All Chapters of Iron Veve's Kiss : Chapter 11 - Chapter 18

***Dru's POV***Moonlight spills through the cracked window, fractured by the rusty fan blades spinning lazily overhead. It stripes the tangled sheets—threadbare cotton stained with motor oil and bayou mud—in silver and shadow. Outside, the buzz of cicadas thrums in time with the creak of the bedsprings, a primal soundtrack to the leather-and-vanilla scent clinging to Dragon’s skin. I wake up to feeling a calloused hand resting on my bare hip. Noticing we are both a tangle of limbs, I nuzzled deeper into the valley between his pectorals, where the scent of motor oil clung stubbornly even after a shower. My lips brushed the jagged scar—a pale, raised line like a lightning bolt over his heartbeat. It tasted of salt and something metallic, a remnant of the fight with Hank. As my lips brush another scar on his chest, and he inhales sharply, fingers tightening in my hair. I brush the tip of my nose along the stubble on his jawline as a sly smile spreads

***Big Danni's POV***The kitchen smelled of burnt coffee and Marisol’s sofrito—onions caramelizing in guilt and garlic. Saints watched from peeling walls: La Virgen’s gaze followed me, her porcelain face cracked like my resolve. St. Lazarus with his crutches, the paint flaking like scabs—the same saint Mamá prayed to when Papa’s cough turned bloody. Mamá’s knees bruised the church floor, her rosary beads clicking like gunshots as she begged Lazarus to spare Papa’s lungs. He died anyway. Now the saint’s crutches mock me—Nobody walks away clean. Guilt? Naw. Guilt’s for folks who think they got choices. I just got consequences. As Dru bounds down the stairs in Dragon’s shirt, my coffee turns to ash in my mouth. Look at her. His shirt swallowed her whole, sleeves rolled to her elbows. That laugh… Last time I heard it, she was three, chasing fireflies in the bayou before Louise locked her in that house. Her laughter—a shotgun blast—shattered the silence she’d armored

***Marisol’s POV*** The air pressed down on me, thick as a wet grave shroud. The scent of damp earth flooded my senses, clinging to the back of my throat like a forgotten sorrow. I was back in that place. The ghost of my childhood home. Its adobe walls now sagging like rotten fruit. The courtyard tiles cracked and sprouting blackened thorns that wept a viscous, amber resin—sticky and smelling faintly of decay. The bougainvillea, my mother’s pride, was a withered skeleton against the pale sky of the dream. Its papery flowers replaced by husks that rattled like dried scorpion tails in the wind.Mamá’s voice surfaced, soft as the petals she once nurtured: *“Marisol, beauty is defiance here. Remember that.” Her hands, soil-caked and steady, cupped the blooms. ‘They thrive when neglected,’ she lied. A lesson in survival.”* Now, the thorns pierced my skin, mocking her memory. A low, thrumming dread vibrated through me, a sound like a tho

***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 strides past, his shadow warping the veve (Vodou symbol) on his leather vest—Papa Legba’s sacred crossroads, drawn in cornmeal and blood the night Mamá swore she’d