by B. B. Hamel
Dante was sitting alone at the table. His eye was black and his arm was in a bloody sling.
“You look like shit,” I said.
“You do too.”
I shrugged and grimaced. “How’d you get out of there?” I joined him at the table. The deli up front was pretty busy, but the staff knew not to come into the back when Dante was there.
“Not ashamed to admit that I hid underneath a dumpster.”
“So that’s what that smell is.”
He smirked. “Good one. Those fucking Spiders, man. They tore us to pieces.”
“How many did we lose?”
“Six,” he said. “Everyone else is injured.”
“I got shot twice in the fucking chest. Vest saved my life.”
“What happened to you?”
“Pushed those cars out and tried to escape, but I took those bullets, like I said. When I woke up, I was lying facedown on the sidewalk and everyone was gone, except the bodies, of course.”
He nodded. “They must have thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, well, lucky me. I got up and walked the fuck away from there as fast as I could.”
“That shit with the cars, that was good work.”
“Thanks.” I leaned back in the shitty folding chair and crossed my arms. “Figured someone had to do it.”
“Seriously, Brooks. That sort of shit is why Gian is so impressed with you.”
“Anything to impress him.”
Dante grinned at me. “You want to move up in this organization, right? Maybe get my job one day?”
I nodded guardedly. “Sure. One day.”
“Then you need to play ball, Brooks. This shit with you refusing to kill women, it just looks bad.”
“I’m not sure I give a fuck how it looks.”
Dante laughed. “See, that’s why I like you, big fucking balls.”
“Why’d you call me down here, Dante?”
“I got another job for you.”
I cringed. “I’m not exactly up for a kill right now.”
“Not a kill, although it is something of a hunt.”
“Spit it out, Dante.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long cigar. I watched as he took his time unwrapping it, cutting it, and lighting it. It was such a stupid fucking power play, but I sat there patiently anyway.
He puffed on his cigar. “We got most of the girls back last night,” he said. “Spiders took a few, and a few others are missing. It’s your job to figure out if they’re still loose in the city or if the Spiders took them.”
The memory of those girls came back to me. I’d let them go. Hell, I’d made them run away. Now Dante wanted me to hunt them down.
“Fine,” I said. “That all? Find a bunch of lost hookers?”
“That’s it. Gian wants them found and brought back if you can. Kill them if you can’t.”
“Why not have someone else do it?”
Dante puffed again, blowing smoke toward me. “Because I fucking want to see you do it, Brooks. That okay?”
“Guess so.”
“It’s going to have to be. Find the fucking girls. Bring them back, dead or alive.” He laughed.
I stood up. “You got it.” I turned to leave.
“How’s your little prize doing?” Dante asked.
I turned slowly back toward him. I’d been hoping he’d forgotten about that, but apparently not. “Why?”
“Was wondering if she’s dead yet or if you’re the long and slow type.”
“She’s taken care of.”
He gave me a look. “She better be, Brooks.”
“We done now?”
“We’re done. Good luck.”
I turned and left, pushing back out through the door.
I got into the car and started the engine, pulling out into traffic.
This fucking guy. Dante just wasn’t letting this girl thing go, and I didn’t understand why. My decision not to hurt women hadn’t been much of a problem before, so I didn’t understand why he gave a fuck now.
Unless it was because of what he’d said. Unless they were thinking about promoting me, but Dante didn’t think I could be trusted yet. He wanted me to prove that I cared more about the mafia than I did about my moral code.
That had to be it. I couldn’t think of any other reason why he was pressing now. Gian wanted to promote me, maybe to a local captain or some shit, but Dante didn’t trust me. Simple as that.
And now I was stuck finding these girls. I was willing to bet that Dante wanted me to kill them all, would be much happier getting all their heads in a bag than getting them back alive and unharmed.
I couldn’t let the girls go, but I couldn’t find them either. I wasn’t going to be the one to drag these girls back into captivity.
My problems were only getting fucking worse. Shit on top of shit.
And meanwhile, Emma was alive and well back in my apartment, and she was going to stay that way.
Fuck. I needed to find a way out of this, and fast, before Dante fucked everything up.
10
Emma
It felt strange sitting in Brooks’s apartment alone for so long. As I stared at the television, feeling numb and lost, I realized that staying in his apartment for just a few days was the longest I’d ever been away from home.
I had no home anymore, I had to remind myself. There was nowhere for me to go anymore, no home or father for me to return to. I didn’t have to worry about my father stealing my money anymore or vomiting all over himself in his sleep.
That was scary in itself. That was all I’d known for so long, all that misery and anger and misfortune. Now I had to figure out who I was outside that house and that relationship with my father. I had to learn what it meant to be a normal person again.
I heard the door handle turn and then push open. Brooks dragged himself into the apartment, grimacing.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, sitting up.
He grunted. “Nothing. Don’t you worry about it.”
