Burn (Brothers of Ink and Steel #2)

by Allie Juliette Mousseau

  At the sound of Vince’s name, my blood chills.

  “Liam’s never fought for him or any of the other local gangs. He’s good enough to get to fight for the mafia guys.”

  “Mafia in Minneapolis?”

  “Don’t be so naïve, Quinn. They come from Chicago and Detroit to show off their best street fighters—usually recruited from their local gangs.” He scrapes his chair back, and the sound makes me jump. Randy walks over to the fridge and grabs the carton of juice.

  I watch him guzzle it down as I sit, dumbly silent.

  He wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Liam’s only been fighting for the past year and likes to think of himself as an independent, but the mafia guys like him, so they ‘contract him’ for their teams. But the way loyalty runs in these circles, he’ll have to choose a side and color sooner or later. He keeps saying no, but tensions are only getting higher, so it’s really just a matter of time.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?” I shriek. “Aren’t you worried about them killing him? Haven’t you tried talking him out of it?”

  “Fuck no! Liam loves fighting.” He laughs. “And he’s great at it!”

  Then I understand; Randy must win a nice purse at each fight. So maybe he’s not really Liam’s friend. Maybe Liam is just a cash cow and gives him status.

  An overwhelming terror crawls up my skin. I really am … all alone.

  Liam’s words have been nice and all, but the reality is that he lives a life with one foot in with the gangs and city thugs. That’s why he wouldn’t tell me about fighting.

  The omission feels like a lie. A lie that could destroy him … and destroy me too.

  What did he get himself into?

  What the fuck have I gotten myself into? Months of barely surviving, at the mercy of other people for food or a place to sleep or a warm pair of boots. Now I’m hiding in a basement. Until what? Until Liam can get the money for us to go down south to Florida? I don’t want him to get money this way! I don’t want him to fight ever again!

  They could easily kill him tonight!

  I’m so fucking confused!

  The thoughts that claw and rip through my mind are unsettling and more than disturbing. I’m so afraid for him, I feel sick to my stomach, like I’m going to puke up the coffee I just drank.

  On top of that, I feel like Liam’s betrayed me. How can I trust him?

  And Liam going to that fight doesn’t help us. He could die. He knows he could die! Or he could decide to go with a gang or mob from another city … they could even force him to!

  I WOULDN’T EVEN KNOW!

  What the hell would I do without him?

  At this moment, I think I could die. It feels like I’ll die—my insides are squeezing and churning—and for the first time since finding Liam, I feel lost again. Maybe more lost than I’ve ever felt.

  I want to go home.

  I want to go home so badly! That’s all I want. To feel secure, to feel my mother’s arms around my shoulders, her telling me everything’s going to be alright. I’d do anything for that right now, anything.

  “Randy, can I use your phone?”

  He says he doesn’t care and goes back to the world of his laptop.

  I’m not here anymore. I don’t understand the way my body feels. It feels empty—like I’m floating.

  In the hallway is an old wall phone. I hold the receiver in my hand and stand close so I don’t stretch the cord too far as I dial my mother’s phone number.

  My teeth grind together as I anticipate the sound of her voice. I can’t make my heart calm down. I haven’t spoken with her for months and I’m freaking out!

  I try to rehearse my words … if I can say the right thing … maybe she’ll let me come home.

  I miss her. I miss my mom; I miss the smell of her shampoo, the sound of her voice … I miss the way it would feel if she would hug me.

  “Hello.”

  I freeze at the sound of her voice.

  What if she just hangs up? What do I say to keep her on the line?

  “Hello!” I’m making her annoyed by not answering back, but I have this pit in my stomach and I’m so scared.

  “It’s … it’s me … Mom.”

  Silence.

  My eyes squeeze shut. I hate silence.

  “Why are you calling me, Quinn?” She sounds put out.

  “I … um … wanted to talk … to you,” I stammer fearfully. She’s not happy to hear from me, not at all.

  “Talk then, I haven’t got all day,” she snaps.

