by K A Sands
The bathroom door squeaking open startled me, and I peeked my head around the curtain to see Shaun leaning against the vanity sink, arms crossed against his chest, a sad look on his beautiful face. He was a hard-looking man, it was a rare occasion to see anything but a menacing look upon him, whether meant or not.
“You need help?”
It made sense he was the one offering, he’d seen it all before and had absolutely no interest in getting off on seeing me naked again.
“No. Thank you,” I said gratefully, ducking back into the shower.
Looking down at my hands, the red stains remained, not appearing to want to come off. Grabbing the loofah again, I tipped copious amounts of shower gel over the hard sponge and scrubbed for a second, maybe a third time. I hadn’t noticed the hot tears spilling over my cheeks, nor the breeze of the shower curtain opening.
Shaun’s hands covered mine and I stilled, looking up into his face. The man was striking, still took my breath away. “How did you do it?” I whispered. He was a man who’d clawed his way out of the darkness and now lived a life filled with love.
“I had something worth fighting for. Everything to lose. Just like you, Chrissie.”
He was talking about Ayden, and Sophie, and most likely Boomer. But who did I have? No one. Never had. Who did I fight for when even I didn’t feel worth it? I was Charlie’s daughter, a drug dealer’s daughter. The Princess. A woman who fucked and drank and didn’t care whose toes I’d stood on as long as I got what I wanted, got what my father wanted. Nothing about me was worth it.
“We’re here.” Soft words from his mouth belied the hardness to his face. They pitched in my chest and I thought my hidden heart might splinter its very last fragment, brittle as it was.
Ryder had come. To save a sister who’d wanted nothing to do with him. Lucca, a stranger, whose son I’d hurt tremendously, and Shaun - my ex-lover who I’d fucked over more times than I cared to count.
All for daddy dearest.
They should have left me to rot, left me to take care of my own mess, and faced the consequences of my actions alone. I’d killed my father, no matter the history, he was my flesh and blood, the only one I’d ever known, and I’d struck him down without a second thought. I’d taken his life in my hands and watched as he gasped his last breath.
I wasn’t worth it.
Never had been, never would be.
They shouldn’t have come.
My pity party lasted all of two seconds. Shaun, sensing I was caving in on myself because he knew me so well, yanked me from the shower stall and threw a towel at me. Pointing to the clean clothes on the vanity, he ordered me to get dressed. I did so without argument while he stripped out the bathroom, shoving everything into the black bag he held in his hand.
Five minutes and we were done. Facing one another, he looked me up and down a few times then rested his gaze upon my face.
“Fuck, Chrissie.”
What else could he say? I knew what I looked like without even searching in the mirror, knew what I felt like without someone else having to point it out. Battered and bruised.
“Claire is coming for you. I’ll walk you out. You get in the car and go straight to the Loft. Ayden isn’t there, but he’s on his way. What ever you think you need to say to him, leave it for another time.”
Seeing Shaun’s boyfriend again made me extremely uncomfortable, especially going to his house. “He’s okay with me being there?”
“It’s the best place for now. You need to get gone, we have to clean up.”
There was only one last question to ask. “Warren?”
He sighed heavily, never a good sign. “I don’t know him, Chrissie. Only you can decide if he’s going to pull through for you. But if he jeopardises any of us, it doesn’t look good for him.”
Fuck. I didn’t know Warren that well past the numerous hot hook ups we’d been indulging in over the last few months. “I don’t know, Shaun.”
I saw something I liked in him though and that extended past the way he sinfully used his mouth and those hands of his. He was older than me, hadn’t pushed for anything more, hadn’t divulged much of his private life either. Still, I liked Warren more than I probably should have.
“Ryder would know better, I guess.”
Shaun’s fingers played about with the scruff of beard on his chin before he looked at me again. “You keep making these choices. Warren isn’t a good one, he works for your brother, you know that, right?” I nodded, then shifted my eyes to the floor. “Is this your way of getting at Ryder?”
“No. Not at all,” I refuted.
And it hadn’t been. I’d known of Warren before he’d started working for my brother. He came into the club now and again, we’d gotten cosy a time or two until, for me at least, it felt a little too seedy screwing around once the doors had closed on the club. I genuinely liked Warren, we’d both made it clear from that first grope that sex was all it would be. It had suited me fine. Sure, emotion reared its ugly head a time or two, but I was a master at pretence, even to myself, and I never let those foreign feelings take root proper or see the light of day, I buried that shit. It wasn’t for me.
Besides, what I thought had been my life’s great love was fucking gay and standing a foot away from me. I no longer wanted Shaun but at one point he had been the man I’d loved with my all. There was no fairy tale ending for the likes of me and proof of that eventuality stood stark in my bathroom helping to clean up a murder. I understood it all too well - Warren was as good as I got - a hot fuck that stayed between the sheets. Where I was at my best.
“It’s just sex, Shaun.”
He glanced down at his feet and it told me all I’d ever needed to know about us, all I’d never wanted to believe - we had been the same. To him at least. Just sex. There was no point lamenting on yesterdays broken dreams or today’s startling truths, I had bigger things to concentrate on than being all butthurt over something that had been undeniably doomed from the start.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I, Chrissie. So am I.”
