by Max Henry
“You need to take this shit straight to the table.” He slams the heel of his boot down on the concrete floor of the garage, scowling at a stone that’s caught in the tread of his sole.
“One step ahead of you.” I wipe my bloody fingers on my jeans and dismount. “I messaged Beefy while you were jerking one off in the restrooms at that fuel station.”
He chuckles, giving me a light punch to my good arm. “Come on. Like you ain’t goin’ to tonight.” He rolls his eyes back, his hand pumping furiously at the crotch of his jeans as his voice rises, taking the piss. “Ugh, she’s so hot,” he whines. “I’m such a pussy who can’t talk to girls.”
I scowl at the asshole. “Fuck up. I did fuckin’ talk to her, didn’t I?” And ever since I’ve been trying to come up with a legitimate reason to return to Kansas City this next week to see her.
“Come on.” He opens the door that connects the garage to the common room and steps aside to let me pass. “Looks like you messaged Gloria, too.” He tips his chin toward the bar as we cross the floor.
Gloria sits at the end, first-aid kit laid out and at the ready beside a bottle of Jameson. Good girl. She’s old lady to one of our lifers, and having been a candy striper for five years as a young woman, she’s our most qualified in-house ‘nurse’. Anything Gloria doesn’t know, she looks up on YouTube and Google. The woman’s a fast learner, and she does her job pretty well. Neat stitches, small scars.
“You ready?” she asks as we approach, setting aside her shandy.
“As ever.” I give her a wink and take a seat beside her kit.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” She reaches out and takes my damp sleeve in hand, rolling it up my arm carefully. The fabric gets tight the farther she goes, making it hard for her to keep it out of the way. “You fond of this shirt?”
I shake my head. “Twenty more like it, minus the blood.”
She chuckles. “Good.” I track her movements as she produces a pair of scissors from her kit and slices up the length of the sleeve, opening the fabric out to expose my blood-covered Band-Aids. She carefully peels the mess off, dropping them with a dull slap onto the counter, and reveals the inflamed area beneath. “Itchy, I bet.”
“A little.”
Our president, Apex, walks in the room from out the back. The dying sun frames him as he stops beside our makeshift station. “Thought I heard your voice.”
“Beefy told you what happened?” I turn my attention to the graying man, trying to block out the fact Gloria wields a pair of long tweezers that are about to find their way into my arm.
He nods. “Already got the brothers in there.” He gestures to our meeting room over the far side from where we are.
“They’ve okayed for you two to be present to tell us the fuckin’ story.” Apex thumps his closed fist on the bar, making the girl who’s squatted down filling the fridge jump.
I clench my jaw as Gloria strikes a particularly sore spot. She makes a satisfied grunt and pulls out a piece of debris. “Now for the fun part.”
I take hold of the bottle of Jameson and down a good quarter of the fiery contents. “Get at it.”
“You catch sight of who it was?” Apex asks, as Gloria threads a curved needle.
“Blood Eagles.” I eye the pointed tip as she takes a hold of my forearm with her free hand and pinches the flesh together. “They were way out of their territory.”
“You don’t fuckin’ say.” Prez scowls down at his tumbler of scotch, freshly served by the timid-looking blonde working the bar area. “Only one reason they’d be that far south.”
“To get dibs on our contract?”
“Exactly.”
Two months ago, our southern VP, Hooch, rode in with bloodshot eyes and the name of a man who could drag our club out of debt. Carlos Redmond—drug lord with one of the largest distribution networks this side of the Mexican border.
The same day Hooch arrived, the contract was taken to the table. Rumor was it passed without contest. Not surprising, really—I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t enjoy picking splinters out of my feet from the broken floorboards in the common room, or having to battle the draught that screams through the crack in the wall when I’m taking a leak.
Gloria’s needle punctures the skin, and I suck in a sharp breath between my teeth.
“Sorry, love.” She gives me an apologetic smile as I reach for the bottle.
“Didn’t realize you’d have to dig so fuckin’ far down with that thing.”
She taps the good flesh above the wound. “Honey, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but with how deep the wound is, and how long you’ve left it, it’s going to hurt.”
Fuck it.
“Come and join us when you’re done there.” Apex tosses the majority of his drink down in one go and steps away from the bar. “We’ll get this underway—figure out what we’re gonna do.”
Knock heads together and take numbers until somebody squeals is what we’ll do.
“Sure thing.” I wrap my lips around the glass of the whiskey bottle and tip it back as Gloria puts another two holes in my flesh.
I’m no closer to working out who our rat could be than I was when we left Fort Worth. Nor am I any closer to working out how I’m supposed to let on that we have a rat without maybe giving it away to the guy. How can we uncover who it is and why they’ve done it without raising suspicion? Do we seek war on the Blood Eagles for what they’ve done? What kind of complications would that bring to us as a club, and also to the fact we’ve been able to do our work for Carlos completely under the radar so far? All questions I thought about the first three hours into the ride home.
The last six hours of the ride, though? Raven black hair, full rose-tinted lips, and the sway of her shapely hips as she wandered the aisles, plagued my mind. I’ve been bitten by a bug, and with the way these thoughts have invaded my head and made a fine host out of me, it’s safe to say the fuckin’ thing is a parasitic one.