  “Yeah, okay. Um, I was thinking that … um, maybe I could um …”

  “For Christ’s sake, what do you want?”

  I push each word out of my mouth. “I miss you.”

  More silence. Blistering, frenetic silence.

  As it echoes and reverberates, it is swallowed into the darkness of my mind.

  “Can I … come home … please?”

  I had wanted to hear her voice so badly. I had wanted her to say, Quinn, I love you so much, please come home. But now I know it was a terrible mistake.

  My very life is nothing but one mistake after another.

  I’m a mistake. I know she’s going to say it. She always says it.

  “Why would I want you here?” my mother says, her voice low and harsh and serious. “This isn’t your home, Quinn, it’s mine. I should have had an abortion when I found out I was pregnant with you. You’re the worst mistake of my life.”

  The darkness grows hungry, hungry for my blood and soul, hungry for every thought, good or evil, like a black hole sucking all of my matter and energy into itself—turning me darker and blacker and making me unreachable. I feel myself being pulled towards the lightless, lifeless, cavern of nothing.

  My heart pounds, desperate.

  How could anyone love me if my very own mother doesn’t love me?

  The truth is miserable and simple: no one could.

  The phone receiver slips from my hand and dangles lifelessly from the gray cord it’s attached to, like a dead body hangs from a noose.

  I know what the black hole is now, it’s my death.

  I’m gone. The essence that is Quinn is gone, forced away from the furthest reaches of my physical form.

  It spirals into the black hole. That hole is hell. Real hell, not the biblical hell that tortures an eternal soul but a palpable hell, where the flames lick at your sanity and promise to obliterate your very existence so that there is nothing left … not even ash.

  I streak from the hallway, through the kitchen and out the front door.

  My feet pound the unforgiving pavement of the road. Hazily, I register the sensations jarring my legs. My physical form moves on its own … fueled by the deepest culmination of pain, rejection and heartache … there is nothing left for me here in this world.

  I turn the corner.

  The darkness knows exactly where it’s taking me.

  My fingers grip the woven steel mesh of the highway’s overpass safety fence. I jam the toe of my sneaker into the metal hole as far as it will go and hoist myself up.

  My other foot finds purchase.

  My body is more than halfway up the fence. The vehicles speed down the highway below me.

  I make a final plea—that when my body hits the ground or a car, no one else gets hurt.

  “I never wanted you. You’re the worst mistake of my life.”

  My right leg curls up and around the barbed wire fence. The barbs pierce through the denim fabric of my blue jeans. It hurts, but I know it won’t hurt much longer.

  I think I hear my name, but I’m probably imagining it. I’m not turning back now, anyway. I’ve come so far.

  I feel strong hands with long fingers grip painfully around my waist and heave me downward.

  I try to hold on, but it’s too much force. My fingers are torn away from the cold steel.

  I land hard on the frozen ground, tangled around another body.

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” Liam screams into
my face. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING!?”

  The jolt of the ground wakes me up. The trance is broken. But now I can’t answer him. I can’t even look at him. I’m so ashamed of myself in so many ways …

  “GOD-FUCKING-DAMN IT, QUINN!” he shouts. “ANSWER ME!”

  I writhe on the ground. I’m ashamed that I would kill myself, disgusted that I failed and sick because all the emotions I was trying to escape are crashing in on me with an unstoppable force.

  Liam grasps my upper arms, forcing my face up, and shakes me violently. “FUCKING ANSWER ME!”

  “I CALLED MY MOTHER! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” I yell. “I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE! I JUST DON’T WANT TO FEEL ANYMORE! I just want the pain to stop. And it’s never going to stop! I’m going to feel like this forever!”

  “Why did you call her, Quinn?!” he implores.

  My lip quivers and I begin to shake and cry uncontrollably. “I just want to go home! I need to go home! I want my mom! But she doesn’t even want me. She hates me.” I can’t stop the flurry of thoughts as I bring my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them. “She reminded me, in no uncertain terms, that I’m her worst mistake; that she should have aborted me when she had the chance. I’ve heard it all before, but somehow … I guess I thought maybe, since I’ve been away from home as long as I have been, she’d change her mind. She’d miss me. I knew I shouldn’t have called her … I don’t want to feel this.” I rock myself back and forth.

