by Erin Trejo
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, who are you Fab? Huh? Who the hell are you?” he roars. He shoves to his feet and moves toward me quickly. His hands land on my shoulders holding me tightly.
“What are you doing?” I ask with wide eyes. My heart beats rapidly in my chest as I suck in much needed air. His eyes are dark. Darker than I’ve ever seen them before, and it scares me.
“You know what we use these boats for, Fab?” His eyes are blazing right now and a shudder races down my spine. I shake my head slowly, watching the smirk curl his lips. “They aren’t just for a good time.”
“What do you mean?” I’m afraid to know but I have to ask.
“It means we bring people out here. Liars, traitors. You name it, we get them. We have a little game we play. We like to call it shark food.” I swallow hard and watch his face for any signs that he might be joking but I never get it. Instead, Sly pulls me toward the edge of the boat before pushing me over the side. His strong hands never leave my shoulders as I scream for help.
“Help! Please don’t do this, Sly!”
“Tell me who the fuck you are!” His growls become deeper.
“I’m just me, Sly! I’m just Fabiola!” I cry. Tears form on my eyes as I cling to his arms, praying he doesn’t let me go. What have I done? What does he know?
Chapter Twelve
I don’t want it to be true. I don’t want to believe it. What kind of sick hell do I live in that this is my new truth?
“Sly, please?” she begs through her tears. My chest clenches, becoming too tight. I don’t want this. I don’t want to hurt her, but she lied to me. How could she do that?
“Damn it! Damn you!” I roar, pulling her back up and letting her drop to the deck. I run my hand through my hair and pace back and forth. What the hell am I going to do with her now? I can’t let her go. I can’t let her take back whatever information she was looking for. What did she find? I turn my gaze to her, where she’s curled into herself on the deck, tears streaming down her beautiful cheeks. I’ve never wanted to hate something more in my life but how? That woman, that liar has made herself at home with me and I fucking liked it!
“Why’d you do it?” I ask my voice slightly softer now. She lifts her head and stares at me unsure of what to say.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play games! I’ve had enough games for a lifetime! Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she screams climbing to her feet.
“You don’t, huh? You wanna tell me why one of my boys just had to put a bullet in a cop’s head?” Her face falls, her anger slowly dripping away. I smirk and cock my head to the side, watching her, waiting for an answer. She moves her head slowly from side to side, no words coming from her lips.
“What?”
“You might know him. Or at least you did. He dropped your name a few times when my boys were torturin’ him. Funny thing about cops - they think they are so fuckin’ smart but they leave evidence. They don’t do their work right. I mean, come on! How stupid was it to walk right out the front door of my woman’s house and think no one saw him!” Her eyes widen, while her mouth falls open. More tears stream down her cheeks as I watch her stand there in shock.
“You…” she begins but her sobs cut her off.
“Oh yeah. I ordered it, darlin’. I told them to pull the fuckin’ trigger and do you know why?” She shakes her head slowly before I step closer to her. Her body trembles but her eyes never leave mine. “He said he fucked you. Long and hard. He said he made you scream his name at the top of your lungs. I don’t share what’s mine, Fab. I thought I made that clear.” Something simmers in her eyes. She slowly backs away from me until her body hits the edge of the boat, then her eyes snap to lock with mine.
“I didn’t…that was a long time ago, Sly. I never cheated on you.”
“I know you didn’t. but you did lie to me.”
“What do you mean? I didn’t lie to you,” she nearly pleads with me.
“You did.” I raise my hand, touching her cheek and slowly dragging my fingers down her flesh. She shudders but it isn’t from me touching her, at least not this time. “Why didn’t you tell me you had deals with the cops?” Her head shakes back and forth. She can try to deny it all she wants but the truth remains.
“I don’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t? So Mack was lyin’ the whole time? Accordin’ to him you were helpin’ them with a case. What case would that be, Fab?” My hand continues to move until I have it wrapped around her throat. Then I squeeze. Her eyes widen, her chest begins rising and falling rapidly. She’s lying to me right now.
