Free Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) by KaNeshia Michelle Page A

lives.
    I grew up alone and abused by my family. I used my rage and frustration to win my battles. I was kicked out of school at fourteen for putting three boys – all older than me by at least two years - in the hospital after they caught me with a prostitute behind the school. The spoiled bastards had laughed at me for it, threatened they would tell everyone. I had saw red and something loud and steady clicked inside my head, and the rage that had built up nicely, waiting with an intensified harshness, broke through like a levy that had taken on too much water.
    I pounced.
    I had turned their laughter into screams of terror and then to shrieks of in pure pain, and agony. I had been A straight student, one of the brightest in my class, but that meant nothing when my teacher saw the aftermath of my rage unleashed. I thought I had showed my strength to my father. A Rogue man had to be strong, and here I had given the best example of strength.
    My father didn’t congradulate me, he waded in.
    And I could barely sit from the vicious beating I received for the fight. He cursed me as he drove a leather belt into my ass. He cursed me harder than he would curse a whore. When he was done, when the belt was broken and tattered in his hand, he left me there. No hug. No ‘I love you, Tristan, you will learn from this’, nothing but him leaving and closing the door behind himself. I had embarrassed him. I had embarrassed the family. 
    He had begun to give up on me then…
    I did not cry. My skin was broken and bleeding but I refused to cry. Papa walked in after hours of me being curled up on the floor. He looked at me and I looked at him. Half of me believed he was going to pick up where my father left off. The other half was ready to kill him if he tried.
    “You’re strong, Tristan,” He spoke calmly.
    I could barely see him through the warm, still flowing blood that trickled down my face – the belt buckle had caught me good a couple of times on the top of my head.
    “If you were not a nigger,” he said, “you would run this family. I see it in your eyes. I see what makes a Rogue in your face.”
    “Fuck the Rogue,” I spat.
    I saw stars when he slapped me so hard my bottom lip tore from his rings.
    “You will not take this family’s name and trash it. Do you understand me?”
    My mouth swelled with blood. It dribbled down my chin and unto my already bloody shirt. I had been securely beaten silent and Papa took my silence for compliance.
    He cleared his throat. “Nobody is going to give you anything in this world. Not even your family. We’re your worse enemies and we are your blood, Tristan. You remember that, you hear me?”
    I said nothing, and, again, he took my silence as compliance.
    The whore slipped her hand over my stomach. “You have a nice place here.”
    I huffed and glanced around the tight, shitty hotel room. It wasn’t nice with its faded carpet and dirty drapes, but I figured it was miles better than a street corner with Johns driving down the road checking you out. When Zander and I first started out, we were in nicer, separate hotels rooms. Between the whores and drinking, we slowly declined. Now we were sharing a room with one bed because it was all we could afford. We would alternate to who would get the hard floor and who would get the bed day after day.
    As if sensing my very thoughts, she corrected, “Well, it’s better than the corner me and her work.”
    The change in her accent – the broken English switched for full sentences that didn’t end in Papi – wasn’t lost on me. Somehow, the hooker lifted the veil of grimy Latina working hooker, to a woman who happened to have a day job that consisted of blow jobs and sex with a person she may not want standing near her, but allowed in her body. There was no need to continue with the façade. I had lost my own role at the paying John looking to blow off steam when I hadn’t had an orgasm and she had.
    The warmth in her body eased me. My