FOUR
Elena
“Ready to come home yet?”
I jump out of my skin as I step out into the dying afternoon sun. I’ve just finished putting Papa to bed and didn’t hear him arrive.
“It’s not my home yet, Carlos.”
He eyes the running gear I have on. “Neither is this squalid dwelling you pass off as livable.”
I grasp the bridge of my nose between forefinger and thumb. One, two, three . . . calm your shit, Elena. “You know the deal,” I say with a sigh. “I care for Papa while he needs me, and then you come and pick me up.”
“I miss my plaything.” He snakes a finger out to flick the wires of my earbuds.
“I am not your toy.”
Carlos moves aside with an amused smirk as I march past him and give his bodyguard an overly fake smile. “Sully.”
“Ma’am.”
Carlos tracks me down the path, cutting me off as I turn onto the sidewalk. “You aren’t the one in control here.”
“I know that,” I snap. “Give me room to breathe, please. I promise I’ll be back at your house as soon as Papa’s well enough.” Or dies. I wrinkle my nose at him before giving one last jab. “You must have another plaything or two on speed dial?”
My illusions about this man were shattered a few days before I came to check on Papa. I’d found what I thought was the perfect dress to wear to a gala he’d mentioned, and I had run downstairs to get final approval on how much I wanted to spend on it.
I’d found him cleaning the dining table with the hired help, her skirt up around her hips.
Carlos smirks at my snide comment and pulls me to him with his hand around the back of my neck. “You know I do.”
Why does that hurt so much? “So fucking call them.”
Darkness turns his usually blue irises a stormy navy. He’s such a strange mix of his heritage: a Colombian mother and an American father.
I whimper as he wrenches my head forward and up. His brutal kiss bruises my closed lips. He pushes h
is teeth against my mouth, biting to persuade me to give him access.
I do when I taste blood.
His tongue is bitter—the same stale taste as the cigars that he likes to smoke every day. I close my eyes and open them again with a start. What the hell? Carlos still assaults me, staking his claim as I shut my eyes again and yet again, see another man’s face.
Green eyes. King.
“You can’t expect to play this game of hard to get forever, Elena,” Carlos warns, as he lets me go with a flick of his wrist.
I press the back of my hand to my lips while I put space between us, glancing over Carlos’s shoulder to find Sully staring blankly at the road. No help whatsoever. I hop twice on my heel and spin as I break into a run, plugging my earbuds in on the move. My thumb traces the buttons on the side of my iPod—one of the luxuries he bought to impress me—to blast the music in my ears.
I need distraction.
I need escape.
Carlos’s black Escalade passes as I turn the first corner I come to. It rolls ominously down the long street until the vehicle’s merely a toy car on the horizon. My legs pump, the music loud enough to drown out any noise except for the echo of my breaths inside my head. I turn left and then right, trying to lose myself as the tears break over my cheeks, getting pushed away by the air that rushes past my face.
I need to call it off with him. Mama will understand if I tell her I need to stay in America a bit longer. I can do this on my own—I can raise what I need to get back to Cuba without his help. I need to get out from under is control before it’s too late.
But therein lies my problem.
With men like Carlos, you can never truly get away.
FIVE
King
two days later
We’re going to war.
The Blood Eagles take on our territory didn’t go down well at the table. Callum and I managed to relay what had happened without giving away our suspicions of a rat inside our walls. A forewarned rat is a prepared rat, and I’d like this asshole to get what’s coming his way when he least expects it.
Our VP, Twig, passes me a full bottle as he joins me at one of the tables dotted over the common room. It’s a usual Friday night with the brothers who work nine-to-five during the week filtering in for their weekly wind-down.
“You all good?” He stares at the busty redhead who dances on the table between us.
“Yeah, I think so.” It shook me up some at the start, but the more time passes, the more I forget how badly things could have turned out if that bullet had hit me somewhere other than my arm. “You think we’ll pull this off?”
“Can’t believe you’re fuckin’ asking.” He pulls a twenty out and stands to hook it in the dancer’s underwear. She’s barely covered in a lacy thong and no bra.
I should watch her dance—damn near every man in the room watches her dance. But my interest in the opposite sex hasn’t been the same since that stop-off in Kansas City. Watching one of the property girls do her thing used to be some kind of guilty pleasure, but now . . . nothing feels right about it.
I busy myself and fidget with notches and dents on the table top, picking at an old knife mark with my nail. “The Eagles have prepped for this. Probably since before they decided they’d ambush us the other day,” I point out. “I’m wonderin’ if we’re goin’ in blind—if we need to take more time to prepare.”
Twig nods and screws his lips up in thought. “Apex wants to start out small—a few idle threats to see if they’ll back off.”
I nod, knowing what he refers to: Molotov cocktails in the right door, taking one of their officers for a beat down and a shake up—the usual things that pass on the message we’re not going to lie down like dogs.
The woman climbs down off the table, teetering over to one of the older brothers after he beckons her. Thank fuck for that. Twig leans forward and slides his elbow into the now empty space. “You sure you’re feelin’ okay?”