“I wasn’t. I don’t know what he was talking about, Sly. I swear to you!”
Chuckling under my breath, I release the hold on her and watch as her hand comes up to rest over where mine was. I take a step back giving her some space, but in reality, I need that space for myself. If I don’t, I might kill her right here on this boat. Turning on my heel, I ignore her and head back to get behind the wheel. I shouldn’t have brought her out here. I shouldn’t have let her get close to me. I feel like a goddamn fool for all of it. Nothing in my life ever comes this easily. I should have known better.
The ride back to the dock is silent. Fab sits on the deck crying into her hands and I ignore her. It’s the only way I can get past what she did to me. I can’t believe that I let myself fall for someone who would betray me the way she did. When I dock the boat, she tries to run. I smirk and watch her as she rushes down the dock only to hear the screams a few minutes later. Once I have the boat tied down, I stroll up the dock to see Wolf holding her in his arms. She has an angry look in her eyes, but I also see the fear.
“Caught somethin’,” Wolf says with a smirk. I nod my head, keeping my eyes on Fab’s the whole time. I stroll over, tugging at a piece of her dark hair.
“Wanna know somethin’ funny, Wolf?” I ask never taking my eyes off her.
“What’s that?”
“She claims she doesn’t know anything about Mack. How fuckin’ ironic is that?”
Wolf chuckles darkly. “Imagine that.”
“Right? Seein’ how he told you guys all about her, I find it a little odd,” I say. Fab closes her eyes, taking deep breaths as if she’s trying to control herself. It doesn’t matter anymore. I know what she was doing or at least I know some of it. She isn’t going to give me anything else.
“What are we doin’ with her?” Wolf asks causing Fab to snap her eyes open. She looks up at me, dark pools of chocolate swirling.
“Basement.” Wolf laughs and pulls back with her still in his arms and heads for the van.
“Don’t do this, Sly! I didn’t do anything!” she screams. I watch legs flail as she tries to fight the hold Wolf has on her, but he’s stronger, bigger than her. She can’t fight him.
Chapter Thirteen
“Be a good little snitch and shut the fuck up!” Gauge roars as Wolf tosses me into the cell. In the basement of the clubhouse are cells. They look a lot like jail cells with the steel toilets and cots. I fall to my knees and cry as I realize what I’ve done.
“I didn’t do this!”
“Yeah, sure you didn’t. You just had a cop leavin’ your house for no reason. A cop that liked to talk a little too much about that pussy between your legs,” Gauge snaps. I don’t turn to look at them.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Whatever the Prez tells us to do to you. Don’t think you’re special anymore, Fab. You fucked that up when you played him.” The words come from Wolf but still I don’t look over because I know the anger that I would find staring back at me. They don’t understand and they never will. Instead of trying to make them, I crawl over to the cot and climb on. With my head in my hands, I hear them leave but not without hearing the lock click into place first. What did I do?
“Why did you leave me? Huh? Why the hell am I doing
this?” I ask no one. He’s out there. My brother is out there somewhere. and I can only pray that this doesn’t end in my death too. Curling up on the cot, I lie down and close my eyes. Conjuring images of my brother’s face from the darkness that I’ve kept them locked in, I sigh. I can’t believe this. None of this was what I thought it would be. I didn’t plan on falling for Sly. I didn’t plan on any of this but here we are. The lock clicks once more but I don’t look to see who it is that’s coming down the steps.
“I warned your ass not to fuck with my dad.” I hear Dezzy’s voice. I keep my eyes closed tightly.
“It’s not what you think,” I tell her.
“It’s not? Is that why you’re locked down here and my dad is up there losing his mind?” Her words hurt more than I expect them to. I don’t want him a mess because of me.
“It’s not what you think, Dez.”
“Then tell me, Fab. What is it?” Now I do open my eyes and turn my head to look at her. She sits there outside the cell in a chair with anger bordering on murder dancing in her eyes.
