"Oh my god. Oh my god."
That was me.
But why was that me?
And why did I sound so hysterical?
This was always the plan.
This was always the end for him.
Why then did it feel like I was going to be sick?
"No," Edison said, clamping a hand over my mouth like he could tell my stomach was rolling, sloshing around the meager dinner of bar peanuts and an energy drink I had forced into me, my body not adjusting as well to my normal shift as it should have. "You need to hold it together," he told me, voice calm.
Too calm.
Way too calm.
He had just shot a man.
A man he didn't even know.
A man who hadn't threatened him or his organization.
And he shot him like it was nothing.
How?
How was that possible?
How could the Edison who stroked my back and whispered to me in Romanian do that?
"Breathe in and out through your mouth," he demanded, voice a little detached as he tucked the gun away and looked around. "This is why you didn't report it," he said, making me turn to find him holding up the silver NBPD badge. "Lenny, look at me," he demanded as I kept trying to focus on the mouth-breathing he demanded. "Did any part of you touch any part of this room?"
"No. But his fists and nails touched my face," I told him, gesturing toward my face.
Reflected in the harsh light above the vanity mirror, it wasn't that bad. A little dried blood. A little purple under the skin. Even if it darkened, I could get away with some bullshit excuse like I was half-asleep making coffee, and whipped myself in the face with the cabinet. Plausible, even if I wasn't known for being clumsy. Shit happened when you were tired. Especially if I played up being hungover after drinking away my sorrows in some cheap gin.
Which, well, I might need after what I had just seen.
"Fuck," Edison growled, leaning down, looking at his hands.
"What?"
"Can't do this."
"Can't do what?"
Oh, God.
Was he going to leave me here to deal with this? To scrape fingernails and wash hands and... whatever else needed to happen.
I could do a lot of awful jobs.
I had been forced to clean the men's room more than once at Meryl's.
For which I had demanded hazard pay.
But I had done it.
This?
I didn't think I could do this.
"Yo. Remember what needed to happen with Bethany's little problems?" He was talking into his cell.
I knew the name Bethany.
That was the woman to one of his brothers.
Laz.
The sober one.
Bethany was clean too.
What were Bethany's little problems?
"Yeah. Exactly. 22 Lone Maple. Yeah. Okay."
"What is going on?" I asked, hearing a certain desperation in my voice.
"Me and the guys, we need to handle this," he told me, looking under the cabinets, fishing out cleaning products.
He called his biker brothers in to help him clean up a crime scene?
That seemed to be going a bit above and beyond the line of duty considering this had nothing to do with the club.
His phone rang again, and he picked up while stopping the sink, then half filling it with scalding water, adding just as much bleach. "In through the back. Hug the wall. Up the stairs. Center. Bathroom. Everywhere. Yeah. See you then."
"What was that?" I heard myself ask, feeling useless on top of everything else. This was my mess. Even if I didn't pull the trigger. No one else should be cleaning it up.
But before he could answer - if he was planning to at all - I heard the boots. Just a few seconds later, I saw the men they belonged to.
Pagan.
And Lazarus.
Neither of them even blinked at the dead man on the floor.
The dead cop on the floor.
"Bring it?" Edison asked, turning to look at his brothers.
Pagan nodded, holding up two bags I had missed since I was watching their faces so closely to see their reactions to my mess.
"Laz, Lenny. Pagan, me."
Those were Edison's orders.
And not a second later, they were obeyed.
"Come on," Laz encouraged, taking me by the bicep, grip a little firm, but then again, I was unable to make myself move without assistance.
"No. Wait. Edis..."
"Later, Lenny," Edison called, slipping on the gloves that had come in a box in one of the bags.
The other bag was given to Laz as he led me out of the bathroom where I could finally breathe through my nose without smelling the metallic odor of blood that filled the bathroom.
"Where are we going?"
"We're getting out of here and into the woods," he explained, meaning the small patch of trees toward the back of the property that maybe, possibly could be called 'woods' if the person was raised in the city or something.
Then, well, we walked into the treeline where he pushed me into the shadows, following, but keeping a respectful distance.
"Everything on you from the clothes to the wig need to go in this bag," he explained, emptying it out. In his hand, he had a tee, some men's pajama pants, and a pair of socks. "I'm turning," he explained as he did so. "Be quick."
Not really having a place to question him seeing as he seemed to be trying to help me cover up a murder that I had planned, I whipped off the wig and my clothes, slipping into the ones supplied with a hard shiver against the cool air.
"Okay," I said, tucking it all inside the bag carefully, reaching down to slide the socks on my cold feet.
"Alright," he said, taking the bag, tying it. "Let's go."
"Where?" I asked even as his hand took my arm again, leading me back the way I had originally come, down the street, then two blocks over to my car.
