Corrupted Vows by Kiana Hettinger
Chapter Two
Caitriona
I stood at the side of the bar and discreetly slipped one foot out of my shoe.
My toes practically squealed in delight.
I’d spent the past six hours running drinks in a bar that was so crowded, it was getting pretty close to standing room only. Really, I deserved a medal. But I’d take a plaque. In fact, I’d settle for an I-survived-the-late-night-beer-rush certificate. I’d hang it on the wall right next to the World’s Dumbest Waitress award I’d kind of earned by taking this shift. Loud music, rowdy men, and the less-than-appealing combination odor of sweat and beer. I’d definitely earned it.
“You’re not planning on taking off anything else there, are you, Phoenix?” Elías grumped, cocking a brow from behind the bar. His shrewd gray eyes traveled down to the ground, and even though he couldn’t see my bare foot, hidden behind the bar, there was no doubt I’d been busted.
“Nah, just trying to flush out the guys with a foot fetish. Totally my thing.”
Even wearing a scowl, he couldn’t stop the corners of his lips from twitching—the closest the surly bartender ever got to a smile. I think maybe he was allergic.
“I think the dishes back there are piling up,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen where, no doubt, the sink was overflowing.
“You send me back there, and I’m burning down the kitchen, Elías.”
He looked at me like he wasn’t one-hundred percent certain I was joking. Good. Served him right for all the times he’d put me on dish duty.
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
He knew I hated doing the dishes, but on nights when the place got too rowdy, he’d send me back there until Nacio or his men calmed things down. He could have sent me on a break or to restock the storeroom, but the cranky bastard sent me off to wash dishes.
He shook his head. “Not my fault it was easier to listen to you bitch about dishes than to deal with you being pissed at me for sending you off the floor.”
Some might say I got a little ornery when Elías tried to coddle me. “Fair enough. Have you got any drinks for me to serve up, or are you just going to stand there looking pretty tonight?”
He scoffed. In his late fifties, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a beard that matched, he wasn’t an unattractive man. But his hawklike gray eyes and the perpetual scowl he wore made him about as approachable as a porcupine, at least to those who didn’t know him.
“Here you go, Phoenix,” he said, sliding me a tray of bottles while I slid my poor foot back into its cage.
“You stay away from the boys in the corner,” he warned, nodding across the floor to a table of four men who’d gotten so loud, I could hear them over the music. “They’ve been getting handsier with the girls all night. I’m just about ready to have them bounced out of here.” He glared at the boisterous table.
I swear they got quieter even though none of them could see Elías.
I delivered the tray without incident and made my rounds to pick up the empties. I’d just about finished when a hand slid up my tattooed arm from behind.
I spun around, but the hand wrapped around my wrist at the same time, preventing me from stepping away or slugging his drunken face.
It seemed one of the boisterous buffoons from the corner had managed to slip away from his pack.
My skin crawled, and my heart raced as he leaned in closer.
“I bet you could set a man on fire with all those flames,” he whispered, so close to my ear his hot breath grazed my cheek.
“Keep touching me, asshole, and I won’t just set you on fire, I’ll burn you to ashes.”
“Do we have a problem here?” Elías asked in Spanish, appearing beside me with his shotgun in hand—which might have been another thing that made him less than approachable. His shotgun was never far from his reach.
The guy’s eyes widened, and he took a step back, hands up. “No hay problema, ese.”
“Muy bien. I’d hate for my girl to have to scrub that hunk of meat that passes for your brain off the floor.”
I bit into my bottom lip and headed back to the bar, fighting the urge to tell them both where to go.
The minute we were out of earshot, I let Elías have it.
“I don’t need you coming to my rescue every time a customer looks at me the wrong way,” I snapped. “It’s annoying as hell, and it’s really bad for tips. Unless you want to start doubling my salary, I’d appreciate it if you let me handle it.”
He shook his head. “No can do, Phoenix. Boss’s orders.”
I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest.
“And even if it wasn’t, my customers are here to drink. If they want more entertainment, they can go find it somewhere else.”
I didn’t completely disagree with that, but I didn’t like the way Elías always stepped in, making me feel like a spineless coward. And worse, a girl who couldn’t take care of herself.
