AVERY (The Corbin Brothers Book 2) (86 page)

My boots clicked on the tiled floor of the building’s lobby. People looked at me as I walked by and I couldn’t help but think they knew my entire life’s story. They didn’t, of course. They were only looking at me because I had big ass, a pretty face, and I was dressed nicely. And my boots made noises.

My face hadn’t been the one that had been on the news lately. I was safe from all that—so far.

“Hello,” I said, as I approached the receptionist. “I’m looking for Sisters Together.”

Her look turned sympathetic, but I didn’t mind.

“It’s on the fourth floor, ma’am,” she said.

“Thank you.”

I took the stairs, not wanting to wait for an elevator. There were things I had to do, and I was in a hurry.

I was puffing by the time I hit the landing on the fourth floor, and spoke with the receptionist there briefly, trying not to pant. I needed to walk some more, get some kind of exercise, I told myself.

“Follow me,” the woman said, getting up from the desk.

The space was modern but comfortable, the lights dimmed to a comforting brightness, the normal bright fluorescent lights having been replaced with pink bulbs. You could still see, but it wasn’t as harsh. It helped a lot with the atmosphere.

We stopped at a glass-walled office, the door ajar.

“Mrs. King? Someone to see you.”

I walked into the office behind the receptionist, unsure of myself. The woman in front of me was gorgeous, dressed in a sapphire blue blazer, her dark hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She had been studying a spread of papers in front of her, tapping her fingers over the surface of the desk. I couldn’t help but notice a diamond ring on her finger. She looked up, her eyebrows raised in a question. Her mocha skin was just a few shades darker than mine.

“Hi,” I said, resisting the urge to drop my gaze. “My name is Sol Ramirez.” I hesitated a moment, biting my lip. “Better known as Pumpkin. One of Mama’s girls.”

The woman in front of me inhaled sharply and let the papers she was holding fall to the desk, scattering. She walked briskly around and studied me for a brief moment before taking me in her arms and hugging me. The receptionist left us.

“I’m Jasmine King, but you know that,” she said squeezing me. “They called me Jazz back when I was one of Mama’s girls.”

Physical contact from strangers was something that I had always squirmed at, but it was even harder now after Andrew. However, something was different with Jasmine’s hug. We had been through the same thing at Mama’s nightclub. She was one of many in a sisterhood of abuse, torment, and exploitation.

She was my sister.

I returned the hug before pulling away.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, taking me by the hand and sitting me down in one of the chairs positioned around her office. She sat in the one right next to me, not bothering to go back around to sit behind her own desk.

“I’m sure you heard about the nightclub shutting down,” I said, looking down at my fingernails.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Do you need a place to stay? I can help with that. What have you been doing since then? It’s been nearly a year.”

She got up to grab some paperwork, but I snagged her wrist.

“I need a lot of help, actually,” I said, hoping to convey to her that this wasn’t a normal situation. “Most of all, I need someone who knows what it’s like to be in this situation to just listen. Can you be that person?”

There had been so many people who wanted to know my story—cops, first, then the media and other curious people. I could talk until I was blue in the face, but nobody truly knew what I was going through. I needed somebody like Jasmine, someone who had been to hell and back, to tell me that things were going to be okay. I desperately needed some kind of hope to hold onto.

Jasmine slowly sat back down in the chair and took my hand. “I can be whatever you need me to be,” she said. “I’m here for you, Sol.”

It felt strange to be Sol—not Pumpkin, not
sorpresita
, but Sol—me. My name. It told me that this was a true new beginning, that things were going to be different now. Maybe they wouldn’t be better. Not right away, at least. But things were going to be different.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard about the situation with Andrew Steele,” I began, then trailed off, not sure where I should even start. It had been fucked up from the beginning, but it had only spiraled into the worst nightmare imaginable.

“Andrew Steele,” Jasmine repeated. “The guy from MarshTide International Security. He’s been on the news recently. They just arrested him for—”

Jasmine stopped and looked at me, her lips pressed together in a thin white line.

“I’ve spent the last year with him,” I said simply, and then told my story. I started in East Harlem, introducing Jasmine to the female contingency and Jimmy, took her into Mama’s nightclub and right back out again, brought her up on the auction block with Cream and me, and then invited her into our private, personal hell. Jasmine never took her eyes off of me as I poured my heart out to her, escorting her through the escalation of sex and violence I’d experienced.

When I got to the part about Cream and the window and the scaffolding, I fell silent, unable to continue.

“You’re the one who escaped,” Jasmine said quietly.

“And Cream was the one who died,” I said. “Belle Nocton. Another one of Mama’s girls.”

Jasmine looked at me, her face serious. “If you need a place to stay, it’s done,” she said. “I will move heaven and earth to help you get what you need. All you have to do is tell me what needs to be done. I take it going back to East Harlem isn’t an option.”

I shook my head. “I can’t go back there,” I said. “Not after everything.”

“We’ll get it figured out,” Jasmine promised me.

For the first time, even though I’d told my story over and over again, I felt as if a significant burden had been lifted. I knew that Jasmine understood where I was coming from. I knew that she had lived that life, walked that path. What was special was that Jasmine was listening to me, but also giving me a way to move forward. She’d been here before and she knew the way out.

My heart still weighed heavy in my chest, and I couldn’t think of Cream without crying. She’d saved my life. I owed her everything.

I owed her everything, and I would do anything to repay that debt.

“That evil man’s trial is coming up,” Jasmine said. “Are you thinking about testifying? You certainly wouldn’t be expected to, after everything. Sisters Together can get you legal help, pro bono.”

