by Hazel Parker
And, not surprisingly at all, not fucking surprisingly at all, Kyle stood at the street corner.
“You know, the last time you left me—”
“Fuck off, Kyle,” I said, giving him the middle finger. “Leave me the fuck alone before I get a restraining order on you, asshole!”
I never stopped walking as I spoke, and I never looked his way as I spoke. In my peripheral vision, however, I could see him almost literally stagger back; I hadn’t hit him, but the impact of my words was almost like that of a punch.
That behavior was so unlike me, but so much about me was unlike me right now. The circumstances of my life, my inability to focus, my rude and blunt manner…life was just a little too crazy.
Maybe it wasn’t going to be the worst thing in the world if I became that crazy author who adopted five hundred pets. At least that way, I couldn’t get hurt like this. I could avoid getting into modern-day Cain and Abel stories. I could actually, you know, live and not die in either the metaphorical or literal cross-fire.
In a sick way, when I got home, I actually did what Jack had requested of me. I sequestered myself in my apartment and decided I would not answer the door for anyone. The only way I was opening my door was if I knew who was knocking when I was in my bedroom; I was not going to use the peephole and risk someone ambushing me that way.
It all just felt a little too fucked for reality. I told myself that in time, this would pass; in time, Kyle would find someone else to be a creepy loser to, Jack would find a woman to make him happy, and I’d find a man who wouldn’t be connected to Kyle.
But that was of scant reassurance considering the kind of day that I had gone through.
Eventually, when night fell and I went to bed, I had done approximately nothing with my entire day. Nothing. The only thing I had edited all day were those two sentences; I might as well have gone and worked as a waitress somewhere because I would have been more productive that way.
As I curled up to bed, my emotions ranging from grief over the way things had unraveled to rage at how unproductive I had been, Jack kept coming back to mind. I had told him the truth—if not for Kyle, we’d still be together. That didn’t mean I wanted to kill Kyle, but….
Oh, fuck. Maybe in another life, things would have worked out a little bit better.
But in this one?
I just had to accept that things had unraveled like so.
* * *
When I woke up the next morning, I had no respite from the Kyle-Jack saga.
That was because I had had a dream that the two of them had pinned me down in the booth at P.M. Coffee and were demanding that I pick one. They weren’t fighting with each other; in fact, it was almost like the two of them didn’t know the other was there, even though they were separated by no more than a foot.
It was, in a sense, the whole devil and angel on my shoulder, trying to guide me in a certain direction. Except in this case, the devil wasn’t tempting because of the promise of a thrill or great sex; he wasn’t tempting at all. He only had sway because he was trying to coerce me into going with him.
Luckily, I was pretty sure that yesterday afternoon’s aggressive gesture had at least given me a reprieve of some kind.
I headed to the kitchen and pulled out the ingredients to make breakfast, but I paused just before I cracked my first egg. I had too much work to do to spend half an hour prepping and eating; I needed to get to the coffee shop, make up for my crappy day of work yesterday, and then I could just eat at the shop. I hated to spend money, but I hated being unproductive even more.
I threw on some half-decent clothes, made sure my hair didn’t look like a complete and utter hot mess, and headed for my front door. I swung it open and gasped.
“The fuck are you doing here?” I said as I put my hand over my heart.
Kyle stood there, his hands in his pockets, a sickening smirk on his face, his shoulders raised high in tension, as if he’d prepared for this battle.
“I’ve come here to make you an offer, or a choice, really,” he said.
It was unnerving how calm his voice was. It was like he knew he was in complete control and I wasn’t. I decided then that I was going to call the police, report Kyle for harassment, and deal with the fallout from there. I didn’t care what Jack had said. This man needed to be taken down.
“You can come with me, and nothing will happen other than you being with me,” he said. “Or, you can say no. You can walk back inside, make whatever phone calls you need to, or you can walk downstairs and go wherever it was you thought you were going.”
Thought I was going?
“Either way, there will be consequences. And I assure you, these are not consequences that you will get to relish in or enjoy. These are consequences that you will suffer from.”
“You’re so full of shit, Kyle,” I said, deciding I was not going to let him tell me what to do. Nor, I decided, was he going to make me be a prisoner of my own apartment. “Just so you know, I am going to call the police and have you reported. Your political career is going to be over. It’s too bad, you know. I thought you were a decent man who got dealt a bad hand in life. Now, I realize that you’re just a bad man who got dealt a decent hand and squandered it by being a sicko.”
“Such simple words for an author,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “Very well. You made your choice. You will suffer accordingly.”
What a sick, sick man. I’d feel bad for you if it weren’t for the fact that this is all deliberate.
Kyle, despite his big words, just let me brush by. He didn’t touch me, didn’t say anything else, didn’t even look at me as I moved past him. I wanted so badly to give him another middle finger, but at this point, the less that was said and done by me, the better. The police had to take the reins on this one—and if they didn’t, I was going to bombard their office with phone calls every fucking day.
And then, before I’d walked another five feet, two burly, thick-built, thuggish-looking men appeared out of nowhere and stopped in front of me. They didn’t touch me, but they made it very clear that they weren’t going to let me go anywhere.
