Malo - Page 46

A few weeks after my seventeenth birthday, I’m stacking crates for one of the stall owners I do plenty of work for, when someone catches my gaze out of the corner of my eye. He doesn’t look like Chuy, not exactly, but still, I find myself turning to face him, almost on instinct.

I freeze on the spot. It is him. It’s Chuy.

After all this time, he’s back.

He looks… different. Really different. His hair, once overgrown and curly, is shaved tight to his head. A long scar runs from below his left eye across the side of his mouth, a piercing in his top lip. He’s far removed from the boy I knew, something in the way he carries himself telling me to steer clear. I part my lips, intending to call out to him, but something in me thinks better of it.

I notice something tucked into the waistband of his pants—a gun. My heart twists in my chest. I don’t know what he’s doing with a gun, but the Chuy I knew hated guns. He would always call the guys who ran around with guns cowards. But if he had one now, something big must have changed.

I finish stacking the boxes and then, as subtly as I can, I follow him. I don’t know what I’m expecting to see, exactly, but I want to know where he’s going. Back to his mother? I know she would be so relieved to lay eyes on him, after all this time, but maybe she would have a hard time recognizing him the same way I did.

He doesn’t seem to notice me following him, but I keep a careful distance anyway, not wanting to push my luck more than I already have. A few people glance up at him as he goes by, and the way they look at him, I can tell they’re scared. They dive back into their houses, retreating behind their front doors to put some space between them. He’s clearly got some kind of reputation, and, judging by the way he swaggers down the street, he’s proud of it, too.

How can this be the same kid I grew up with? He looks so different, as though he’s someone else entirely. Where has he been all this time? He’s a grown adult now, even though I know he can’t be more than seventeen, like me. What is going on with him? And what’s he doing back here after all this time?

I track him to a large warehouse on the edge of town, usually used for storing livestock during the summer seasons before they’re shipped off to the city to be sold. I don’t have any idea what he’s doing here, and I have a hard time believing that he’s just working in agriculture with a gun tucked in his waistband.

I watch as he glances around, and then goes inside, pulling the heavy metal door shut behind him with a clang. There’s something about this that reminds me of that awful mess I got into before, when I was nearly kidnapped and trafficked across the border. It’s been years since I’ve even thought about that now, but the dust that kicks up in the air from his footsteps is taking me right back there again.

I slip toward the warehouse, not sure what I’m going to see in there, not sure I want to know either, but there’s a part of me that insists on knowing, insists on finding out just what Chuy has gotten himself involved in. Where the hell that kid I grew up with has gone.

Sneaking around the back, I find a door that’s hanging off its hinges, and push it open. The air is filled with the smell of blood and metal, thick and metallic, and I have to hold my breath to keep from gagging. I’ve worked for a few butchers in my time, but this… this isn’t the smell of animal blood, I’m sure of it. No, this is…

When I round the corner, I find myself faced with the last thing I want to see.

A line of people, all chained up to the far wall—most of them women, a few boys scattered amongst them, too. Arms above their heads, hands hanging in these thick metal shackles that have chafed away at their skin enough to cause the bleeding that I could smell when I walked in. I freeze, sheer horror crashing over me like a bucket of ice-water.

They’re being held here like animals, and I know damn well that it isn’t going to end here. What are they being kept here for? But I already know the answer. Exploitation. To be used and abused as their owners see fit. But Chuy would never do something like this, would he? He would never have allowed something like this to happen under his watch. I’d told him about what happened to me, when I’d nearly been taken, the terror I’d lived under, and he had listened with sympathy, even anger—anger that someone was capable of doing something as twisted as that to a kid my age.

But now? Now, I barely have time to pull back behind one of the stalls before he emerges from a room in the back, casting a cold eye over the people in front of him. He’s the one who put them here, I’m sure of it. One of the women tries to mutter something to him, but he snarls at her to be quiet, and lifts a hand, ready to strike her.

I can’t hold back. I call out before I can stop myself, trying to save her before he can land the blow, but he spins around to face me, his eyes flashing with fury. His hand is already on his gun as I emerge, holding my hands up, praying to God that he will show me some kind of mercy, even if the look in his eyes seems to indicate the complete opposite right now.

“Chuy?” I mutter.

He takes a step toward me, eyes narrowed, not taking his hand off his gun.

“Malo,” he whispers. There’s that name again, the one his mother gifted to me. I hate hearing it come out of his mouth, but at least he recognizes me.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demand, gesturing to the people who are chained up against the wall. Some of the boys look barely older than ten. What could they have possibly done to deserve something like this? To land themselves in this kind of trouble?

“None of your fucking business,” he snarls. He closes the distance between us, pushing his face against mine. Though he still has some of the same features as the Chuy I knew, he’s not the same person, I can see that now. There’s no way that Chuy could have looked at me like that, with this kind of loathing and hatred in his eyes.

“Let them go,” I protest, though I know it’s futile. He’s already made his mind up, and he’s not going to let these people get away. He’s already decided what he’s going to do, and there’s no way I can talk him out of it.

“You need to get out of here, Malo,” he warns me, pointing to the door.

I hesitate. I don’t know what to do. There’s a part of me that wants to fight him on this, remind him of all the ways that he wasn’t the kind of person who would do this, but looking at him now, I know he is.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You go, or I come after everyone else in Los Malditos,” he growls. “Every single one of them. You hear me?”

“What the hell?—”

“I’m giving you a chance to get out of here, Malo,” he tells me, and, for the barest split second, I can see some mercy in his gaze. Is this his way of repaying me for the friendship we shared all those years?

Guilt twists in my gut as I look at the people chained against the wall. I need to do something. I can’t just turn around and walk away from them.