by Naomi West
I want to tell her about the assessment day, but once again the fear of being laughed at stops me. It stops me for the next fifteen minutes, until dinner is almost ready. But then, in the middle of the conversation, Willa remarks, “You know, when I was a girl I always thought it’d be awesome to married to a guy in uniform. I remember in school once this policeman came in and talked to the class. But I wasn’t interested in him. I was interested in his wife standing behind him. She looked so proud. I don’t know. Maybe it’s silly. It was after Mom and Dad died, you know, so maybe it has something to do with that.”
“I …”
She’s standing at the stove, pasta sauce bubbling. “Hmm?” She tilts her head at me.
“I …” Dammit, I’m not a kid. “I called the fire people, on that flyer you left.” I blurt out the rest, telling her that I’ll be attending an assessment day. “And then we’ll take it from there.”
She skips across the kitchen, throws her arms around me, kisses me on the cheek. It feels real. It feels like I’m a real man and here’s a real woman and this is a real life. That’s what it feels like and Grimace and Dad are nowhere to be seen. I feel like I’m floating as I walk to the bedroom, to the pillow. I put the ring box in my pocket and stand in the kitchen as Willa drains the pasta. Maybe doing it while she’s draining the pasta isn’t the most romantic setting. Maybe flowers and chariot rides and all that lovey dovey stuff’d be better. But this is real. Her braided hair has come a little loose; she looks a tiny bit flustered. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“I wish I had some speech,” I say. “I should’ve written a speech, maybe.”
She places the strainer down in the sink, watching me closely. She’s watching my hand, which is in my pocket, clutched around the ring. Her lips start to tremble. I think she knows what’s happening. Her brown-flecked blue eyes are already going wide.
“But by the looks of you, little lady,” I say, dropping onto one knee, “I don’t need a fancy speech.” I take the ring out of my pocket and open it, showing her the glittering diamond. “Willa Holloway, will you marry me?”
She whispers, “Yes,” in my ear, and then moans, “Yes,” in the bedroom. When we’re lying next to each other, naked, with the pasta bubbling loudly from the kitchen, the room smelling of sex, she leaps into my lap and kisses me over and over again on the nose. “Yes, yes, yes!” she cries.
As I watch her walk naked into the living room to turn off the stove, I think to myself: This is easily the happiest moment of my life. I know it’s not going to be easy. I know there are going to be obstacles along the way. But for the first time in all my days, I feel like I have a chance at something better. And that’s worth fighting for, I reckon.
Epilogue
Willa
Driving from the station to the suburbs takes longer than driving from the station to an inner-city apartment, but since I never had a car anyway and had to ride the bus, I don’t really notice the difference. I was given the car I’m driving now a year ago, when I was made assistant to Sofia Silva, with the understanding that one of these days I might become head of the station. I look down at my wedding and engagement ring, smiling to myself even though I’m stuck in awful LA traffic.
The wedding was held at The Princess, something we brought up as a joke at first. Diesel—he’ll always be Diesel to me—said, “Imagine if we had it at that bar, the one where we first met.” He was trying to tease me but the idea grew and grew and grew, until I didn’t find it remotely funny anymore. The more I thought about it, the more perfect it became. So I stood in that dive bar in my dress, and Diesel stood there in his suit, and we kissed each other and promised never to let each other go. And we haven’t. For five years, we haven’t.
The traffic relents and I’m able to drive the rest of the way home. I’m nervous as I pull into the driveway. Diesel won’t be home for another hour yet, but when he gets here, I have something to tell him. Something which has made focusing today almost impossible.
I climb from the car, lift some groceries off the passenger seat, and walk toward our house. Mine and Diesel’s slice of suburbia, a four-bedroom with a well-kept green lawn and rows of houses stretching out in either direction. I pause for a moment on the doorstep, savoring this feeling, the feeling of having a home, a life. It’s one I haven’t really known since Mom and Dad.
The door opens before I can touch the handle, Frankie standing at the threshold in her little firefighter’s outfit. Diesel got it for her last week and she hasn’t been able to take it off. She grins up at me. “Mommy!” she calls, leaping up and down. “There was a fire in the kitchen and I saved the day!”
“A fire in the kitchen?” I ask Tammy, the babysitter.
She rolls her eyes, smiling kindly. “I lit a candle over the sink for her,” she says, “so she could put it out with a glass of water.”
I laugh. Tammy is easily the best babysitter we’ve had. “How much do I owe you?”
Once Tammy is paid and in her car, I carry Frankie through into the living room and sit her down in front of the bookshelf. She whines that she wants to watch TV, but I stand firm. I never got around to writing my novel. Maybe one day Frankie will write a novel of her own. Or do anything else she wants.
I put away the groceries and then join Frankie, picking up The Hobbit from the top of the shelf and continuing from where we left off. Diesel walks through the door in his firefighter’s uniform just as Bilbo is trying to rescue the dwarves from prison. Frankie leaps on him, and Diesel lifts her up and kisses her on the forehead. He smiles at me over the top of her head. Frankie has my hair and build, but Diesel’s dark green eyes. It always breaks my heart a little to see them together like this. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s real.