That surprised me. His tone was short and gruff, and although he’d never exactly been a teddy bear to me, he’d never been short either.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.
He collapsed onto the couch next to me. “Nothing. Just this damn fucking bruise. And my fucking boss.”
“Had a bad day at the office, sweetie?”
That made him grin a bit. “Yeah, I did. Think you could rustle me up a little steak and a blowjob?”
“Get your own meat,” I said.
He sighed, kicking his legs out. “Is it too much for a man to expect his woman to cook dinner once in a while?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “Your woman now, huh?”
“Just going with the domestic fantasy joke you set up.”
He lapsed into silence as I studied him again. I looked at the tattoos that curled up along his arms and disappeared into his tight black T-shirt. His eyes glanced at the television but drooped in exhaustion. I could sense a tension rolling off his body, like something had happened.
“Look, I know something’s up,” I said. “Just spit it out.”
He glanced at me. “You don’t want to know, Emma.”
“I’m stuck in this apartment,” I said, annoyed. “The least you can do is talk to me.”
He sighed. “Fine. Last night we were supposed to protect a shipment of girls.”
“Girls?”
“You know, Eastern European girls, addicted to drugs, forced to be hookers.”
“Human trafficking,” I said, surprised.
“Yeah, well, it’s not my usual shit. I got roped into it. Anyway, shit went bad obviously, since I got shot. During the mayhem, I let a group of girls escape.”
“How noble of you.”
He glared at me. “Look, I didn’t choose this. I didn’t want to get involved with that shit.”
“And yet you did. You have choices, you know.”
“I know that. Why do you
think you’re alive and those girls are free?”
I looked at him for a second, surprised by his intensity. “Okay. Fine. So what happened today?”
He took a breath, relaxing. “My boss is suspicious of me, wants me to find those girls.”
I blinked. “You have to hunt them down?”
“And bring them back dead or alive.”
“Brooks, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t kill them,” I said, shocked at my own anger. “You can’t just murder those girls.”
“I don’t murder girls,” he said, nodding at me. “As you’re aware of.”
“But you work for men who do, and who keep girls as fucking sex slaves.”
“Yeah, I fucking do.”
“You’re okay with that?”
“Fuck, no, I’m not,” he growled at me. “I’m not fucking okay with it. But then again, the mafia gave me my life. They took me in. I can’t just turn my back because I don’t agree with everything they do.”
“It’s wrong, Brooks.”
He grinned at me. “I fucking kill people for a living, sweetheart, and you think some dumb bitches are going to make me turn my back on my people?”
I stood up, shocked. “I thought you were better than that.”
He grunted. “Guess not.”
“What happened to you not hurting girls?”
“I fucking don’t,” he said, not looking at me, “but I also can’t control everyone else around me.”
I shook my head, surprised by my own disgust. I walked away without another word, angry at him and angry at myself.
As I shut the bedroom door behind me, I didn’t know what I had expected. I knew what kind of man he was. Brooks was a killer. Maybe he had saved my life and didn’t hurt women, but he was still a killer. That was the type of man I was dealing with, the type of man I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I was angry with myself, and afraid.
I knew the mafia sold drugs, guns, robbed banks, stuff like that. I understood that sort of thing and could be okay with it. But human trafficking was a whole different thing, something dark and horrible. I couldn’t picture Brooks being a part of it, but obviously he wasn’t turning his back on them completely.
Was that even reasonable to want? He’d already gone so far for me, risked so much. As I sat on the bed, uncertainty rushing through me, I had the urge to look at my mother’s old photo album.
I rooted through the duffel, searching for it. The album was the last thing I had that connected me to her, and when things got too dark, I always looked through it. Whenever I felt alone and scared, that album calmed me down, at least a little bit.
But as I rooted through the bag, I couldn’t find it.
Panic struck me. The album had been the first thing on the list, the one thing I absolutely needed. I remembered him saying that he couldn’t find a few things, but I didn’t think the album was one of them.
I wanted to storm out there and yell at him, but I stopped myself. He didn’t owe me anything. He had done his best to get me what I needed. He had no way of knowing how important that album was to me.
I took a deep breath and let it out. Besides, I had to admit that I was a little scared of him at that moment. He was a man who got shot because of a human trafficking attack. I could overlook the murder of my father, because he was a bad man, but they were innocent girls.
And yet he had let some of them go. That was probably another big risk to take.
I was so frustrated. I couldn’t decide how I felt. This wasn’t so simple; it wasn’t just an easy decision to make. Brooks was a killer, but he had saved my life. He was involved with human traffickers, but he had let girls escape when he didn’t have to. Brooks was a contradiction, and I didn’t know what to think about him.
But I did know one thing. I needed my album.
I pushed open the door and poked my head back out into the living room. Brooks was sitting on the couch, his head tipped back, snoring lightly.
I blinked. He was asleep.
