CHAPTER [wey fire madrugada (n.) the moment at dawn when the night greets the day Ronan Hanos in my rockers, I stood in front of the library window watching light search the horizon. The grandfather clock chimed the eight a.m. hour, signaling I got less than three hours of sleep after returning from Moscow last night. But as soon as the sun rose, so did I. Old habits die hard. The quiet winter morning remained still when the first ray of light reached the toes of my boots. Dust particles floated in the thin golden beam. The sight reminded me of sunlight filtering through a grimy apartment window; of frozen breaths from chapped lips, hunger, and fading yellow bruises. First light in my childhood meant my brother and I had to run the streets and steal pastries from local bakeries. Kristian would scope the restaurant out, and I’d do the dirty work. My mom wasn’t exactly a cook. Or a mother who fed her kids. After she died, we were homeless and better off. To this day, my body still awoke charged every morning, expecting the need to find food. The involuntary response was called trauma, but I thought that sounded a bit dramatic. When light glimmered on a flaxen head of hair, a lash of heat licked through me, slid down to solidify in my groin, and stretched my body taut. The rising sun created the perfect illusion of a halo on top of Mila’s head before she disappeared behind the trees that outlined my property. For a second, I thought I was so sexually repressed I was imagining her. God only knows how many times I’d thought about fisting a hand in that hair while