***Dragon's POV***
The rain stings like Esteban’s belt—a remembered pain, thin and precise, splitting skin and pride alike. I burst onto the porch, the wrench in my hand slick with grease and sweat. The bayou’s humid breath clings to my lungs, thick with the iron tang of approaching violence.
“¡Mamá! What’s—?” The words die in my throat.
Dru’s sprawled in the mud, her hair matted to her face like Spanish moss strangling a live oak, clutching the snapped rosary like it’s a live wire. The chain glints in the stormlight, serpentine and cruel. My breath hitches—that scar on her wrist, same as the one snaking across my brow. The one he gave me with his wedding ring, the jagged edge catching on my eyelid as I screamed. Three years old. First lesson: flinching earns you worse.
Big Danni