"You are going to get in your car, drive to the compound, go into Edison's room, discard these clothes, throw them into the hall. Then you are going to walk into the shower, and wash until every part of you squeaks."
Okay.
I could see the logic here.
"What then?"
"Then you find something of Edison's to wear. You go get yourself a drink, some Advil, and an icepack. Then climb into his bed, ice your face, and go to sleep."
"But..."
"Don't worry about all the other details. Just do what I say, Lenny. Do it exactly that way, and nothing will ever come of this, okay?"
There was earnest determination in his voice, something in it telling me to trust him.
And, really, what other choice did I have?
"Okay," I agreed, reaching under my car to fish out my keys where I stashed them.
"They will let you in. I'm calling now."
With that, he was moving back a few feet, watching, waiting for me to turn over and pull away. I could see him in my rearview making a call before he finally turned away to go back toward the house.
The gate was open when I drove up, one of the members I didn't know closing it up after I drove in.
Inside the front door, I was greeted by Reign who was leaning back against the bar, brow raised.
He shook his head at me. "Knew you had trouble written all over you." I stiffened at that, not wanting the president of a biker club to think I was a burden he didn't want his club to bear. But then he pushed off the bar, moved over toward me to snag my chin, turning my head to check out the bruise on my cheek. "This all he got in?"
"Yes."
His smile was approving then. "Good for you. Go and follow whatever instructions they gave you. I'll have Cash bring you a drink and icepack."
With that, things went exactly as they all said it would.
I discarded the clothes, walking across Edison's bedroom naked, then climbing under the water until my skin was reddened and overly sensitive from the heat and the scrubbing. I dried off, got into one of Ed
ison's shirts since his pants wouldn't fit me, and made my way to the door.
The clothes were gone.
And Cash was there with a bottle of gin, a bottle of aspirin, and an icepack.
"You take care of you, honey. Edison will take care of the rest. Then he will come back. I figure you got some questions now."
Boy did I ever.
But I did as I was told.
Downed the Advil with a healthy gulp of gin.
I got under the covers, and put the icepack on my face.
I tried to sleep over and over as the hours passed, failing every time.
Just when I was genuinely feeling sick with worry, the door finally creaked open, and in walked Edison.
His boots were left outside.
And standing in the doorway, he stripped completely bare like I had done, tossing out his clothes, then moving to the bathroom.
I said nothing, knowing he needed to finalize his ritual, had to get clean, had to get rid of the evidence.
He came back to the bedroom, sliding into pajama pants, then moving toward the bed.
"Okay," he said, exhaling.
Okay?
Okay what?
"Okay?"
"It's handled. It's done. Don't worry about it. Life goes back to normal tomorrow. Work. Home. The status quo."
"Okay..."
"Ask," he told me when I didn't say anything else.
His head turned, eyes pinning me, like he knew all the questions rolling around in my head.
I couldn't think of just one thing, just one question that could cover it all.
So, dumbly, all I could seem to manage was, "Who are you?"
FIFTEEN
Edison
I was a lot of things.
But I started as the only child to poor parents in a rural village in Romania.
We had a front garden that my mother - and I when I was old enough - tended relentlessly, even in the cold months, even when nothing would grow but some potatoes, cabbage, and onions.
Soup is good for the soul.
My mother said that so often that you could almost forget that she was only saying it because it was all we had.
Our home was a small, three-room structure, hot in the summer, cold in the winter. But it was shelter. It was home.
I learned to read in that house.
I learned to write.
To speak the broken English my mother had learned from having heard when she was younger, back when she lived in a nicer area with better schools, with people from other countries who would happen by, accidentally sharing their culture.
I also learned some of the Russian my father knew from some of the laborers he worked odd jobs with, the sounds hard and guttural even to my uncultured ears.
"Fiule," my mother would say when I would repeat something I had heard my father say. "Those are not good words."
Apparently, most of my Russian consisted of curse words that my father used liberally since no one else could understand him, and my mother hated.
Things never seemed off to me until my fifth year, when my father found it harder and harder to find odd jobs in town to make an income.
What few animals we had for milk, eggs, and meat were sold off for other basic necessities.
The winters got leaner.
My skin hung over my bones like clothes on hangers, no buffering to stop the grotesque outline of my skeleton.
Those long winters, that was when my father became mean.
To me, sure, but I was no stranger to a beating when I misbehaved, or simply didn't do something exactly the way he wanted. It wasn't uncommon or strange.
But this was the first time I saw him raise his hands - fists - against my mother.
"Are you going into town today?" she would ask innocently enough while serving his meager breakfast, barely enough to keep any meat on his bones either. We were all wasting away. It was a question she used to ask every morning, seeing as he often had work in town.
But now, apparently, it was not the right thing to ask.
