Lady Killer (Dead Girls Club #2)

36. Luz

Chapter thirty-six

Luz

Denton, Texas

Two Years Ago

“Ay, mija, let me borrow your blush.” Mami’s head appeared in my door, her long black hair up in Velcro rollers and gel eyepatches under her golden-brown eyes.

“You’re going out with the orthopedic surgeon again?” I said, moving from my desk to grab it for her.

Mami had been stealing my sample of Fenty Cool Berry cream blush ever since I got it. I placed it in her manicured hand, and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, mija.”

“Keep it.”

She clucked like the mother hen she was. “You don’t have to do that.”

I rolled my eyes. “It looks better on you anyways. You have cooler undertones than me.”

Mami squinted at me as she tried to catch me in a lie, but I was telling the truth. After a couple moments, she nodded, before pinching my cheek as she blew me an air-kiss. “You’re an angel.”

“Stop it,” I said, batting her away and returning to my studying.

It was Mami’s fifth date with Dr. Eric Hauserman. Things were getting serious, and I wondered what her plans were this time.

Mami’s job as the new site clinical manager for a large nursing agency had taken us all over Texas. Usually, we would spend six months to a year in a place, while Mami helped new locations recruit, hire, and train new staff. Then it was off to the next job.

“Carajo,” my mother cursed loudly from the bathroom down the hall that we shared.

Doing her makeup was one of the few times my mother could be caught swearing. She may have been a priestess in the cult of beauty, but she cursed like a sailor anytime she tried to use liquid eyeliner.

“Do you want a hand?” I called out.

Stubborn silence followed, then another muttered curse, before . . .

“Por favor, my love.”

As expected, I entered the bathroom to find her cleaning up a blob of black liner around her eye.

“Thank you,” she said, turning to hand me the offending eyeliner.

“Sit down,” I told her, pointing to the toilet with my chin.

She sighed and shuffled over, putting down the lid before sitting with the grace of a dancer and crossing her ankles.

Kneeling down in front of her, I inspected my mother’s face.

Sofia Torres was a beautiful woman. Her hair was a shade darker than mine, but just as long and thick. Her face was more heart shaped by comparison, her lips fuller, and her nose a bit wider, but my eyes and cheeks were all hers.

So was my butt.

I had an inch on her in height, but since she usually wore much higher heels than I cared for, she appeared taller .

People often mistook us for sisters, and it wasn’t hard to understand why.

“Look down,” I instructed her as I unscrewed the top.

“What are you doing tonight, mija?”

I didn’t answer right away, focusing all my attention on neatly applying the liner. When I paused to assess my work, I answered, “Mmm, not much. I’ve got some more SAT prep I want to get through.”

Mami hummed in approval, and I started on her other eye.

“And everything is good at school? No boys causing problems for you, right?”

It was understandable that Mami had her trust issues around men. My father had done a lot of damage, to both of us.

“No, Mami, no boys,” I said, squinting as I leaned forward to angle the wand to get that perfect flick. “Besides, I thought I showed you that I can handle myself with Kai.” Pulling back, I sat on my heels as I compared the two sides.

“Ay, my baby is all grown up.” She threw up her hands. “I know, I know.”

I licked my thumb and used it to clean up a tiny splatter of black liner.

“It’s my job to worry about you,” she muttered, still keeping her eyes down .

This was far from the first time I had heard this from my mother. We both knew the ritual well. “You put yourself in far more danger than I ever do.”

“I also have far more experience than you do.”

“Look up at me,” I said, taking one last look at her eyeliner. “There you go. Check it out.”

When I’d told her that there was a boy who had to die, she was prouder than when I brought home my first A.

Being a nurse provided Mami with a plethora of knowledge and tools that came in handy when it came to killing.

Long before I even met Kai, she’d taught me how to fill a syringe and how to administer an injection. How to find a vein and how to deliver an air embolism.

She’d done a stint at a psychiatric hospital and was trained on how to rapidly sedate violent patients, and she made us both practice in the living room until we were covered in bruises.

It was her idea to use fentanyl to disable and eventually dispose of Kai, and she was the one who had stolen it from a hospital where she had teaching privileges. After it was done, she picked me up around the corner two blocks over from the party, giving me a relieved hug when I returned.

She was always proud of me, no matter what. But choosing to follow in her footsteps . . .