  “Quinn.” Liam pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly. “Quinn, look at me.”

  I try to gather the courage to look into his face, but I feel embarrassed. I want to run away and hide, but there’s nowhere left to run.

  He sets his hands behind my ears and around my head and forces me to face him. “Open your eyes.” His voice is different; it’s choked, and I realize he’s crying.

  I do what he asks. Tears are falling from his eyes.

  “Just because your mother doesn’t love you, doesn’t mean nobody else does!”

  “What does that mean, Liam?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like.”

  “Who? Who loves me? No one loves me.”

  “I love you, Quinn! I love you.” His thumbs stroke my cheeks as he searches my eyes. “You’re irreplaceable.”

  He’s so beautiful and strong and sincere, and he makes me want to believe there could be something good in this world as he crushes me against him, hugging me so hard I can barely breathe.

  “Promise me you won’t ever do that again!” he shouts and cries at the same time. “You promised you wouldn’t leave me, and killing yourself is most definitely leaving me!”

  “And what about you fighting? Isn’t that the same thing?” I whisper, afraid to make the only person who may love me angry at me and, at the same time, not able to stop myself. “I know what it is. I know the danger you’re in.”

  Liam lets out a long, deep sigh. “Yeah, I suppose it is just like that.”

  “If you love me, please don’t go through with it. We don’t need the money. We could hitchhike or something,” I try. “As long as we’re together we can do anything, right?”

  He leans back away from me, and I know this is the part where he tells me to go fuck off and walks away.

  “I already booked the fight, Quinn,” he says, stroking my hair. “They’ll come and find me if I don’t show up.”

  My brain races for a cure. “There are six fights, right? I’m sure fighters have to cancel for … something.”

  “The only way you get out of it is if you’re in the hospital or in jail,” Liam explains, wrapping strands of my hair around his fingers.

  Those aren’t good options.

  “Hospital or jail means police, and police mean I could get charged with assaulting the Richardsons.”

  “Even though they attacked you? And you were defending yourself?”

  “Who is going to believe that? It’ll be my word against theirs.”

  “Unless I speak up.”

  “Then they throw you into St. Anne’s. I don’t want you in a place like that,” he says. “I’d have a better chance of doing my time and then finding you once I get out.”

  “We could run,” I say. “Right now. Turn south and just keep going.”

  He considers me. “Is that what you really want to do? We’ll be hand-to-mouth, with no help and no money.”

  “I’m positive,” I assure him. “I can’t stay here anymore.” I need to be as far away from her as possible.

  “We’d have to leave now, today, before they come for me,” he says.

  I nod. “I understand.”

  Liam helps me back onto my feet. “Okay then. We’ll get our stuff and go.”

  We’re both freezing, neither of us have a coat on. He takes my hand in his, puts it to his mouth and blows warm air over it.

  “Do you mean it?” I ask.

  “Whatever I say, I mean.”

  “So, you love me?”

  “I definitely love you.”

  I lay my head on his shoulder as we walk back to Randy’s.

  “Remember, if anything goes wrong inside of you like that or your emotions are fucking with you and you’re scared, talk to me—about whatever it is. Don’t ever run from me and never, never give up your life. That would kill me.”

  I tearfully nod and hold on even tighter.

  We get up the sidewalk, closer to the house, when I see a brown paper bag of groceries that looks like it was haphazardly dropped to the ground. A carton of eggs is busted open and they’re oozing onto the concrete. Liam stoops over and carefully salvages what he can.

  I know it’s my fault. That was money and food wasted.

  I swallow. “Liam, I’m—”

  “Don’t say it,” he interrupts me. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

  I stand quietly, biting on the inside of my cheek—a bad habit I have when I feel nervous.