“Never better. Why?” I take a nervous gulp of my beer and do what I can to jam all thoughts of Elena to the back of my mind. The man’s like a fucking clairvoyant—it seriously creeps me out some days.
“You haven’t paid any mind to that dark-haired thing just there who’s been givin’ you the eye.”
I look to my left, where he points with a tattooed finger. “Abbey?”
“That her name?” he teases. He knows full well who she is.
Abbey’s some street kid Apex put a roof over a few years back. Quiet, barely speaks a word, but a fucking hard worker around the place. Earns her keep and then some. And no way near legal. “Are you fuckin’ kidding with me?” I look back and find him laughing his ass off. Oh yeah, it’s a big joke. “She’s all of twelve, man.”
“Yeah, and you’re so fuckin’ wound up about something else that you didn’t even pick I was messin’ with ya.”
Wound up doesn’t even start to cover it. I ache so bad that sitting has become a task. “Fuck you, asshole.” I chuckle and push off my stool. “I’m headin’ out to find something that won’t land me in fuckin’ jail.”
He nods, accepting my half-truth easily, and dismisses me when his woman walks in with their two girls. I stand in place for a moment and watch Twig as he picks up his daughters, hoisting them on to his hips before he leans over to give his old lady a kiss.
Yeah, I’m jealous. So what if I’m young? I grew up watching my parents act the same. Married thirty-five years and they still behave like high-school honeymooners after all that time.
I want that, the love eternal with a good woman who’ll stand by my side no matter what. Twig’s old lady has supported him through some pretty questionable times. From what I heard, he did a short stint inside, but who was there the day he walked out? His woman.
I give Abbey a smile as I turn and head for the garage. Poor kid gets a bad rap around the place; she doesn’t deserve half the stick the guys give her. She stares at me with wide eyes as I pass, wound as tight as a two-dollar watch. Fuck knows what happened to her, but the damn kid’s like a stray fucking cat—all suspicious and ready to strike when you least expect it.
I step over to my bobber and pat down my jeans, doing the obligatory check before I leave. I’ve got no idea how I’m going to find Elena, but I’ve got a fair bit of time before I need to be back here. I guess when I break it down I start with what I know first, which is she shops at the store Callum and I visited. Start there, and work my way out.
I throw my leg over the bike and rub both hands over my face. What am I doing? I’m riding out on the chance I’m going to find a woman I met and spoke to once. Why? What the hell is it about her that’s invaded my every lone thought? I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and groan. I wish I had the answer. I wish I knew what it was that’s got me convinced I’ll regret this forever if I get off and walk back inside.
The Harley growls to life after I punch the ignition switch and, with a few gentle twists of the throttle, she clears her throat ready for the road. I idle out to the gate and sit with my feet on the gravel, arms folded as gate rolls open. The trip south is ludicrous, it’s crazy, but I have to try.
I have to know if fate will let me have her.
SIX
Elena
six days later
Papa’s getting worse. The home-care nurse pulled me aside during her visit on Thursday and told me to make preparations.
“His lung capacity is falling fast,” she’d said. “It might be a good time to check that everything is in place.”
Everything what? He doesn’t have a funeral plan. He only had health-care because it was drilled into him from Mama that he needed to look after himself so he could see me grow up. I guess somewhere along the way he decided he’d seen enough.
My running shoes hit the pavement in even strides. Something good came out of my angry run from Carlos the other day—I found a riverside track I never knew existed. Trees line the concrete path that’s cracked and risen in places where the roots pus
h through, and the water is only a few feet to my left. The setting is peaceful, serene, and exactly what I need.
I’ve run this loop every night since, enjoying the time to clear my mind. I file through the issues that hang over me when I wake each morning as I run, sorting them by what’s most urgent, what I can change.
What I can’t.
Carlos hasn’t been in contact since our spat. I should be relieved; it’s exactly what I wanted. But silence is unnerving. I’ve got no idea what he’s doing when he’s quiet. I’ve got no idea what I’ve done by getting offside with the man. My punishment will come—he doesn’t take to disrespect lightly. I just wish I knew what it would be . . .
I pass the point I normally turn off and reach the end of the track where it connects back onto the street when I first spot him. The path climbs up for a few yards, rising until it comes to a set of steps that lead out to a row of cafés on the outskirts of the shopping precinct.
And there, seated at an outdoor table, looking every part the hipster, except for his leather cut, is King.
I slow to a walk and quiet my approach while I climb the steps and pocket my earbuds. His head is down, and he stares into his coffee cup as though it contains the answers to whatever he’s thinking about. I’ve never felt the urge to just touch someone so badly. My fingers itch to know how his beard would feel as I traced the line of his jaw, or the tautness of his shoulders as my palms skimmed the rise and fall of his muscles.
At least I don’t wear my ring when I exercise—yay for small victories. My fingers run nervously over the bare flesh as I step up on to the street level. The road comes to a dead end; the line of cafés start straight ahead, and the river lies to my left. He has no idea I’m there as I approach from behind, spotting his bike backed in against the guttering.
“Doesn’t really look like your scene,” I remark as I drop on to the seat opposite him.