“Allow me, because I am such a nice guy, to make this offer again,” Kyle said, walking up to the three of us. “You can come with me. Nothing will happen to you. In fact, you’ll get plenty of time to work on your novel. Or, you can resist. But I think now, you can see that the consequences of fighting back are, shall we say, a little bit bigger than you might have expected.”
“You fucking psycho,” I growled, but I kept my voice low. “You’ll pay for this.”
Kyle, to my surprise, just laughed at that.
“Absolutely. One of us will. With our lives.”
One of us? With our lives? What the fuck…
Is Kyle suicidal?
It sure sounded like it—but I didn’t mean in the depressed sense. He sounded like he wanted to watch the whole world burn, and if it cost him his life, so be it.
But in this case, the whole world wasn’t the literal world, and I didn’t think it was Brooklyn, either.
Instead, I realized with grim horror, his world meant me and maybe his two brothers. I was going to die at some point under his watch unless Jack and Kyle did something.
At this point, then, the game wasn’t escape or evade. It was delay. And as terrifying as that prospect was, letting these two thugs behind me do whatever they wanted was even more horrifying.
“Fine, let’s go.”
“Good girl,” Kyle said, putting his hand on my cheek and patting him. “I knew you’d make the right choice.”
The only reason I didn’t slap him right there was because I wanted to save it until I knew it was the last thing I’d ever do.
Chapter 17: Biggie
Life fucking sucked.
Uncle was dead. Kyle was alive. And Lilly was gone.
And for what? Some misguided sense that she’d be better off without me than with me?
I tried desperately to consider if there was any way I
could have better handled the fallout from Uncle’s death and how I had handled her, but I didn’t see a way that it could be done. If I’d let her run free, knowing that Kyle was now resorting to murder, I never would have been able to forgive myself if something happened to her. Being dumped sucked, but losing a second person I cared about would suck even more.
Still, it was impossible to overestimate how much “being dumped sucked.” That was doubly true considering how quickly things had come together for the two of us.
I sat in the repair shop, smoking a cigar and taking a sip of some whiskey. The shop was closed for the day, but the place was still teeming with activity as Savage Saints from across the country brought in supplies, distributed them, and discussed their plans for the evening. We had an officers-only meeting set up for about an hour from now, led by Trace, Richard, and Marcel. It was a damn good thing that I was not part of the group currently tasked with leading the club.
The club had picked up at the reception pretty fast that something had happened with Lilly and me, but only Marcel asked anything. I just said that we were done and that I didn’t want to discuss it at all. I still engaged with members, recalling fond memories of Uncle, but did it help? Nope.
A loud thunder rumbled, so loud that I could hear it even in the office of the repair shop. It actually drowned out the sound of Marcel entering the office, although my eyes were on the door anyways. Marcel shut the door behind him and drew the blinds, a not-so-subtle indication about the privacy he wanted.
He walked over to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and patted twice.
“I know you’re going through some shit right now,” he said. “I remember what it was like with Christine. I can’t even begin to tell you how much it sucks. I don’t need to, I know. But we need you right now, Jack. I need you right now.”
I looked up at him. Marcel took the cue to pull a chair over and sit before me.
“Jack, I haven’t said this much, but I admire you. And part of the reason I admire you is because of your ability to still see good in Kyle. Or, at least, you did.”
I snorted, but that was it. No smile, no slight chuckle, nothing.
“There’s no good left now, Marcel,” I said. “There was earlier. But at this point…he has to take the initiative.”
“I know,” Marcel said. “But Jack. I’m jealous of you. I wanted to believe that you were right. I wanted to have your optimism. Do you think I take any pride in knowing that we’re about to kill our brother? No. No way. Even if my brother was Hitler, I think I’d want to try and get him to realize his mistakes.”
“Even if?”
“OK, maybe not.”
For the first time all day, I let a slight smile emerge. It was a pretty fucking sad smile, but at least it was a smile nevertheless.
“The point is, Jack, I may be president, but you’re my brother before you’re a vice president. And I need you to be ready to help me however I need it. Just as I promise to be ready however you need it, OK?”
I nodded. A tiny amount of confidence and determination was coming forward. Not a lot, but enough, maybe, to get the engine going.
“If nothing else, do it for Uncle,” Marcel said. “I hate that it took a sucker punch to our collective guts for us to rally around each other like this, but we can’t waste it. Let’s get rid of Kyle and end this madness once and for all, OK? And then we can have all the therapy sessions about relationships we want.”
I let out a short laugh, and this was a real laugh—not a throaty laugh, not a half-hearted laugh, not a laugh that was meant to fill the air, but a real, genuine laugh. Nothing could better indicate how ready I felt than that.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s—”
“Biggie! Marcel! Guys! Guys!”
We both immediately bolted out of our seats as Fitz ran into the room.
“You guys have to come outside. You’re not going to fucking believe what you see.”
Fitz is swearing like this? This is going to be good.
“Let’s go,” Marcel said. “Cover us, Fitz.”
We both headed to the door. By now, a commotion had formed near the front entrance. A few of the Savage Saints from the West Coast were moving to the garage door, prepared to open it at a moment’s notice if needed. Fitz followed us outside. I looked right. I looked left.
