Free The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) by Kele Moon

trying to breathe past the misery.
    Over twenty-four hours and no blow.
    He wanted to fucking die.
    Like really die.
    Instead he was counting the popcorns on the ceiling because he needed something to focus his mind on. His skin felt like it was crawling. A cold, uncomfortable sweat covered his body, but the back of his neck was hot with the longing for an escape from the misery. All he could think about was the blow. Everything in him told him to get into his car and drive back to Miami as fast as he could. He wanted to get high so bad he could taste it, bitter and sweet in the back of his throat.
    He closed his eyes against his will, imagining that first wild rush when it hazed the pain and heightened the anger, making it easy to take out all the fuckers who had killed Juan and Tiá Camila. God, he wanted it back. Desperately. He wanted ten more gangbangers to hunt down and kill to give him some sort of satisfaction.
    But there was no one left to take out.
    And there was no more blow to hide in.
    No cars to steal.
    No business to manage.
    Just Chuito, alone, in his own private prison that was too cold because the heat in this place sucked, and it was fucking snowing outside.
    He should have turned himself in to Miami PD.
    At least then he’d be with his cousin and uncle.
    He had more people on the inside than out.
    It was late, and these Garnet pendejos all went to bed at nine o’clock. Clay wanted Chuito to meet him at his gym at five a.m. tomorrow.
    Fuck him.
    Chuito would work hard. He wanted to work hard. It was the only thing that distracted from the crash, but he drew the line at waking up early, and he told all of them that.
    He kept his eyes closed, trying to imagine being loaded as a placebo. He wasn’t sure if it worked, or if twenty-four hours of no blow, forty-eight hours of no sleep, and nothing to eat or drink except cookies and caffeine had him passing out so hard it was like he had died.

Chapter Nine
    Alaine sat at the kitchen table, doing advanced calculus, even though she hated it. The numbers were swimming, and she was cursing the educational system for forcing her to learn this when she saw absolutely zero application to it in her real life.
    She didn’t want to launch the space shuttle.
    She just wanted to be a lawyer and help people write out wills and file for divorce. She wanted to support Jules, who had been the only one willing to listen when Alaine had said she did not want to be the daughter her father was trying to mold her into.
    Someone meek and obedient. Who was supposed to get married and have a dozen babies. She didn’t begrudge anyone else that life. There were a lot of very happy women in the church, but it just didn’t feel like the life Alaine was supposed to have.
    Her mother had always encouraged her independence.
    She said if God had given Alaine a free spirit, it must have been for a reason. She saw the good in that streak of rebellion Alaine had been born with, but her father never had.
    Now her mother was gone, and her father was angry.
    It made Alaine sad; it really did, because she didn’t want to be alienated from him just for being herself. She had stopped going to church, which meant she didn’t have any friends anymore, when she had grown up with a huge social circle.
    All her friends had sided with her father.
    Now all she had was Jules, who was funny and kind and bold in a way Alaine would likely never be, but she was still so much older than her.
    She wished she had a friend her own age.
    All of a sudden a sound broke the quiet air, something raw and terrible and so heart-stopping she jumped out of her chair on instinct. She ran out of her apartment when she realized it was coming from next door.
    She knocked, but no one was answering, and she could still hear the screaming. He was speaking in Spanish, but she didn’t need to understand the words to hear the horror in them.
    “Mr. Garcia!” She pounded harder. “Jesus!”
    When he didn’t answer, she tried