  He picks up the bag and we step into the house. Randy’s still sitting at the kitchen table with his face buried in his laptop.

  “What have you guys been doing?” he asks impatiently.

  “Nothing. Hey, Randy, I’ve got to talk to you,” Liam says.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Quinn and I are going to take off.”

  “You have to leave for the city by nine o’clock,” Randy reminds him.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Her and me, we’re just going to blow town, get someplace warm, start over.”

  “What the fuck, man? You can’t just fucking leave. This is a big fucking fight tonight.” He stands from his chair, confused.

  “Yeah, that’s why it’s better I’m taking off right now,” Liam states with confidence. “Don’t worry, man, we’ll be out of town hours before the fight. They’ll never know I’m gone until it’s too late. I’m going downstairs to get our stuff. Thanks again, man, for letting us crash here.”

  “No problem.” Randy looks unenthusiastic.

  Liam and I go to the basement and start stuffing our belongings into our packs.

  “It would have been nice to make something hot to eat before we took off.” He shrugs. “But fuck it, we’ll bring what we can and stop for cheeseburgers along the way.” He smiles at me. “And don’t worry, we still have some cash left.”

  I manage a weak smile back. Truthfully, I’m physically and emotionally drained. I’d like nothing more than to lay here under our blankets and let him hold me and kiss me in the warm safety of our pretend house. I dig deep for some reserve strength; I know I’m going to need it tonight.

  We wash up our hands and faces, getting rid of the tear streaks and grass stains, and change out of the wet clothes we rolled around on the ground in, putting on warm layers of fresh clothes to keep us going through the night.

  Once we’re packed and ready, we head back upstairs. Liam says goodbye to Randy. I thank him too, and he walks us to the door.

  The moment we step outside, we notice the disturbing
ly out-of-place black Cadillac parked across the street.

  Liam eyes it cautiously.

  The front passenger door opens. A big guy gets out and opens the back door.

  “Keep walking, Quinn,” Liam tells me.

  But it’s too late.

  “Liam,” I whisper. “That’s Vince, leader of the Westhill Cartel!”

  “Randy, what the fuck did you do?” Liam seethes at his friend.

  “Man, I have five hundred dollars riding on you tonight,” Randy admits.

  “You sold out your friend for five hundred dollars?” I spit.

  “Why the fuck would you call Vince?” Liam’s hands keep pressing into fists as we watch Vince and his two thug cronies follow him into the middle of the vacant street towards us.

  “It’s easy, you’re supposed to be fighting tonight for Tommy Bonito from Chicago against Vince Ortega’s guy. I don’t have Bonito’s number …”

  “So you called Vince, ’cause he’d be losing money,” Liam finishes.

  “Looks like you’re going on a vacation, Knight.” Vince’s words ooze out like slime.

  “Just checking out of this douchebag’s hotel.”

  “Weren’t going to skip town on fight night, were you?” Vince’s fake nice guy tone is frightening.

  “Why the fuck would I do that?” Liam stiffens his back. “You shouldn’t get your information from an asshole, all you get is shit.”

  Vince laughs, but it sounds sinister.

  That’s when he turns his attention to me. “Hey, pretty little bitch. I haven’t forgotten you still owe me.”

  “I don’t owe you anything!” My voice shakes.

  “You know, Knight,” Vince begins. “I just came up with a plan that might allow you to live. I’ll keep the girl with me as collateral, and once you show up tonight at the fight, I’ll give her back to you.” Vince licks his lips as he looks me up and down. “She’ll be more—or less—intact.”

  His words and intent send chills shooting down my spine.

  Vince’s two goons come forward, closing in on me, as if I’m simply an object to take.

  Liam steps directly in front of me. “Call off your apes, shit-for-brains, or I’ll light you up right here.”

  “Now that’s the fighter I want to see,” Vince states with a lift of his chin. “It’ll be great entertainment to watch my guy kick the living fuck out of you tonight. Unless, of course, you’re already dead because these guys kill you first,” Vince says. “Get the girl.”