“I am going to testify,” I said. “I owe Cream—Belle—that much. People need to understand what happened to her. If they can’t understand, they have to at least know. I don’t trust the courts to not get it all twisted. There needs to be a firsthand account, and I’m the only one who can do that.”

Jasmine gave me a ghost of a smile. “You’re a brave young woman, Sol. Can I tell you something?”

I nodded.

“You’re doing this the right way,” she said. “You’re facing your fears, not running away from them. It may not seem possible right now, but you’re going to be okay. It might take a long time, but you’re going to get through this. Sisters Together is here for you. I’m here for you.”

I smiled back at her. “Thank you,” I said. “I came here because I thought you might understand.”

“I was tortured by my mother’s boyfriend while I was still in high school,” Jasmine said. “I was raped by a customer at Mama’s nightclub when I was just eighteen years old. That man gave me HIV.” Jasmine spread her hands. “And yet here I am. I am living proof, no bullshit, sitting in front of you and telling you that you can do this.”

She lifted my spirits. I wanted someday to be able to sit across from a virtual stranger and tell her the worst of what ailed me as easily as reciting from a shopping list. One day, perhaps. One day.

“I have a request,” I said. “I’m afraid it is a lot like moving heaven and earth, though.”

“I am in the heaven and earth moving business,” Jasmine said. “Tell me.”

“I need to find Terry Nocton,” I said. “Belle’s brother.”

“I find people all the time,” Jasmine said. “What makes you think this is so hard?”

“He went missing in action while he was serving in the Army,” I said. “In Afghanistan.”

Jasmine’s eyes were serious, but she smiled all the same.

“Give me time,” she said. “All I need is time.”

* * * *

The house was small, nondescript, and not in a great neighborhood, but it had a well-maintained chain link fence, and flowers. The person who lived here cared about the place. That much was evident.

I let myself in through the gate and walked up to the porch, leaves crunching under my shoes. It was past autumn, winter settling into the city. It would be Christmas, soon. I smiled, thinking about the Christmas lights that the female contingency would unwind every year, draping them around the walls and windows inside the apartment. It was one of my favorite times of the year.

There was a bundled newspaper thrown on the porch, and I stooped to retrieve it. One of the headlines blared at me: “Steele case to proceed; survivor to testify.” It was the right thing to do. I didn’t care that I’d look Andrew in the face again. I wanted to. I wanted the world to know what he’d done. I wasn’t shy about justice. He was going to get his.

I was, however, nervous about raising the knocker on the door and letting it fall. I picked it up with my gloved hand, wincing as it squeaked, and waited.

It had taken two long months to find Terry Nocton. I was afraid of what it meant to be standing there on that porch, about to see the man I’d heard so much about. I tried not to think about the what ifs—what if Cream had known her brother was alive at the time of the raid, what if she had called him instead of Jason, what if things had turned out differently.

Jasmine had discouraged this line of thinking after she called me into the office to give me the number.

“That doesn’t help you, Sol,” she said. “It doesn’t help you and it doesn’t help Belle. You have to keep moving forward, even if it’s a half a baby step every day. You can’t afford to take any steps back. Keep your eyes looking ahead of you, not behind.”

I let the knocker fall. Then lifted it and let it fall again. And again.

“Coming!” a voice called from inside. The door swung outward and I backed up a little.

The man in front of me had rich brown hair, the exact same shade as Belle’s had been. He was fair skinned, too, but he had a bit of a sallow look about him, like he’d been having trouble sleeping.

But the very first thing I noticed about him, the thing I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to, was that he was sitting in a wheelchair, missing both of his legs. Black athletic shorts revealed wrapped stumps that ended just at the knee.

“Terry Nichols?” I asked, my voice breaking, my mouth suddenly dry.

“If you’re a reporter, you can turn right back around,” he said.

“I’m not,” I said quickly, shoving my foot in the door. I couldn’t lose him, not when I’d come this far. I promised Cream that I’d find her brother and tell him what happened. He needed to hear it from someone who had experienced that hell.

“Who are you, then?” he asked. “And what do you want? It’s cold out there. Please hurry.”

I blinked rapidly, looking at the circles beneath his eyes, the stubble speckling his chin. How was he going to react to what I was about to tell him? Would he scream? Cry? Yell at me? Demand to know why I hadn’t tried harder to save his sister’s life?

I didn’t know how he would act, and I didn’t know which outcome I preferred. Part of me wanted to be punished. Why had I made it and she hadn’t? Why couldn’t it have been the other way around? I deserved his hatred. I deserved to be beaten, to be screamed at.

Survivor’s guilt, Jasmine said. She told me it was natural, that I was going to learn to move past it. There hadn’t been anything I could’ve done, she told me.

It was so hard to believe. Sometimes, I didn’t even try.

“Miss?” Terry looked up at me, his eyebrows raised. “Did you come to my porch to daydream, or what?”

“My name is Sol Ramirez,” I said. “I was with your sister, Belle, in Andrew Steele’s home.”

I waited for his reaction, holding my breath for it. He only looked at me for a long time, studying my face, before he sighed.

“I guess you’d better come in, then,” he said, wheeling himself backwards before turning the chair around quickly and leaving me at the front door. I stepped inside, closing the door against the chill, and followed him.

The house was small but orderly, most things on low hanging shelves to be accessible for Terry. The television was on in the den, but the sound was muted. I glanced at it and quailed. It was one of the 24-hour news shows, and they were showing a video feed of cops leading Andrew into a courthouse for his indictment. He looked briefly into the camera and I felt like he’d seen me, my heart seizing.

Terry grabbed the remote and flicked the television off. He glanced up at me.