Page 35

“Perhaps,” I said, and he should have recognized the venom in my voice. He and his brothers were snakes after all. “Or I will blow your cocks off—single shots.”

He laughed, wheezed with it. Coughed up something sickly from his lungs and spat it out. “I’m so glad you joined us, Italy. You’re a barrel of laughs, except for those tits and that ass.” He whistled. “A man must take those seriously. You’re a smoke show.”

“Fuck you,” I spat out, making a rude Italian hand gesture with it.

Everything I said, he found amusing, so the both of us became quiet as we moved closer to the door. He dragged me inside of it, flung me to a floor covered in straw, and took the position next to his brother at the door.

Two walls blocking my exit.

Was my cousin even here?

“Atta?” Her name left my mouth in a breathless push. My eyes frantically searched for her, and when they found her, I got to my feet, rushing toward her.

A hand snaked around my waist and pulled me back.

“Sistine, am I right?” His warm breath washed over my ear, and I shivered from disgust. “Atta’s cousin from Italy. A fiery Latin beauty, with all that silky dark hair, and a temper that would keep a man warm in bed in the dead of winter.”

He was the opposite of his brother. His voice was firm, and there was no taunting edge to it. I was not sure which was worse. The brother with the quips or the one who was acting as if he was doing nothing wrong.

My mouth refused to speak to him. All I could do was stare at Atta.

She stared back with a tear in her eye. The one that had dropped was frozen to her face, along with blood.

Her other eye was swollen shut, and her lip was split.

It ran with blood, but it was freezing before it even reached her chin.

“Sistine,” she barely got out.

My eyes drifted to her body. Most of her layers were gone, but nothing had been ripped. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I was not sure how long that would last. Although her bottom lip was bleeding, both were turning blue. She was freezing to death.

Rattler brought me next to Atta and sat me down. This was when I noticed what I did not before.

The unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake’s rattling. A warning. I sat as close to Atta as I could, a single bulb swinging from the rafters, giving very little light to the darkness. I wanted to know where that snake was.

“Bianca Watt knows where I was coming,” I said. “She will come to check if I am not back in an hour.” It had already been thirty minutes since I left the ranch.

Hopefully this no-good son of a snake could do proper maths—er, math.

“Let her come,” he said. “Let her join the party. The more the merrier.” He touched Atta’s chin, and she allowed him to, but her eyes looked away from him.

He went to touch mine and I tried to bite him. Atta screamed, “Sistine, no!” as his palm wrapped around my head and he slammed it into the wall.

When the stars cleared from my vision, she was whispering, “Don’t say anything, don’t fight, please.”

I registered her words, but my eyes were on Rattler.

He was going for something tucked inside a deep basket on the other side of the barn.

He used something like oversized tongs to pull the whipping and hissing snake out.

Once he had a good grip on it, the snake seemed to still but was still hissing.

Its fangs were exposed. It wanted to inflect its poison into anything it could, whether that thing was good or bad.

Rattler came closer, his brothers laughing, smoke billowing from their mouths from the cold.

Atta grabbed my hand, squeezing, but I could feel her shrinking. It was not long before I understood why.

Rattler put the snake in my face, so close, if he had released the tongs just a breath, it would have struck me on the nose.

This game went on for what seemed like forever—forever being thirty minutes or so. My coats were taken, my gloves, even my hat. They left the boots. The snake was back and forth in my face, irritated, the hissing nonstop.

Despite peeing myself out of fear, and the cold ripping my skin open across my knuckles, perhaps from clenching them so hard, my mind spoke the truth to me.

These ass faces were using mind games to weaken us. Atta was already there. Each time the snake would come close to us, she would not scream out, only suck up a shuddering breath, as if she could not control them, as if she had no more energy in her to make a noise.

When Rattler looked in my eyes, he grinned for the first time, running a gloved finger down my face. “You’re not so easily broken.”

My eyes moved from the snake’s eyes and into his master’s. I could not control the clattering of my teeth, but I kept my chin lifted. “You have no idea,” I breathed out. “You will die for this—perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but someday, you will.”

Perhaps he took my threat seriously. He flung the snake toward his brothers, who all started to whoop and holler, frightened by the thing. It was moving through the hay, making a path.

Even bracing for his heavy hand would not have helped ease the blow. It came out of nowhere. It was strong enough to make my head rattle. I wondered, absentmindedly, if that was how he got his moniker.

Atta’s hand jittered in mine. She could no longer squeeze. The air was too cold, and it was making her blood move slower. I was feeling it as well. The blow was a distant fire that did not warm me.

Still. I forced my eyes to stay frozen on his.

“That’s a witchy little bitch,” one of the brothers said. “I don’t like the way she’s looking at you, Rattler.”

I turned my dull stare on him, and he lifted his hands, taking a few careful steps back. The vipera was still on the loose.

“Me either,” Rattler said. He leaned down, grabbed a piece of hay, and stuck it in the side of his mouth. “Get me another one, little brother. Time for this bitch to know what true pain feels like.”

“No!” Atta screamed out.