My mother and I learned this when his arm flew up, knocking the plate she was holding - something of her mother's, something of her comfortable life before that never knew hunger or cold, before she chose to follow her heart across the country - to the ground. Her gasp whooshed out of her frail body, her hand going to her chest, covering her heart as though in breaking the plate, she broke a piece of her heart as well.
"Don't ask me about my business!" he'd roared, shooting upward, backhanding her across the face hard enough to send her much smaller body flying through the room, crashing hard into a cabinet in the kitchen with a cry.
My father?
He just walked out.
As soon as he did, I flew across the room to her, my little heart in overdrive at her tears as she cradled her cheek.
And because I was little, because I didn't understand the depth of wrong that was using your strength against a woman, my words were enough to send another rush of tears down her face.
"You have to be good so you don't get hit."
After the first time, I guess it got easier and easier for him to raise his hands to her.
Hardly a night went by when I wasn't woken up by a crash, by crying, by screaming, by the roars of my father about how she needed to stop questioning him, stop wasting his money, stop eating so much of the meager meals we had to share, that he needed more for work.
Work he didn't have.
They became less frequent in summer, when the garden bloomed and bellies filled more, when the cold didn't settle into the bones quite so fully, when a few jobs could be found.
It was possibly the only time of the year, spring and summer, when I didn't see bruises marking my beautiful mother's face or arms or neck.
But as the weather changed, so did my father.
Every fall without fail.
And it wasn't until I was ten, when I had seen another man raise a hand to a woman, and felt this churning awfulness in my stomach at witnessing it, that I finally understood how wrong it was, that it wasn't the 'discipline' that my father bestowed upon me. It was different. It was wrong.
That night was the first time I tried to get between them, ending up bleeding in a corner for my effort.
And my mother got beaten worse than ever before as my father screamed about turning his son against him.
For the next six weeks, she couldn't move her left arm, kept it cradled to her chest. When my father wasn't home, she would use one of the scarves she kept over her hair as a makeshift sling, allowing her to move around more fully.
For whatever reason, in my simmering, internal rage, I started cataloging those types of things.
Broken arm.
Busted nose.
Split lip.
Choking bruises on her throat.
Broken rib.
Black eye.
The list grew and grew as I did as well, shooting up over six feet before I was even fifteen, filling out wide by the time I did, making me tower a few inches over my father, have a body that could hide his.
And then it happened.
I was woken out of sleep by a crash and my mother's screaming.
But it cut off.
Mid-scream, it went eerily silent in my home.
I could tell by the churning in my stomach and the racing of my heartbeat that something was wrong, terribly, awfully wrong.
I shot out of my bed, storming into my parents' room, flinging open the door so hard that it cracked against the wall, making my father shock back from the prone form of my mother on the floor, blood making a halo around her head. Free of her scarf, her hair was spread over the floor like a painting, thick, shining, and long. I wasn't sure I had ever seen all of her hair before.
Beautiful.
It was beautiful.
But it was slick with blood from a gash on the side of her head where it had collided with the edge of the dresser when my father had pushed her there.
"No!" I had roared, rus
hing over toward her, but you could see it in her wide open, dark, unseeing eyes that, yes, she was gone.
The rage boiled for a moment, then oddly cooled.
Cold.
I was ice fucking cold.
I moved to stand, turning on my father who looked stricken.
But his shock wasn't good enough.
Even his repeated chants of sorry weren't good enough.
That night, I became the man I would continue to be for decades after.
That night, I became the judge, jury, and executioner.
I became the champion for women who couldn't champion themselves.
Broken arm.
Busted nose.
Split lip.
Choking bruises on her throat.
Broken rib.
Black eye.
Those words coursed through me as I reached for my father, his frame brought weak by age and lack of work no competition for my youthful brawn.
Broken arm.
Busted nose.
Split lip.
Choking bruises on her throat.
Broken rib.
Black eye.
"Fac asta in numele, Ioana."
This is in the name of Ioana.
My mother.
And then I did it.
Broke his arm.
Busted his nose.
Split his lip.
Choked bruises into his throat.
Broke his rib.
Blackened his eye.
Then, when I had shown him what he had done to her all those years when she was at his mercy, I gave him her ending as well.
Unlike my mother, there was nothing beautiful about the blood that haloed around his head.
I stood there for so long that my legs felt like they locked up, before the sun started shining, and I knew that I needed to handle the situation.
I wrapped my mother's body in the beautiful blankets she had gotten as a wedding present from her family, taking her out into the garden she had tended so dutifully, keeping me alive all those years as my father sucked the life out of her. I dug a grave, and I put her to rest.
I packed everything useful we had, and I left.
My father?
He rotted in that house.
And no one missed him.
Fully aware of my actions, of the illegality of them, I traveled as far and as fast as I could.
I broke into the Ukraine where I found odd jobs. I got myself nourished, stronger, older.
Edison (The Henchmen MC Book 10) Page 21