Shaun stepped forward and shrouded me in a hug, one I sank into and accepted without preamble. His arms had always felt good around me and maybe it was simply meant to turn out this way. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, readying myself for what was to come.
“You don’t look. There’s boys here you don’t know.” His words in my ear put finality to the outcome. “Straight out to Claire.”
Nuzzling his warm neck a moment, I promised I’d do as he asked. “You’re staying?”
He didn’t answer when he pulled away and opened the door. Ryder stood leaning on the wall on the other side of the hallway, a large hooded coat dangling from his fingers. Giving me a smile, he leaned out and wrapped the coat around my shoulders.
“Ready?” Overcome with emotion again, tears glistened in my eyes as I tipped my head up at him. “I’ll come by later, bring you some stuff and the sim from your phone.” At least he was thinking straighter than me. My phone and bag were covered in evidence, covered in my father’s blood. “Not a word. You open the club like normal on Tuesday and we’ll take care of the rest.”
His assurance felt genuine, so I took it and held onto the hope I could come out the other end in one piece. Charlie had men above him, he was a small fish in a big pond, if he owed someone then they’d come knocking on my door when he was nowhere to be found. It would be me they came to next. I quivered at the thought, Ryder clasping my clammy hand in his.
“You’re not on your own. Not this time, you hear me?”
I did. Loud and clear, and as I walked from the flat into the early morning Sunday sunshine, despite the carnage I was leaving behind, I felt lighter in the knowledge that my father could no longer use me in the games he’d played my whole life. I had a brother who was going the extra mile for me, something I’d never had before.
Charlie had left a mess, but maybe now I could find the truths he’d buried deep, find out where I belong
ed. Where I fit. If I craved anything at all, it was truths.
Chrissie
Five days later, and I still couldn’t breathe any easier. I was a nervous wreck, still at the Loft with Ayden and Shaun, still waiting for the knock on the door that would kick me on my arse.
Both men had been in and out the whole five days. Shaun, polite. Ayden, frosty at best. Who could blame him? From what I’d gathered I was sleeping in a room that had belonged to his best friend, Jake, who was also the father to Sophie’s little girl. My being in there must have dredged up painful memories for them all, I acutely remembered the aftermath having been called by a neighbour. Vaguely remembered seeing someone lying deathly still in the corner of the room as I’d tried desperately to staunch the flow of blood from Sophie’s chest. It all seemed like a cruel joke, except it wasn’t. hefty prices had been paid that day.
It was a stark reminder that we all lived with our own pain, our own memories. Demons that would come in the dead of night and strip us back to our bones.
Mine was Charlie. He arrived like clockwork, dead eyes boring into me as he licked the very knife I’d used to extinguish his life. Then he’d laugh, a sound that jarred my ears. The little boy he had clutched around the neck with his meaty paw frightened the life out of me. Wide, terrified eyes would stare accusingly and when Charlie’s blade sliced through the skin of his belly, I’d jolt awake with tear streaked cheeks and my heart beating triple time, looking for a basin to be sick into.
For five nights in a row, the vision haunted me and prevented any sleep that was restful. I was a walking zombie.
I’d seen Ryder twice. As promised he’d brought some of my clothes and toiletries. One of my other purses where he’d tucked a brand-new phone inside along with the sim he’d retrieved from my old one. Then, he’d appeared half way through the night I’d opened Monty’s, checking up. He was the same as he always was when he came in; didn’t ogle the girls hanging from the poles, didn’t talk to anyone except the staff. He was gone just as quick as he’d appeared.
Opening the club had been therapeutic. My patrons behaved themselves, had learnt over the years to respect the girls and the staff, knowing we took no nonsense despite being a titty bar. For that reason, we were always busy, more so on a weekend than a week night which went with the territory. Going into work had been less of a chore, more a relief. Now it was Friday and the club would be filled out, takings good, but I was jittery and so tired I almost cried off and called Claire. It wasn’t such a good idea when I thought about it and I’d trundled into work looking like I hadn’t seen my bed for the past few days. Which wasn’t all that far from the truth.
There had been no word from Warren, which in itself wasn’t unusual. We had each other’s numbers but rarely used them. Still, I found myself irritated he hadn’t bothered to check up on me, nor had he been at the club, even just to see if I was all right. I hadn’t dared call him, and while I knew it worked both ways, I wasn’t ready for the rejection surely coming from his mouth if he even picked up my call.
My whole life was in limbo, like I was waiting for the almighty hammer to fall with a crash. I was neither here nor there, and I couldn’t right myself no matter which way I turned. My cheeks were beginning to hurt with the effort of smiling and my ‘I’m fine’ words were beginning to bore me to death.
A familiar face snagged my attention as midnight rolled around with patrons well into the swing of getting drunk and hollering at my girls. I grimaced at what his presence meant, he was a man of the law after all, wasn’t a regular by any means. Unlike his brother, who camped out at Monty’s regularly, he frequented enough that I knew his face and name. Something I always made it my business to know.
