never trusted.

“You’re doing good for yourself. Got emancipated,” he says proudly as he moves my hand up and down his cock some more. “I’ve watched you for a few weeks. Go from that shitty little apartment to the grocery store you work at and back again. I’ve even seen the guys who come and go from your door at night.” He leans in and whispers in my ear, “They paying you, Zora? Or are you giving away what’s mine for free?”

“Slater, please,” I plead, needing him to stop.

“I know about Remi,” he whispers next, making me freeze. He wasn’t supposed to know about him. His dark chuckle sends chills up my spine. “That’s right, Zora. That’s why you’re going to do everything I say.”

“W-what do you want?” I ask as a tear falls down my cheek.

“Isn’t it obvious? I want you, glow worm.” His use of the nickname he gave me long ago makes my stomach churn. “Now, stand up and walk with me without fucking fighting me.”

I do as he says. His hold on my upper arm is bruising, but I don’t dare show him any weakness. He takes me upstairs into a room I’m assuming is his.

A wolfish grin splits his face after he closes the door and turns to look at me. “Strip,” he commands, that one word killing a part of me, taking more of my soul with each drop of my clothing. With a groan, he says, “You get hotter every time I see you.”

Pulling off his shirt, I see the ink on his skin that tells the story of his life. I see the one over his heart with my name, making me want to puke all over it. Pushing down the bile, I know I can’t let how I feel about him show. It’s not just my life on the line anymore. It’s his too.

“Lie down.” I listen to him, squeezing my eyes shut when I hear him undo his belt and his jeans hit the floor with a thud.

I about jump out of my skin when I feel his hand land on my chest between my breasts. Keeping my eyes closed, I find that place in my mind where I lock him out right before I feel him push inside me.

* * *

Curled up on my side,my body trembles as he smokes next to me.

“What do you want me to do?” I finally get the nerve to ask with my back to him.

“I need you to be my little spy.”

Turning to my back, I look at him then in confusion. “What? Spy on who? What makes you think I could do something like that?”

“Because they won’t be able to keep their dirty hands off of you once they see you,” he says, blowing out a puff of smoke.

“Slater, I don’t understand. Who?”

Turning his head, he looks at me, his eyes dead as he says, “The Black Swans.”

Not knowing who these swans are that he’s talking about, I know it can’t be good. None of this is good. I should have run so much farther away.

But I couldn’t leave Remi. I couldn’t bring myself to be too far away from him. I thought I was doing it to protect him, to make sure he was safe. Instead, I put him more in danger.

Putting his hand on my cheek, his face softens. “I’m going to teach you first. Remind you who you belong to.” He smiles at me. A smile that I know is deceiving. “You know who you belong to, Zora?”

Digging my nails into my palms, I whisper, “You.”