I kept my eyes on his.

He was starting to sweat in what felt as cold as a freezer.

Every head but mine and Atta’s whipped in the direction of what sounded like a stampede.

It took us longer. I wanted so badly to warm Atta with the heat still lingering in my veins.

The blow had pissed me off. My fingers were curling and uncurling, my skin too numb to even feel the splits from my hands being chapped.

Rattler turned to one of his brothers. “You didn’t secure the gate?”

“Dumbass.” The one who walked me in pushed the irresponsible brother in the back. He tripped a little but was still mindful of where he was putting his feet down.

“I did!” The irresponsible brother lifted his hands in a surrender gesture. “It’s her.” He pointed at me. “She sent a curse out! I saw her mouth moving.”

This bunch was an intelligent one. I rolled my eyes, or thought I did. They felt frozen in their sockets. My mouth was moving because my teeth were chattering.

Rattler’s eyes came back to mine. He narrowed them at me. Swirled the hay around.

One of the brothers peeked his head around the barn door. “Something is scaring ’em. They’re not far off. They’re panicked. They’re going to tear this place down in a rush.”

Rattler kept his dark stare on me. It was colder and more dangerous than the snake’s had been. He had thoughts behind his.

He cleared his throat. “Say hello to your brother for us, will you, Watt? He often forgets to watch his back when he’s busy.”

The herd of cattle had reached us. I could hear them hitting the barn to get away from whatever they were running from. The brothers left in haste. Probably going to try to get their herd back.

Atta sat there, her eyes dazed, her lips and skin blue, not able to move. I had more energy since I had not been without proper clothing as long as she had been.

“Atta, listen to me.” I took careful movements to reach our pile of clothes. I gasped and fell back when the rattlesnake slithered out of a jacket, hiding in the hay again.

“Leave them,” Atta barely got out.

I nodded, wrapped my arms around her shoulders, and we heaved ourselves up, using the wall as a solid foundation. I could still hear thumps of the cattle that were reckless in their escape.

We took careful steps out of the barn, careful and slow, until we both saw the truck, a beacon with its lights still on, and moved as fast as we could. We were like cattle ourselves, running from predators.

No, not cattle—bison.

I had to help Atta into the truck, and instead of rushing to the driver’s side, I slipped in next to her. The truck was dented, the windshield broken. The bison had hit it hard enough to make it look as if it had been in an accident.

Accident or not, it started, and I flew down the crude road, turning the heat to high, knowing that, even if a wild animal darted in front of the truck, nothing was going to stop me. I hit a deep dip, the truck complaining about the blow, and Atta hissed.

My eyes whipped to hers.

She held up a trembling hand. “I’m all right, for the most part. Just sore. Keep your eyes on the road.”

My eyes flew forward, my hands thawed enough to squeeze the wheel, but the longer I drove, the lighter my foot pressed on the gas.

“Sistine,” Atta whispered. “Keeping going straight. Do not turn back.”

She was right. I was about to turn back. Wait for them to make it home. Hide in a tree or some brush and pick them off one by one. Blow up their shriveled cocks and laugh while they burned from the heat.

“Sistine.” Her voice was firm. So serious as, miles away from the condemned barn, I pulled to the side of the road.

She sighed. “Neither one of us will ever forget this night, but we can never speak of it again.”

“Atta,” I whispered, but it was only because I did not understand. How could we allow them to get away with this?

“That threat he left us with—he’ll kill my little brother.

My baby brother, who looks so much like my daddy.

Who has a smile that can bring out the sun.

No.” She used her hand to make a stop gesture.

“We can’t do anything about this. Remember that line in Romancing the Stone ?

‘ Bastards always have brothers .’ And if not brothers, they have uncles or cousins.

“If we make a stink about this, or one of them get hurt, they’ll find out. They’ll kill my brother. They’d kill my family over the ranch. They’ve always wanted it. One less Watt to worry about causin’ a stink.”

I stared at her for a moment, until I looked forward, watching as the snow twirled in front of the lights. I jumped when Atta set a blanket around my shoulders.

“You’re shivering,” she whispered, setting one around hers. “My daddy always stocked our cars with blankets and hand warmers. Never know when you’ll need ’em around here.”

We both stared at the snow falling in silence, the world beyond it a black void that could not be penetrated, not even by lights.

Atta sighed. “This is what we’ll say to mamma and granny. We swerved to avoid an animal, and we slammed into a tree. The truck is beat up, the windshield cracked. It’s believable. We were out, just to listen to music and have fun.”

“Is this why he did this?” I whispered. “Does he want the ranch? Or did he do this for fun?”

She shook her head, shrugged. “I told him no, and then he had some fun.”

I took a deep breath. “Did he…hurt you beyond what I can see?” I whispered, wanting to be gentle about the invasive question.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Sistine. I want to just forget. It feels like if we keep talking and thinking about it, it’s going to take my brother from me. I can’t. I just can’t.” She started to sob, covering her face.

I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her closer, and we both cried.

Then we both buried it, but we did not forget.