My eyes went wide at the sight.
A single police cruiser had parked about five feet away from the shop, its front facing right toward us.
And standing before it was none other, none fucking other, than Kyle Stone.
“You!” Marcel shouted. “I’m going to fucking kill you, you little prick! You piece of shit, you—”
“Marcel!”
He was already headed over. Kyle wasn’t moving. In fact, he seemed to welcome the fact that Marcel was coming to kick his ass. It was a trap.
“Marcel!”
I had to grab him around the waist and pull him back just inches from Kyle’s face. Kyle never once moved, although he looked tense, like he was about to jump back if someone actually threw a punch that could have hit him.
“You want to get caught on camera punching a politician?”
“He fucking killed Uncle!” Marcel roared. “You’re a dead fucking man, Kyle! You hear me? You’re a dead fucking man!”
“Don’t worry, you may yet get your wish,” Kyle said, walking forward. “But I almost got you to go down with me just there. Luckily for you, Jack’s still too much of an idiot to realize we can never reconcile and find peace.”
I ignored that comment. Kyle wouldn’t have said it if there was sincerely no chance of that, but that wasn’t anywhere on my mind. Kyle had lost his chance to have that be on the table.
“You’re a fucking piece of shit, you know that?” Marcel said, actually spitting inches away from Kyle’s feet. “You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve showing up here. There are about forty people here who would gladly shoot you in a heartbeat.”
“And all of those people are on camera right now, and all of those people would wind up in jail for life. Surely, you’re not willing to sacrifice all of your future freedom for a chance at murdering me, right?”
“It’s a chance I’m seriously considering,” Marcel warned.
I had my own questions for Kyle, most notably why the hell he’d been such a disturbing creep and loser to Lilly. I wanted to know how he felt about the fact that his actions had made me lose her. I wanted to know why the fuck he seemed so unconcerned and so at ease with seeing me.
But right now, I had a more important role to play—making sure Marcel didn’t fall into Kyle’s trap that would land us all in jail.
“You’re lucky as it is,” he said. “I disabled the audio receptors. So nothing you’ve said will get used against you. But you can most certainly be assured that that camera is my insurance to guarantee that if I die right now, you go down with me.”
“Cut the fucking bullshit, pussy,” Marcel sneered. “The fuck are you doing here?”
“Am I a pussy, Marcel, if I’m here in front of forty men who want to shoot me and mutilate my corpse?”
It was still unnerving how easily he spoke. This was not the dweeb that we’d grown up with or even the gnat that had bothered us the last few months. This was something far, far worse, far more unsettling.
“Just fucking talk,” Marcel said.
“About time,” Kyle said. “About time you actually gave me the chance to talk. In any case, now then. Imagine that your whole life, you’ve waited to see something. Imagine that you finally got comeuppance on the person that tormented you for the longest. Imagine that the vengeance and bloodlust you’ve hoped to fulfill your entire life finally came true…and now imagine that it didn’t do shit to fulfill you.”
Like if we kill you.
Luckily, I’m not a sicko enough to think that killing you will make me happy. I find fulfillment in the joys of life, not the darkness.
“Now, on top of that, imagine that you didn’t get
the girl of your dreams. Imagine, instead, that not only did you not get the girl, the girl pushed you away, told you to fuck off, and then jumped on your own brother’s dick.”
Kyle stared right at me as he said it. There was such little subtlety that even a five-year-old could have connected the dots. Suddenly, Marcel wasn’t the only one who needed to be reined in before killing someone. I had to focus more on myself than I did Kyle just to make sure I didn’t pull a gun out and kill him on the spot.
“What has this world given me other than misery and failure? Everywhere I turn is a failure. I have failed to become the favorite son of the Stone family. I have failed to win the heart of the girl I love. I have failed to find happiness with my biggest life goal accomplished. But, luckily, there’s a new life goal I’ve found.”
“And what’s that?” Marcel said, sneering.
“Oh, simple. Killing you both and taking Lilly for myself.”
The way he said it so casually was the most chilling part. His tone was so lighthearted, he might as well have said he was going to order a Whopper at Burger King and give some fries to a dog.
“You see, I was wrong. Uncle wasn’t the source of my greatest torment. He was just the most obvious person. No, it’s you two. You two, who always seem to have every fucking break go your way, every fucking thing turn out well, and every girl you’ve ever wanted. You two are a daily reminder of what I could be, but because life has fucked me over, I have nothing!”
“Because you’re a goddamn asshole and bitch, that’s why you aren’t that!” Marcel said. “Do you even hear yourself, Kyle? Do you realize how much of a whiny bitch you sound like?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter what I sound like!” Kyle said.
He took a breath, calmed himself, and laughed again.
“I know you all are coming to kill me tonight. I’m well aware of that fact. I’m not stupid. So, I figured I’d just take this right to you. This weekend, at least one of us will die. Either I’ll die and I’ll no longer have to suffer this cruel, unjust world…or I’ll get to kill one, hopefully both of you, and I’ll get a new spot to dance on in celebration.”
