Page 5 of Ink

I sighed.

“Eres un pendejo,” she admonished in a whisper, tossing her purse down in her area.

“I’m also your boss,” I reminded her sternly.

I didn’t need to look at her to know she was rolling her eyes.

“Please,” she scoffed. “You won’t fire me.”

She was right.

She was also the exception.

I’d known Fer for years, and she had gone above and beyond proving her loyalty to me and the club. She worked her ass off here at Devil’s Ink and had quickly become family. A person the MC would ride and die for.

In private, she could joke like this.

In public, she knew better.

“She’s a nice girl,” Fer continued as she washed her hands in a far sink and grabbed sanitary spray to clean her area.

“You had one lunch with her.”

She winked. “One lunch is all I need to gauge if someone’s buena gente or not. Trust me, she’s a good one.”

“There are a lot of good ones,” I scoffed.

But good didn’t mean jack shit in our world and this woman, Xiomara Nava, didn’t belong in it at all.

Chapter Three

Xiomara

Mybosswasahuge hijo de puta. I found myself repeating the phrase every time he appeared in my line of vision throughout the week. He was always barking at me for one thing or another, and always over trivial fucking things.

I worked my fucking ass off to get shit right. I didn’t want to fuck up another job, least of all before payday. My mamá needed the money, and I didn’t want to let her down again. So I gritted my teeth and forced the anger down every time it threatened to rise.

A part of me wanted to snap back at him, but a bigger part of me wanted to fold into myself and disappear.

I didn’t do well with criticism. It was stupid, since I’d been criticized my entire life by people who mattered more than him, and yet that didn’t stop me from working hard to impress the asshole.

But nothing seemed good enough.

It never was.

Especially today.

Because… I’d fucked up.

“Get your shit and get the fuck out,” he growled.

I’d never seen Ink look so pissed. Granted, I didn’t know him well enough aside from scowls and barked orders, but he’d never been this angry.

“I don’t know what happened–”

“You fucked up is what happened.”

“I didn’t! I swear, I logged their names and times separately into the calendar–”

---