He puts her down and goes upstairs to take a shower. When he comes downstairs, I’m in the kitchen preparing dinner and Frankie is in the living room, finally allowed to watch TV. I need her attention elsewhere for what I’m about to reveal to Diesel. I catch him in the kitchen, wrapping my arms around him and looking up into his face. He’s grown his beard out several times since we first met, but he’s never had it this long before. He looks like a real man, a wild man.
“Is something wrong?” he asks.
“Not wrong, exactly,” I say. “Just … something.”
He kisses me on the nose. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
I swallow, and then come out and say it. “I’m pregnant.”
He doesn’t hesitate for even a moment. His smile is instant. For a moment the world seems brighter. He hugs me tightly to him, kissing my cheek over and over. “Why do you look so worried?” he asks, laughing. “This is the best news I’ve heard all year. Come here, you silly woman.”
He lifts me off my feet and I squeal. Then Frankie comes running in, pretend hose in hand, screaming, “I’m here to the rescue! I’m here to the rescue!”
THE END
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THE DEVIL’S BABY: The Smoking Vipers MC
By Naomi West
I SWORE I’D PUT MY BABY IN HIS DAUGHTER’S BELLY.
She thinks I’m the devil, but that won’t stop me.
When her father sees what I’ve done with his girl, he’ll beg for my mercy.
But I won’t rest until she’s wearing my ring…
And bearing my baby.
I’m gonna end this war once and for all…
By hurting Snake Lafayette in the most permanent way possible.
His daughter already thought her life was hell…
But then she met me.
And I’ve got big plans for this little princess.
She’s gonna bend where I tell
her.
Beg when I command her.
And once I drag her to the altar, she’ll be mine forever.
Whether she likes it or not.
Chapter One
Spike
“I’m going to kill every damn one of ’em!” Knuckles roars, charging into the clubhouse and kicking a table so hard that it collapses in on itself. He’s a tall, wide, fat man who makes the whole building tremble.
I follow behind the men silently. My anger is more of a seething, boiling anger, the kind of anger which takes a while to blow over the top. My anger is the sort of anger which causes men to turn up slit from ear to ear. I drop into a chair and wave at one on the pledges to bring me a whiskey. It’s evening, but it’s summer, and it’s Sunnyside, California, so an orange glow fills the room, bouncing off photographs of the MC, the old decommissioned WWII rifle above the bar, a pile of old motorbike tires in the corner which Red-Eyes says he’s going to fix one day. I sip my whiskey as my men gather around me.
Justin Herveux, my vice president, leans his elbows on his knees. He’s a good man, a couple of years younger than me, ginger, with freckles all around his nose. He’s the only one here who’s finished college. Business, I think. “I understand Dwayne’s anger,” he says. Justin is the only one who calls Knuckles ‘Dwayne.’ “But what are we supposed to do, boss? Can we afford to put security on our bars twenty-four hours a day?”
“So we’re gonna let ’em hit us twenty-four hours a day instead?” Alfred mutters, his voice wheezing. He must be ninety years old if he’s a day. He sits hunched over, clutching the table, eyes watery. But when he speaks, he looks like a young man again, if only for a moment. “The Scorpions need to be taken out. I’ve lived in Sunnyside since I was a lad. I helped make this club. And now you’re telling me these Scorpion fucks can just roll in and take over? I won’t have it.”
“The Dinosaur’s right,” Charley Red-Eyes says, his eyes bloodshot as usual. He’s short, stocky, with a flat face and a flat attitude toward violence. “They need to die.”
“I agree,” Danny Simmons squeaks up, nineteen years old, the youngest officer by far. He wipes down his blond hair and smiles nervously. “We can’t let them keep going in on us, can we, boss?”
They all turn to me, waiting. I’ll never get used to that moment. One day I’m sitting on their side of the room, looking to the President for advice, and the next I’m sitting here, dishing it out. Part of me misses just being able to sit there, waiting to be told what to do.
“Some of you might not know this,” I say. “But I had a girl I’ve been seeing on and off for a couple of months now. Her name was Christina. She was a cousin to one of the club girls. Anyway, she was at the bar tonight. One of the men—and I reckon it was that bastard Snake Lafayette, ’cause it’s always Snake Lafayette—left her bleeding out back. She’s dead.” I lean forward. The officers sit up, watching me intently. “So believe me when I say I want the Scorpions wiped out as much as you do. But here are the hard facts. They have just as many men as us, maybe some more. They are just as tough as us. They are just as brutal as us.”
Knuckles heaved up his huge body, smacking a meaty fist on the table. “Bullshit!”
“Do I look like I’m done talking?” I ask quietly.
Knuckles swallows, shakes his head, and hunches down.
“They are our equals,” I go on. “I know you don’t wanna hear that, but they are. So here’s what we need to do. We need to find a way to make things unequal.”
“Like in checkers when you get to the other side of the board and become a king?” Danny Simmons whispers, looking nervous when the men turn to him.
“Sure,” I say. “Like that.”