“It was a mistake. It was all a mistake. I didn’t think I would fall in love with your dad, Dezzy.”
“Are you kidding me?” she roars. “In love with him? So much in love that you went behind his back with a cop?” Her eyes narrow as I blow out a breath.
“You don’t get it. Mack was a long time ago. He means nothing to me.”
“Whatever. You just fucked yourself, Fabiola. I can’t believe that I almost trusted you. My mistake,” she huffs before standing from the chair and heading back up the steps.
I could tell them the truth. I could admit to them what I was doing but then I’m as good as dead. They don’t like traitors and I just became one. Tears roll down my cheeks when one of the other girls comes down with a plate of food and a bottle of water. She slips it through the bars and looks up at me.
“Sly said you need to eat. That you haven’t eaten lunch yet,” she says softly.
“Tell Sly I don’t want to eat.”
“You know I can’t do that. He wants you to eat, you eat.”
“I won’t.”
“Why would you do that to him? The whole club knows you betrayed him.”
I take a deep breath and sit up on the edge of the cot to look at her. “I don’t care what the club thinks. I was only doing this for my brother!”
She blinks but doesn’t say anything else. Just turns and leaves like everyone else did. I grab the water off the floor and check to make sure it wasn’t tampered with. When I’m satisfied that it isn’t, I take the cap off and take a drink. My stomach grumbles but I won’t be eating just because he wants me to. He will not dictate what I do while I’m being held prisoner. Closing my eyes, I lay back on the cot and contemplate my next move. Deb will come looking for me eventually. She knows that I went with Sly. What if she calls the police?
With a heavy sigh I try to get some sleep. I have a feeling this is going to be a long night.
Chapter Fourteen
“How the fuck do we not have anything on her?” I ask looking around the room. The guys all shrug but it’s true. I’ve looked over everything myself and I’ve come up blank. Not one damn thing on Fabiola Watson. It pisses me off because I can’t even find a fucking death certificate for her mom. I scrub my hand over my face as I look back around the room.
“She’s a ghost, brother. Not one thing on her. No arrests, nothin’. Hell, she don’t even have a fuckin’ parkin’ ticket,” Shaft informs me once more. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly.
“What about birth certificate?”
“Some states are sealed. Maybe she wasn’t born here,” Gauge adds.
I shake my head not knowing what the hell to do now. I have no idea what she was looking for. I don’t know what she told Mack either. That thought alone pisses me off. What if she found out something about the club? I can’t let them take the fall for this shit.
“I want information!”
“From where, Sly?” Gauge roars. “There’s nothin’, brother!”
“Fuck!” I growl before grabbing the bottle of Jack off the table and bringing it to my lips. I swallow it down, pissed at the world right now. The guys slowly file out of the room leaving me and Gauge. I glance over at him and see the look. “Say what the fuck you wanna say.” He chuckles.
“You love her?”
“Fuck you.”
“Just admit it. You’ll feel better.” He smirks at me. Bastard.
“Doesn’t matter what I feel. She was turnin’ us in,” I remind him, taking another drink.
“We don’t know what she was doin’. She ain’t talkin’, Sly.”
“She was in with a fuckin’ cop! What more do you need to know?” Glaring at him, I huff out a breath. I have to consider that he might be right. We don’t know what she said but she sure as hell isn’t going to tell me. I don’t know if it’s that that pisses me off more or the fact that I’ve grown to have feelings for this girl. I’m mad at the fact that she played me. I’m mad that I invited her into my life, my clubhouse. Gauge stands from his chair and walks around to where I’m standing. Slapping a hand on my shoulder, he looks me in the eye.
“You can’t figure this shit out if she won’t talk, brother. She ain’t tellin’ us shit. You should go down there and see what you can find out.”
“Fuck that! I need to talk to Baptista. You wanna have talk time, feel free,” I tell him before downing another long pull from the bottle. Shrugging his hand off my shoulder, I brush past him and out of the room. Heading down the hall to my office, I drop in my chair. Grabbing my phone, I dial Baptista and wait on him to answer.