There was no time to think about it. This was my chance. I crept across the room, moving silently. As quietly as I could, I opened the apartment door. I slipped out and shut it silently behind me.
Down the steps I went, my heart beating hard. I stopped down in front of the main door, staring at it. Beyond that door was freedom and danger. It was an unfamiliar, scary world, one without Brooks. If I did this, he couldn’t protect me.
But that album was my last connection to my past.
I took a step forward and then another. I felt more and more confident.
I put my hand on the knob, turned it, and pushed the door open.
It was a beautiful day as I left the apartment building. It took me a second to figure out where I was, but once I did, I knew which way to go.
I began walking.
I’d walked alone in the city hundreds of times before, but this was the first time I was truly alone. Nobody was coming for me; nobody was waiting for me. My father was gone and my house was empty. All I needed to do was walk to the house, grab the album, and head back.
I felt afraid, but good. I felt like I was finally doing something instead of sitting around and waiting for things to happen to me. I felt like I was going to change my life, like nothing could stop me.
Cars drove past as I walked down the simple neighborhood. It was a cozy little place with neat row homes. It looked like the sort of place that’d always been a part of Chicago, like the people who lived there had always been there. It surprised me that a killer like Brooks lived in such a quiet neighborhood. I smiled to myself, enjoying the walk.
And then someone grabbed my arm, yanking me backward.
Terror lanced through my mind. In that instant before I looked back, I thought I was dead and Brooks was dead and I’d destroyed everything.
“What are you doing?”
I stumbled back into his body. He held me there, his strong hands on my arms. Brooks looked down at me, and I heaved a deep breath.
“Shit. You scared me,” I said.
“You can’t be out here.”
“Let go,” I said.
“No,” he answered. “You need to come back, Emma. It’s not safe for you out here.”
He held me pressed against his chest, and I could feel his heart beating. He must have moved fast to catch up with me, and I bet that had hurt a lot. I couldn’t see the pain on his face, but I knew he was hurting. And he still held me tightly against his hard body, keeping me pressed against his muscular chest.
“I’m sorry if I was pissed off, but you don’t need to run away just because I was in a bad mood,” he said.
I shook my head. “It’s not that at all. I needed something from my house.”
He stared at me and then grinned. “You were going to walk all the way there?”
“Sure,” I said, shrugging.
“It’s on the other side of the city. Do you know where you are?”
“I knew that,” I said, looking around again and realizing that I had no clue where we were.
“Come on,” he said, dragging me back toward the apartment. “It’s dangerous out here.”
“But I need to go back.”
“What did I forget?”
“It’s a photo album.”
He laughed. “You’re doing this for a picture album?”
“It’s the last thing I have of my mother’s.”
“If I promise to get it, will you stop fighting me?”
“I guess so.”
“Fine. I’ll go get it. But you have to stay in the apartment.”
“Deal. Can you let me go?”
His grip relaxed and we walked back toward the apartment.
“Nice day out,” I commented.
He grinned at me. “Cut it out. Someone could be watching right now.”
“You think so?”
“I told you, my boss doesn’t trust me.”
He opened th
e front door and I went inside with him just on my heels. Once up in the apartment, he grabbed his gun from the coffee table.
“I’ll go now. You wait here.”
“I have nowhere else to go.”
He nodded and then disappeared back outside.
I stared at the door and shook my head. I didn’t know what he meant to me, but he was willing to go back to get the photo album, and that was something.
11
Brooks
As soon as Emma was safely back in the apartment, I went out onto the streets. I probably needed to rest and heal up, but I didn’t have fucking time for that.
What the hell was she thinking? As I cruised down the street in my car, I couldn’t imagine why she would risk her life for a fucking photo album. It just seemed like such a high risk for such a little reward. The damn thing must have been pretty fucking important to her if she was willingly exposing herself just to get it back.
She was so damn willful and impulsive. I had to admit that I was impressed with her strength, but she needed to think before she went running off. This wasn’t some damn game we were playing. This was some real shit.
I pulled my car over in the parking lot of a seedy-looking gas station at the edge of a very bad neighborhood. It was only ten blocks away from the club where everything had gone down the night before, and I happened to know the owner. He was a small-time hustler and often had his hands in a bunch of different illegal places.
I climbed out of my car and couldn’t shake the strange feeling I had. It was like someone was watching me, but when I looked around, I couldn’t spot a thing. I walked carefully, keeping my eye out for a tail, but I didn’t see a thing. Either someone skilled was on me or I was getting more and more paranoid.
I went into the gas station, pushing in the door. It was empty, and John the Rat was standing behind the counter. He looked up as I entered, and a look of fear crossed his face before being replaced by his normal sleazy smile.
“Brooks!” he exclaimed. “So good to see you.”
“No, it’s not,” I grunted. I leaned against the counter and let my jacket fall open so he could get a glance at the piece I had tucked into my pants.