“But how?” Red-Eyes asks.
“Yeah.” Justin furrows his eyebrows. “Do you have a plan?”
“No. Not right now.” They all deflate. “For now, let’s all get some rest. Get some of the club girls in. Get some life into this place. It’s seven o’clock, goddammit; we’re not all dinosaurs here.” I wink at Alfred, who croaks out a savage insult.
Half an hour later, I’m in my office which adjoins the bar, listening to the sound of glasses clinking and women giggling in the next room. The only one who doesn’t get involved is Justin. He’s in an office next to mine. I can hear him in there, tapping on his keyboard. He’s working out the logistics for a gun shipment, I know. Leaning back on my chair’s hind legs, staring at the framed photograph of me and the previous president, Sonny, I think about Christina. Truth be told, I wasn’t in love with Christina; nothing as dramatic as that. She was just a woman who liked to fuck. But killing a man’s woman, even if it is just some casual thing, is crossing a damn line.
The whiskey bottle calls to me from the drawer of my desk. I’ll crawl into it soon, crawl deep, and forget about the trashed bar and the dead woman. I’ll try and forget about the other memory, too, the smoldering car and cooking flesh—I shake my head, forcing the memory deep down where it can’t bother me.
I need to ride, hit the road and be a man and his bike instead of the president and his officers. I need to pretend I’m just an enforcer again, working a job, trying to keep the Smoking Vipers afloat.
I feel oddly young when I climb out of the window into the parking lot. Not that I’m old at thirty-one, but I feel twelve or thirteen or something. This is the sort of thing Toby and I used to do, back in the day. The sun has almost set now, the silver handlebars on my bike catching an eerie purple color. I climb onto the bike, no jacket, no helmet, and ride away from the clubhouse. The music pumps behind me, becoming quieter as I get further away and release the engine to a full growl.
The wind feels good in my face, waking me up. I always think best when I’m on the road, metal roaring beneath me. I don’t know how a man can think in silence. There’s too much room for stray thoughts to get in the way. Sunnyside is a smallish town buried in the Californian south amidst trees and dust, San Diego a whisper to the west. As I ride, though, I don’t feel like I’m in California. I don’t feel like I’m in America. I feel like a pioneer, in the middle of nowhere, just me and the wide, unknown road. After about half an hour of aimless drifting, I ride toward the Scorpions’ clubhouse. I guess it can’t hurt to see what the enemy is up to.
During the two years I spent in the army, I learned to move quiet. So I park my bike on the far side of the road, hidden under the trees, and then creep across the road to the clubhouse. The building is squat and ugly, all jagged edges with a glaring neon light proclaiming Scorpion with a flashing scorpion figure next to it. Around thirty bikes stand in the parking lot. I approach from the dormitory side, skirting the lot, crouching low behind some bushes. I’ve got my pistol slung under my arm in its holster, just in case. But I’m confident I won’t get caught. A man can move like a shadow if he knows how.
I crouch here for an hour or more watching the dormitory windows. Most of the curtains are drawn, but I catch a glimpse of a couple of bikers. Mostly it’s just club women, the same kind we have, party girls who like to have fun, or cleaners and cooks doing their work. The moon is fading into the sky when I’m about to get up and leave. Coming here was a stupid idea anyway.
But then a light switches on, a yellow rectangle tempting me to stay. I crouch lower. The woman who walks into the room is like something out of a magazine. She must be around twenty, with a youthful, red-flushed face and big saucer-like blue eyes. Her blonde hair is tied up in a bun. She moves around the room with the grace of a dancer, her body short and curvy in all the right places. She’s the sort of woman who makes a man want to bury his face in her tits. I don’t know whether other men would feel guilty about eyeing up a piece like this after their girlfriend just died, but I don’t. A body and face like hers is too much to resist.
My smile drops when Snake Lafayette enters the room with the woman. I take out my pistol, wondering. But then I slide it back into the holster. I could shoot him at this distance without a problem. I’ve killed men from longer r
anges with pistols. But guns are loud, way louder than in the movies. One shot would draw out the whole club and see me dead. The woman backs away from the man, shaking her head. I can’t hear what they’re saying, dammit. I don’t even know why I want to. Before I can question myself, I’m creeping to the window, making sure to stay in the shadows. I press flat against the wall, their voices dim but audible.
“Listen, I’m sure we can work something out.” Snake’s voice reminds me of the brown noses in the army, the ones who’ll do anything to please the officers, or like the brown nose pledges who never get patched. But Snake isn’t a brown nose. He’s just a snake. “I know you’re upset about your mother, but that’s no excuse for being unreasonable.”
“Unreasonable, Dad? Unreasonable?”
Dad . . . I creep away from the window, making my way back toward my bike. Snake Lafayette has a daughter. I had no clue about that. I have no clue how he could keep something like that a secret, either. But the facts are the facts. Snake Lafayette has a daughter, and we need leverage against the Scorpions. If the leader of the club I’m trying to take down has a daughter, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what needs to be done. She could be useful. She could be the difference between the Smoking Vipers living another year or dying in the Scorpions’ pincers.