“Yeah?”
“Tell me you got news,” I say into the line.
“They were there checking into crooked cops, Sly. You weren’t the only one that knew about them. Those three were sent over there to see what they could find.” Reality hits me hard. They were looking into the same thing as we were?
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I’m really sorry, Sly.”
“Me too, man. Thanks,” I tell him before hanging the phone up. I rest my head in my hands on the desk in front of me when Dez walks in.
“You okay?”
“No. Chris was in town lookin’ into the fuckin’ cops, too. They were handlin’ it, Dez, and I fucked that up!” She moves through the room and sits in the chair in front of my desk watching me.
“You didn’t know.”
“Does it matter? I should have! I have done nothin’ in my life but fuck things up, Dez. You, your mom, now this shit? I’m fuckin’ it all up.” Dez just smirks at me and it pisses me off too.
“You’re joking right?”
“Yeah, Dez. Which part seems funny?” I ask sarcastically.
“All of it! You haven’t fucked up anything. Me and mom fucked ourselves up. You had nothing to do with that. And this? How would you have known? You couldn’t have. Stop blaming yourself.”
“I brought her in here though, didn’t I? I messed that part up. God only knows what she went back and told that little cop boyfriend of hers!” Anger slowly grabs hold of my chest making it hard to breathe. I hate this. I hate what happened and how this is playing out. I should have known better, but I was too busy looking for a piece of ass to realize she was playing me the whole time.
“Get the fuck over yourself!” I raise my eyebrows at her and smirk. I know Dez has a mouthlike mine, but it’s been awhile since she’s actually called me out like this.
“Get over what exactly?” I ask watching the fire in her eyes at it burns.
“This bullshit! You care about her. We can all see it but you! How do you know she even said anything? Maybe she didn’t.”
“She was talkin’ to the cops, Dez! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what that shit is about,” I remind her.
“Need I remind you that you are friends with cops, Dad?”
Her use of the word dad stills my heart. She doesn’t use it as often as I would like
her to. I know we’ve had a rocky past but I’m slowly fixing that. I’m making things right with Dez.
“I don’t know her play, Dez, and that’s what bothers me. I don’t know what’s runnin’ through her head.”
“That’s why you need to talk to her. Maybe this is a misunderstanding.”
“Maybe it’s not. I can’t risk lettin’ her out of there and she turn this club in for somethin’ that I can’t fix, Dezzy. Don’t you get that?” I ask while trying to keep my tone calm. She has to be able to understand that much.
“I get it but even still, go talk to her.”
“Since when are you on her side?” I ask with a slight smile.
Dez rolls her eyes and stands from her chair, coming around the desk. She leans down and hugs my neck before she says, “I’ve always been on your side.”
I turn my head and press a kiss to her cheek before watching her leave the room. I grab the next bottle I can find in my desk drawer, which happens to be Vodka, and take a long pull. Wincing at the burn, I shake my head. Could she be right? Maybe Fab didn’t say anything to him. Maybe he was just bullshitting me into thinking she did, but why? What was his gain? What would he get out of doing that? He ended up dead for what he said. Maybe that was the goal he wanted for her too. Reaching for the phone once more, I dial up another old friend.
“Yeah?”
“Mystic, how you doin’, brother?”
“Good, man. I’m good. What’s goin’ on?”
“I have a situation.”
“You motherfuckers always have a situation,” he laughs.
“That ain’t even a lie, brother. Got a girl here that I can’t dig up shit on. No birth certificate, no parkin’ tickets. Not a goddamn thing.”
“What’s her name?”
“Fabiola Watson.”
“Gimme awhile. I’m workin’ on somehin’ for Miami right quick but then I’ll get on her. If she’s out there, I will find her.” I chuckle because I know he will. He’s the best at what he does.
“Heard that. I’ll owe you one.”