“Gracias, mija, you did a perfect job.” Mami’s voice broke me out of my memories.

“Of course, Mami,” I said, going to stand against the bathroom wall. She continued to apply the rest of her makeup as I watched, before she poured herself into a stunning black lace dress that fit her like a glove.

By the time the good doctor arrived to pick her up thirty minutes later, the poor guy never stood a chance.

“Fuck, Sofia, baby,” the middle-aged man stuttered, unable to believe his good fortune. His thick hands pawed at her waist, and a feminine giggle escaped my mother at his touch.

I cleared my throat loudly, causing Mami’s date to finally notice me.

“Lucy,” he said, the tips of his ears turning pink.

“Luz,” my mother immediately corrected him, as I smirked at him behind her back.

I might’ve understood why she was dating him, but I didn’t have to like it.

Eric took me in over her shoulder, his eyes roving up and down my body.

Gross .

“Sorry, Luz,” he said, his expression never changing. “I didn’t realize you were there. I was just about to take your mother out.” His tongue darted out between his lips as he stared at my tits.

Crossing my arms, I refused to give him the satisfaction of my discomfort.

“Come on, Eric, we’re going to be late.” Mami tugged at his arms, and he broke eye contact with me to stare down at her.

“Of course, Sofia, let’s go,” he said with a satisfied smile, no doubt thinking he had my mother exactly where he wanted her.

As the two of them walked out of the living room and toward the front door, Mami called out to me one last time, “Love you, mija. Don’t wait up for me!”

The sun was rising by the time she returned.

Dressed in workout clothes with a small duffel bag slung over her shoulder, Mami looked like she was coming from an early morning workout instead of night out.

“You’re back late,” I said from where I sat at the breakfast table as she let herself into the house.

“Ay! Luz! You scared me,” she shouted, clutching her hand to her chest dramatically. She toed off her shoes and set her gym bag down before coming to join me in the kitchen. “I thought you would still be asleep.”

“I was worried about my mother out on a date with a known creep, forgive me for getting up to see if you had returned home safe.”

She stood on her tiptoes, reaching for the coffee on the top shelf, as she tossed her hair, tsking at me not so subtly under her breath. “I’m your mother, mija. It’s my job to worry about you.”

Mami had made my father and stepmother pay. But it hadn’t been enough to heal the wounds he’d inflicted on her.

“How was your date?” I said pointedly.

She sighed, fiddling with the moka pot. “Eric got a tad handsy.”

Mami turned to face me, and this time, I really took her in.

There were bags under her eyes, and her makeup had long since faded. But underneath the fatigue, there was a brightness in her eyes. She was brimming with energy.

“How did you do it this time?”

My father hadn’t just stolen Mami’s only child and effectively run her out of town. He’d systematically abused me and ritually murdered me over and over again, only to restart my heart .

There was no form of justice that could ever right my father’s wrongs.

“Poison hemlock. His family has a history of heart disease.”

Mami hunted men now.

Rich men. Powerful men. The kind of men who used their influence to destroy the lives of the innocent simply because they could.

Men like Dr. Eric Hauserman.

Although she had insisted on me using drugs for my first kill—“better safe than sorry”—Mami personally preferred deadly plants to get the job done. Less risk of something being tied back to her work.

“Why were you there so long? Did he hurt you?”

She scoffed. “I’m fine. He just took a long time to die.”

My fears weren’t unfounded.

Three of the doctor’s past girlfriends had been hospitalized during their relationship with him. One of them miscarried in the third trimester after she fell down a flight of stairs.

There were rumors that he had sexually assaulted one of the residents at the hospital where he worked. A woman had brought a complaint against him forward but retracted it at the advice of HR. Coincidentally, two months later the Hauserman family announced a multimillion-dollar donation to the hospital.

I picked at my cuticle, a habit Mami hated, and she caught me right away, wrapping her hand around mine to force me to stop. “You worry too much, mija.”

Unlike me, Mami needed to kill.

Something was broken inside her, and at this point, I didn’t think she could stop even if she wanted to . . .

As she sipped on her coffee, Mami told me all about her date. The lovely restaurant he took her to, the drinks they had at his place, the sounds he made when his heart started to give out on him . . .

Looking at the woman, with her beatific smile and maternal energy, no one would’ve ever guessed she was a stone-cold killer.

Like mother, like daughter.