by Tia Lewis
“Hello, Drake. Sorry to bother you.”
“No, you’re not.” I stayed on the bike, smiling tightly. What the hell did he want with me? It felt like two years ago all over again, when I couldn’t ride down the street without getting pulled over.
“I was only asking what you were doing in the city. You don’t spend a lot of time here, do you?”
“No. And that’s why I came in. I don’t see it enough. I was hoping to score some tickets to, like, The Lion King or something.” I smirked, and he laughed at my sarcasm.
“You’re in the wrong part of the city for that, pal. Broadway’s that way.” He pointed up the street. “But I can see you making that mistake—like we already said, you don’t come in a lot.”
“Yeah, like we already said. And how about you? What are you doing here?” I hated him just then, in his shirt and tie, looking smug. Sitting there in a shitty old car, probably the best he could afford on a cop’s salary, acting like he was better than me.
“Just cruising around. I saw you pull up here and thought I would hang around to say hi.”
“Okay. Hi.” I turned my attention to the bike, ready to get her purring and get the hell out of there.
“How’s your fiancée?”
His words stopped me. “What?”
“How’s your fiancée?” He wasn’t really asking. He was taunting me, trying to bait me into a fight. Right. A fight with a detective. That would be the smartest thing I’d do all day, for sure.
“She’s great. Why don’t you give her a call sometime?”
“Oh, I do. I’ve spoken to her recently. She didn’t sound very happy.”
“That’s a shame. Maybe it was because she was talking to you?” I couldn’t fuck around with him anymore, and when I started the engine and pulled away without looking at him, I saw him turn around in my mirror. I breathed a sigh of relief. All I needed was for him to ring the bell at the door I’d just come out of.
I wasn’t in a better mood when I got back to the clubhouse. I was in a much worse one. And I knew one thing for sure: I needed to tell somebody about the notes I got in the mail. They were the biggest thing on my mind, and considering that I had a fiancée who wouldn’t speak to me, that was saying something.
“I didn’t wanna have to tell you guys about this, but I don’t think I have much of a choice,” I said as I pulled Ace, Diesel, and Creed into our meeting room and locked the door behind me. I sat at the table, pulling the two sheets of paper out and spreading them on the table.
“What is it?” I held out the two letters. All three of them looked at me, then at the letters, then at each other.
“What the hell is this about?” Creed asked, his face screwed up in a frown.
“These are letters I’ve gotten in the mail over the last week. The first one came the day the Vipers were here. The other one came this morning.”
“No shit. The ‘Personal and Confidential’ stuff?” Ace asked. I nodded.
“And I guess we can assume this is all pointing to Nicole being in trouble,” Diesel mused.
“What do you think, man?”
“Easy, easy. I’m just thinking out loud. I’ll keep it to myself from now on.”
I groaned, scrubbing my hands over my face. “No, no. I shouldn’t have blown up at you. My bad.”
“This is creepy shit, man,” Creed said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, man. I never saw one of these in real life before. Only in the movies.” Ace sounded almost impressed.
“Wait a second,” Creed creased his forehead. “Is this the reason why you asked me to check on Nicole?”
“Yeah, that’s the exact reason. I wanna know what we can find out about these, and I mean anything. Talk to one of our friends with the police if you have to—you know the ones I mean.” There were always two or three people working in the department who had ties to the club. We liked to keep an eye out for any police trouble, and it helped when we could find shit out. Like who sent a couple of mysterious letters to me.
“Okay. I’ll take them over right away if you want me to.”
“Fuck, we’ve already touched them,” Creed pointed out.
“Yeah, but they’ll have our fingerprints in the system already, so they can rule those out. It’s the fifth print they’ll be looking for.”
“Right,” I said, though I did wish I had put the letters in baggies or something to keep them safe. Ace didn’t seem to worry about it, so I wouldn’t worry, either.
“Then what? Let’s say they find out who did it. What do we do to them?”
“We fucking kill them, that’s what.” Diesel didn’t look or sound like he was fucking around. “I’m sorry, but this dude just threatened my president’s old lady. I don’t take that lying down.”
“Neither do I,” I agreed. “Let’s take it one thing at a time, though. I wanna know who’s doing it so we can hopefully find out why. I never thought I would say this, but I’m glad she’s not around right now. I don’t need her mixed up in this shit.”
“You really think somebody would go after her, man?” Creed looked sympathetic.
“Hey, it’s not like it never happened before,” I reminded him. Had it only been two years? Sometimes it felt like decades, and other times it felt like a few days. It was still so fresh in my dreams. Seeing Hawk press a gun to Nicole’s temple.
“True. Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like I don’t believe you. It just doesn’t seem right—then, at least we knew we had an enemy out there. Now? We don’t have issues with anybody.”
Something started coming together in my head, but I decided to keep it to myself until it was just Creed and me, alone. When Ace left to contact his buddy at the crime lab, and Diesel went off to do whatever Diesel did with his time, I pulled Creed aside and told him what happened with Tommy Preston outside the brothel.