The detective currently ambling around tables and heading to the bar was a good-looking son of a bitch, into his forties at my guess but wearing those years well. He knew it too. I hoped he was here for the simple reason of titty teasing before he slunk off home to his woman. A man like him definitely had a trophy tucked away behind closed doors.
Everything my employees and I did in the club was legal, all above board. I’d cleaned out after Charlie handed me the bar and I’d since declared there’d be no more dodgy shit going down. No drugs, no sex... Nothing to taint Monty’s name further, I’d been hauling the place out of the gutter and turning it into a reputable establishment. There was no fear about getting my club turned over. I was, however, worried for other reasons.
“Busy night, sweetheart?”
He stood with his hip flush against the bar at a sideways angle, scanning the room. It was the way he always stood, yet he still gave his attention fully to whoever served him behind the bar. A gruff man, never impolite with it, my staff liked him. He tipped big too, which always endeared my ladies. He was the complete opposite of his brother who was in Monty’s drowning whatever sorrows he saw fit regularly. Tony had yet to roll through the doors tonight. He always arrived late, drunk enough to sink a ship and left last, surely drunk as a skunk. Whatever, he still managed to walk a straight line to the exit.
“What you having tonight, Detective?”
He tsked at me, rattling off his usual response when I used his profession to address him. “Off the clock, young lady. Just a pint, the usual.” I’d never seen him drink hard, unlike his brother.
I poured him a pint of what we had on tap, letting the head settle a minute before placing the frosted glass on a beer mat and pushing it toward him. “On the house.”
A small smirk tugged at his lips. “Bribery. I like that.”
The running joke made me genuinely laugh, the first in days. Not even Claire’s crap one liners she was renowned for managed to pull the corners of my mouth upwards in that easy way she normally could.
“Where’s your dad, Chrissie?” And gone was the smile, wiped clean off with those four words.
No beating around the bush, it wasn’t Adrian Stenhouse’s style. Of course, someone would come looking, I just hadn’t expected it to be him. A bloody detective. He’d never asked me about Charlie in the past, had no reason to. Now, he must have thought he did.
“How should I know where the fucker is? You know I don’t talk to him.” Truth of it was, I didn’t, and I hoped the grit to my tone was enough to convince him.
“You’ve not been home in a few days.”
What the fuck?
I stared at him incredulously, suddenly disliking the man, his statement poking at my nerves. “You’re watching me?” I asked, cocking my head to the side and planting my hands on my hips.
Not once had it ever occurred to my naïve little brain that this man would be watching me. God, I was so fucking stupid. Probably not just him either, Charlie’s men most likely had eyes on me too.
Turning to face me fully, his whole body shifted and pressed into the bar. Leaning over, he gave me another one of his killer smiles, this one edged with creepiness. “Observing. I like what I see.”
Officially freaked out, I made the excuse of management work and promptly left the bar. Escaping down the dim hallway and into my shoebox office, I firmly closed the door behind me and laid back on the barrier. Heaving in great gulps of air, I thought my heart was going to give out. Detective Adrian Stenhouse rattled me, which had probably been his intention.
I hadn’t imagined what the very nice and polite detective said. This was the beginning. He was simply the first in a long line who would come to the club looking for Charlie. Five days was long enough for any person to be gone without a word, never mind someone like him. People noticed, he would be missed. Then they’d come looking.
Five minutes. I took that time to calm down, wash my face and pull myself together. Guzzling down a bottle of cold water to quench the dry of my throat, I put my game face back on and waltzed from my office like I didn’t have a care in the world, intent on meeting the detective head on and playing the ruse. I was the master at flirting, I could definitely throw him off.
Warren was sitting in place of the detective inste
ad, and from the looks of things - shit faced. Wonderful. I didn’t know which was worse - him or Detective Stenhouse. Standing in front of the man who fucked like a stallion, I grimaced when he looked at me. Half open, bloodshot eyes stared back at me.
“Warren,” I greeted blandly, still annoyed at his silence over the last few days.
“Chrissie,” he mumbled, swaying on the stool.
Folding my arms across my chest, locking up those stupid emotions that threatened to overwhelm me, I stood tall. “I’m not serving you. You look like you’ve had enough.”
Warren
Well, there was a truth if I’d ever heard one, and she was bang on target with it. I’d had enough. Enough of the constant crap that was my life. An ex-wife whose bribery techniques rivalled the mob and brought me to my knees every time she opened her mouth and the threats fell out. Never mind that she was the one who’d had an affair with my best friend, Clive, behind my back. The loneliness of the nights because my ex demanded I stayed single. The longing for a woman who was unlikely to return my feelings.
I wanted quiet. I wanted true. I wanted my son. I wanted Chrissie.
And wanting her was the most fucked up thing of all because being in her life would not bring me the serenity I craved. Instead, she invited a danger I couldn’t afford. Not with Kieran.
So yeah, I was drunk. Had been most of the past few days, taking the week’s holiday my boss had so graciously given me through gritted teeth. I’d sat at a bar a street away and downed some doubles, plucking up the courage to saunter into Monty’s like everything was A-okay. I had to see with my own eyes. Had to see if the woman who was slowly but surely creeping into the lonely corners of my life, was all right.
