Page 41 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
Not completely dark. The city doesn't allow for complete darkness, not even out here. There's ambient light from the gas station two blocks over, a smear of orange against low clouds, and the distant pulse of traffic on the 110. Enough to see if your eyes adjust. Not enough for anyone passing to see us.
I cut the engine. The night settles around the cab, cool and smelling of asphalt and old rain.
"Is this the spot?" Emilio is already half-turned in the passenger seat, hand on the door handle. "Should we start unloading?"
"Let's check the area first. Make sure it's safe." I'm scanning the lot as I say it, reading the shadows along the mall's far facade, the gap in the chain-link. The lot is exactly what Google Maps showed. Half an acre of cracked asphalt, weeds pushing through every seam, a row of dead planters along the strip mall entrance that haven't held anything living in years.
Behind us, a van pulls in slowly and parks close. Headlights flash twice.
"The others are here." I reach for my door. "Let's walk the space and decide what goes where before we touch anything."
We spill out quietly. Eight of us total. All in black. Nobody speaks above a murmur. This is the part that feels most like a drill, everyone moving to their position by muscle memory, no instruction needed.
Dev leads with a small flashlight kept low, the beam tracking the ground ahead of us. The asphalt is uneven under our boots, cracked and heaved by tree roots that have been doing their patient work for years without anyone to stop them.
"Not much rubbish to clear," Dev says, sweeping the beam across the nearest section. He's right. The lot is cleaner than I expected. "What's the plan?"
"Same as always." I step over a buckled seam, crouch to feel the soil in the nearest planter bed. Dry. Compacted. Not dead, just neglected. "Resistant plants, visually appealing but useful. Lavender along the entrance strip, the raised beds toward the back, the small orange tree at the corner where the light hits longest."
"Ms. Silva, from the bodega, has already confirmed." Rosa says, keeping her voice low. "She said that they will help to maintain it once we set it up. Her words were something like, "Finally someone is doing something with this eyesore."”
Ms. Silva's bodega is forty feet from this lot. Her customers walk past dead planters and cracked asphalt every day. What we put here tonight will hopefully be here for a long time.
We complete the walkthrough, assign zones, and go back to the vehicles to unload.
This is private property. A development company is holding it off-market, waiting for the right buyer while the neighborhood deteriorates around it. No plans to build, no plans to maintain,no plans at all. Just an asset on a balance sheet sitting empty while Ms. Silva's customers and all the neighborhood step around the weeds.
This is a complex and dangerous area we are navigating. We don't have authorization and there might be legal consequences. But giving a dead corner of a neighborhood something alive, tended and useful, is worth the risk. We all understand the risks involved.
We settle into the work. Each one with their tasks.
The raised beds go up in sections, Dev and Emilio handling the timber framing while Rosa and I fill from the soil bags stacked in the van. Tools clink softly in the dark, the sound swallowed quickly by the open air. The flashlights are kept pointed at the ground. We don't need more light than that. We've done this long enough to know where our hands are in the dark.
I crouch to pack soil around the base of the first lavender, pressing the earth firm with my palms. The smell of it rises, clean and specific.
I look up and scan the group.
Everyone is working. Rosa is planting at the east bed, moving quickly and precisely, her hands sure. Dev is on the timber frame, making sure that is right. Emilio is hauling soil bags from the van without needing to be asked. There's a quiet satisfaction in the group. The specific mood of people who know they're doing something that matters.
I let it settle into me. Try to let it chase out the anxiety that's been sitting in my chest all day.
I was anxious at the Vale Hotel. All day, moving through the kitchen garden, the herb bed measurements, the soil tests, and underneath all of it my nervous system was on high alert. Waiting. Braced for the moment Carter would appear.
After his text, I didn't know how I was going to handle being in the same professional space as him.
Turns out, I didn't have to worry. He was absent the whole day.
I was relieved. Obviously I was relieved. The absence made the day manageable. I got real work done and I didn't have to figure out how to keep it together in his presence.
I was also disappointed.
The other pressing thought is about Adrian, the kiss we shared and the flirting conversation over text.
Carter and Adrian. Both of them friends of William. William, who hates my guts.
I press more soil around the lavender's base. The earth is cool and slightly damp under my palms.
Here. This. The plant in my hands, the soil and the fact that something is going in the ground tonight that wasn't here before. That's enough.