“He said that? He asked how your fiancée’s doing?”
I nodded. “I mean, he knows her, and he was just trying to bait me. He wasn’t threatening her. But it makes me wonder if he’s not getting desperate.”
“What do you mean?”
I realized I should have told him what was up with him and Nicole’s aunt, but it had seemed personal at the time. I filled him in as fast I as I could. “So he’s been looking at me a little closer than usual. He doesn’t want the wedding to go off.”
“Oh, shit, man. He needs to mind his own fucking business.”
“Don’t get me started. I don’t know, though. Do you think he would get this desperate? Sending letters like these, I mean? If he wanted her away from me bad enough …”
“Yeah, but it still seems like it’s a little overboard, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s a lot of effort to go through just to get you to break off the engagement.”
“I don’t know. Following me around seems like a lot more effort.”
“That’s true.” Creed leaned against the bar, chewing his lip like he did whenever he was thinking hard about something. “You could ask her, you know. She knows the guy. She could tell you if she thinks he would do something like this.”
“That’s out of the question,” I said, shaking my head. “For one, I don’t wanna scare her. And I don’t wanna talk to her, either.”
“Oh, come on. It’s been how fucking long now, man?”
“Five days,” I said. And three hours, and twelve minutes.
“Five days since you stepped foot in that massive house you’re paying a massive mortgage on? Five days since you’ve looked at your fiancée? This isn’t right, man.”
“I’m not asking for advice on my relationship,” I reminded him.
“Well, you’re gonna get it, because you’re fucking crazy. She’s a great woman, and you know it, and you’re too proud to go to her and tell her you fucked up.”
“I didn’t fuck up.”
“Sure you did. Now I know why she got so pissed at you—she knew that cop was all over you, right?” He shook his head, laughing a little.
“All
right, all right. Now you know everything about that.”
“And you think it might be him?” He narrowed his eyes.
“I think he holds a grudge, yeah. And I think that aunt of Nicole’s set him on me. She’s a real head case.”
“Oh, Nicole told you about her?” Tamara asked, overhearing us.
“Told me about her? Yeah, she told me about her. She told me she’s a fucking idiot.”
“I couldn’t believe it, either. Trying to set her up with another guy over dinner.”
“She what?” Tam froze, and Creed let a whistle out through his teeth.
“Looks like your girl keeps secrets of her own,” he muttered.
16
Nicole
I pulled up at the clubhouse for the first time in a week. I felt a chill go through my spine when I did. Looking over the few motorcycle bikes by the front door, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that Drake’s wasn’t one of them.
Still, I had to double-check. I called Tamara’s cell. “Is he in there?” I asked.
“No, goof. I told you, he said he was gonna be out for most of the day. He has things to do. Who the hell knows? Get in here.” She hung up, so I had no choice but to get out of the car and take the small suitcase out of the trunk.
“Come here, you.” Tamara hurried out from behind the bar when I stepped inside, her long ponytail swinging as she went. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a year.” She enveloped me in a warm hug.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I feel the same way.”
“You wanna drop his clothes off?” she asked, glancing down at the suitcase by my feet.
“Yeah, I’ll wheel them back there myself.” I took the bag to his room, doing my best not to look around when I did. I thought my heart would break if I took the time to actually be in the room, to remember that it had been where we’d first slept together. I resisted the urge to sniff his pillow—the room already smelled enough like him as it was, enough to make my heart clench and my eyes water. Damn his pride and damn mine. I went back out to the bar, an intense thirst suddenly overwhelming me.
Tamara already had a drink waiting, smart girl. I took a quick sip, then a deep breath.
“You okay?”
“No.” I laughed shakily.
“You know it doesn’t have to be this way, right? You can talk to him, he can talk to you. I know you guys can work this out. If anybody can, it’s you two.”
“I appreciate your faith,” I said, “but it’s bigger than that.”
“It doesn’t have to be and you shouldn’t be alone.”
“I know. Well, Creed has been checking up on me so that made me feel a little better.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Now, tell me what’s really going on, Nicole.”
“Tamara,” I sighed. “Everything about us is wrong. I want kids, he doesn’t. I want us to be honest with each other, I want him to tell me about the big decisions he’s about to make before he makes them. He couldn’t care less what I want. He won’t even discuss the topic of children. He won’t touch it.”
“Jesus,” she muttered.
“Yeah. And it’s worse than that, but I don’t feel comfortable getting into it. Let’s just say I think there might be too much difference between us, you know? We’re from different worlds. It doesn’t mean I don’t love him. I just don’t know if I can live with a man like him for the rest of my life. I have to think about the long-term.”
“I can tell you’ve been thinking that speech out for a long time,” she said, smiling. She leaned against the counter behind the bar, arms crossed over herself. I noticed for the first time that she was wearing baggy clothes. She never did that.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked. “You’re not dressed up like you usually are.”
“Who me? I’m fine. Bloated, you know.” She shrugged. “Besides, nobody’s looking at me with these whores running around the place.”
My heart sank. She saw the look on my face. “Sorry,” she whispered. “They’re not running into Drake’s bedroom, if it makes you feel any better.”