I wasn’t that girl anymore.
“I’m going on my break. If you’re lucky, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
Elías laughed dryly, probably because I’d made that same idle threat at least a hundred times in the past three years. Idle, because the truth was, I knew he cared about me—even if he didn’t want to admit it. He was just trying to look out for me because, though no one ever talked about it, he knew about my life before this place. Not that I thought Nacio had told him; he was just a perceptive son of a bitch. There was no keeping secrets from Elías—he could sniff them out like a bloodhound.
I could still hear him laughing as I left the bar and headed down the short hall to the back door.
Outside, I hopped up on the old picnic table that Elías said had been out here as long as he could remember. Most of its paint had chipped or worn off, and the bench seats sagged.
Settling right in the middle of the tabletop with my feet perched on the bench, I scrubbed my fingers over the tattooed flames on my arm, trying to rub away the sensation of the creep’s hand on me.
Mission semi-accomplished, I pulled out the lighter I kept in my pocket and flicked it, watching the small flame twinkle and dance in the quasidarkness. It was how I spent every break out here, the one time in the day I let my mind go back there. The sight of the flame still twisted my stomach in knots.
If I thought about it, I could feel a tingling burn across my skin, like a fiery ghost reawakening old wounds.
In those old wounds, there were answers.
There had to be.
Dissociative amnesia, Nacio’s doctors had called it. My mind blocking out just that singular period of time I craved to remember so much. A few minutes? A few hours? Damned if I’d ever know.
The back door swung open, and Nacio stepped out, shaking his head at me.
“Give your mind a break, Phoenix,” he said, watching me flick the lighter when the light evening breeze blew out the flame.
I sighed. “Have you met my brain? It’s a cruel bitch and doesn’t deserve a break.”
“Nonsense, I find it perfectly delightful.” Now, there was sarcasm if I’d ever heard it. “Not argumentative or stubborn at all.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes. “Nice to meet you, kettle. My name’s pot.”
Nacio laughed. “You might be right.”
He sat down on the tabletop next to me, an arm’s-width of distance between us. “Still searching for answers in the flames?”
I nodded and flicked the lighter again. “The fire that night… I still don’t know if I was a victim or if I set that fire. My brain knows, though. Probably not a good sign that it doesn’t want to tell me, huh?”
He laughed sadly. “You’re no murderer.”
“Ha! We both know that’s not true.”
Even if I hadn’t set that fire, I’d racked up a decent body count since.
Nacio shook his head. “Snuffing out the life of a man who didn’t deserve one to begin with isn’t murder. It’s correcting a universal error, setting things right.”
“Yeah, that’s me. The universe’s hit woman.” It was my turn to laugh.
He turned to look at me, and my laughter died away. “If you want to stop, you only need to say the word, Phoenix.”
I sighed. “That’s the thing, I don’t want to stop. It gives me a purpose. If I stopped, what would I be?”
“You’d be a stubborn pain in my ass, just like you are now.”
I laughed but sobered quickly. “What do you see, Nacio?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“What do you see when you look at me?” I looked up at him, meeting his dark gaze like I was staring him down, daring him to answer.
“I see a girl who is too busy looking back to move forward.”
I flinched, because he wasn’t wrong.
Looking back was like an itch; you could only resist scratching it for so long.
“How do you do it? How do you keep moving forward?” I posed.
“My son,” he said, smiling, but like always when he spoke of Emilio, his eyes were filled with sadness. He brushed a finger over one of the tattooed angels on his arm. “I imagine him looking down on me and what he would think of me.”
“He’d be proud of you,” I said meaningfully. It wasn’t an ego boost. I’d say it was God’s honest truth, but from what I’d seen, I don’t think God spent much time in Colombia.
“I hope so,” he said. His eyes cleared quickly, hardening around the edges, and I knew what was coming next. “Are you still certain you want to do this?” he asked with a slight note of disapproval in his voice, just like it always was on nights like this.
I nodded, not the least bit deterred.
“Then come, Phoenix. You have a decision to make.” He leaned toward the lighter’s flame and blew it out with a sly grin before he hopped off the table and started walking toward the door.
“Asshole,” I called after him as I tucked the lighter away and stood up.
“And don’t you ever forget it, señorita.”