“It doesn’t, but only because I don’t care.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is.”
“Then why are you still wearing that ring?” I looked down at my hand. The diamond still sparkled just as bright as ever.
“Because I like it,” I said.
She chuckled, ponytail swinging again. “You can’t fool me. You’re nuts about him, and it kills you to think that those girls are around here. But don’t worry. I’ve been keeping an eye on things.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Honey, think of me as your personal double-oh-seven. I’m all ready to go to you with any recon info I come up with. Only there hasn’t been any. You’ve gotta believe that. He’s so nuts about you, he wouldn’t think about touching another woman. He could have at the party, right?”
“I guess.”
“I know. I saw the way those girls looked at him from the end of the bar. Like he was just a piece of meat. I’ve seen that look. Hell, I’ve given that look.” We both laughed. “Before you, he never would have thought twice about going for it. After he met you, all that stuff stopped. And he hasn’t gone back to it since.”
“I hope you’re right.” I looked around the room with a sigh. It had become home to me. I hated being away from it almost as much as I hated being away from Drake. How many happy hours had I spent there? How many family dinners had I helped cook? I missed everyone and everything about the club. I wondered what I would have thought about myself two years earlier if anybody had tried to tell me I would one day feel that way. I would have laughed myself sick, I guessed.
“Are you starting the new job soon?” she asked.
“Tonight.”
I saw a frown on her face, in her eyes. “I don’t see why you had to get another job. Why can’t you just work here?”
“Tam, don’t ask me that question. You know why. It’s hard enough without having to explain myself.”
“Okay, I get that, but it doesn’t mean I understand. You have a job here. We need you.”
“And I need to stay sane while supporting myself. The mortgage payments won’t wait for me to settle things with Drake.”
“Like he wouldn’t make sure they get taken care of,” she said.
“Like I would let him take care of them,” I replied with a smirk. “Come on. Have we met?”
“You’re both the most stubborn people I’ve ever known. How you ever managed to get together in the first place is beyond me, and I was here when it happened. I’ll never understand it if I live to be a hundred.”
“It’s not for you to understand. It’s for you to be my friend and listen to me complaining about him all the time.” I laughed a little at the strained face she made. The truth was, there was no way I could get through half the bullshit of my life—the good drama, the bad drama—without her in my corner. She was the best friend I’d ever had.
“Yeah, well, I need to get paid a therapist’s fee, then.” We were both chuckling when the front door opened, and I froze in my seat like a deer in headlights. Was I really so afraid to see my fiancé? The man I loved?
It wasn’t him, anyway, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Only that relief didn’t last long when I realized I was watching two hookers stroll into the clubhouse like they owned the place. I could almost hear Tamara’s hackles going up, but she stayed neutral on the surface.
“Hey, girls,” she said, nodding.
“Hey.” They both took seats at the end of the bar, both of them looking beautiful and bored. A redhead and a blonde. Both were nearly as tall as me, but they were both wearing mile-high shoes, too. Short dresses, long hair in waves over their shoulders. Just a little too much makeup for early afternoon.
“Whatcha doin’ here?” Tamara asked. “Bobby send you over?”
“Yeah, it’s our day off,” the redhead explained. “He sent us over here.”
“Tha
t sucks,” Tamara said, shaking her head. “I’m sure there’s a million more fun things you could be doing.” She sounded like she was trying to be sympathetic, but I knew her well enough to recognize the way she was trying to draw them into the conversation. She wanted to know more about them—so did I, frankly. I wanted to know why they wouldn’t leave my fiancé and his club alone.
“Yeah, well, when Bobby says jump, we ask how high.” Both girls giggled a little.
Tamara turned back to me, asking quiet questions about the new job. I’d be working as a hostess in an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. I’d waitressed back in college and could string a few sentences together during an interview, so they’d hired me on the spot. That was only twenty-four hours earlier.
“I guess they were desperate for somebody new,” I said with a shrug. “They didn’t seem too particular.”
“That’s good, though. I mean, I guess. If you’re into that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?” I laughed.
“Getting a job when you already have one.”
“Don’t start with that again,” I warned her with a tight smile.
“You know,” the redhead said from across the bar. She wasn’t talking to us, but she was at the same time. I could tell she wanted to get my attention, but I did my best to make it seem as though she didn’t have it. “Some women need to keep a better eye on their man if they don’t wanna lose him.”
I looked at her, and so did Tamara. Even the girl she was with didn’t seem amused—I thought she might have inched away.
“Excuse me?” I asked, turning my body toward hers.
“I’m just saying. A man like that won’t be alone for long. Don’t be surprised if you find out he’s with another woman when you’re not here.”
“And you would know this how?” Tamara asked, hands on her hips.
“I’m just saying. It’s not like he’s fucking around, but he might. Soon. So I would think about that, is all. One woman to another.” She gave me a sweet smile.
“Watch yourself,” I warned. “I mean it. I grew up in Queens, just like everybody else here. I know how to take care of myself.”
