His to Protect: Midnight Riders MC

by April Lust

  Indoors, I heard the clack of pool balls skimming across the green felt of the billiards table and deep voices rumbling. We emerged from the dark hallway into a low-lit bar. Men like the one at the door were scattered around the room. Some drank, others smoked and played pool. All were equally as huge, equally as intimidating. Every single one of them looked up at us as we entered. We froze in our tracks.

  A man unfolded himself from the booth to my right and sauntered in our direction. He stubbed out his cigarette as he strolled over. When he stood in front of us, he folded his arms across his chest and cleared his throat.

  “Hey, Fists,” Smalls stammered. His hands were wringing in front of him like he was trying to squeeze out the last few drops of water from a dishrag.

  “Smalls,” replied the man, inclining his head.

  “Got a, uh, we got a good one for you today, yep, uh-huh,” he babbled.

  The man shifted his gaze from Smalls to me. His eyes were dark and stormy. They raked up and down, peeling me apart like an onion. “Who’s the runt?” he asked, jerking his chin at me.

  “Oh, this? This is my, um…”

  “I’m Nico,” I interjected. I folded my arms across my chest to match the man’s posture and drew myself up to my full height. I had more room to grow, but I could already tell I was going to be a big son of a bitch. This bastard didn’t scare me. Nothing scared me. I was Nico. A man of the streets. I stole cars and drove fast and did whatever the hell I wanted.

  The man’s eyes glistened. “And what are you doing here, Nico?”

  “I work with Smalls now.”

  “Is that so?” the man said, turning back to Smalls.

  Smalls nodded and kept wringing his hands. His gaze darted around the room, never resting for more than a beat on any one thing. The other men had gone back to their mugs of beer or their game of pool, but there was still a palpable air of violence in the room. Bad things had happened here, I could just tell. But I liked it. It had the same pent-up vibe as the silence of a stolen car right before the engine roared and the wheels caught and I went flying down the street away from anything and everything trying to stop me. It felt dangerous. It felt right.

  “Yeah,” I said before Smalls could say anything else. “That is so. Who are you?”

  “Now, Nico, let’s just…” Smalls started to caution, laying his hand gently on my arm. I shrugged him off and glared back at the man.

  He stared back at me stonily. “I’m Fists,” he said. “I’m the president of The Punishers Motorcycle Club. This is my clubhouse you’re standing in.”

  The Punishers. So this was them. Smalls was always careful not to reveal too much about who bought the cars we boosted. But he’d let that name slip a couple times before. His tone when he said it was identical every time without fail. He said it the way you’d say the name of the devil if you were worried that, if you said it without the proper respect, you might accidentally summon him. Respect and fear all rolled into a few syllables that clattered off the tongue with a nice, rugged edge. It reminded me of the first time I’d cursed, way back in my foster care days. Just like the word “fuck,” the name of The Punishers MC had a ring to it that nothing else could quite match.

  And this man. He knew what that name sounded like spoken out loud. In fact, he was the physical embodiment of it. Tattoos ranging over his tanned skin, muscles that had no doubt been earned the hard way, scars earned even harder. He had a steel barb piercing each ear and a set of rings on his fingers that had points suggesting they were there for more than just show.

  He should have scared me, intimidated me. And in part, he did. But there was another part of me that didn’t see him as a predator or a bully like Smalls did.

  It saw him as a brother.

  Smalls started babbling about the car, and Fists’ attention flipped back to my partner in crime. But I could feel a piece of his awareness stayed rooted on me. He was testing me. There was not a chance in hell I was going to let him sense any weakness. I kept my arms folded and my face scowled, like nothing here impressed me.

  “It sure is a nice whip, lemme tell you that much,” Smalls was saying. “Brand new leather interior and a custom engine. Here, here, come, let me show ya.” He waved, gesturing for Fists to follow him out to the curb where the stolen car was parked. He turned and started walking.

  Instead of following right away, I hesitated for just a moment. My eyes locked with Fists’. I wanted to tell him one more time, Pain doesn’t scare me. You don’t scare me. I’m Nico.

  Then we went outside.

  # # #

  We sat on the sidewalk and counted the stack of cash for a few minutes after Fists had driven the car into the garage and disappeared. The bills were crisp and fresh. They had that beautiful smell that nothing else in the world could match. Nothing beat the scent of new money.

  Smalls was giddy. He riffled through the stack half a dozen times. I kept the scowl planted on my face long after the door to The Punishers’ clubhouse had shut and locked behind us.

  “Oh, we are lookin’ real nice now, ain’t we, partner?” Smalls cackled, shifting back and forth where he sat. “Dough for days, ain’t that right? Yes, it is! Yes, it is!”

  I didn’t answer. I was still in the middle of processing the weird sense of belonging that had swept over me when we walked into the interior of the clubhouse. I had an unnerving intuition that those were my people.

  Smalls was my people too, of course. He’d saved me. I owed him more than just gratitude; I owed him my life. And his lessons were what had allowed me to make a living on the streets. We made a hell of a team and, in our few years running around together, we’d grown close.

  But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that inside that clubhouse was where I belonged.

  “Smalls,” I began in a solemn voice.

  He jerked his head up and looked at me with that funny sideways glance of his. “What’s up, youngin’?” he asked. “Something’s on your mind, ain’t it?”

  I looked at my hands. They were stained with oil and grime from that day’s work, but beneath the muck, they were strong and capable. I flexed once, twice, savoring the feeling of power in my fingers. “What’s the deal with these guys, anyway?” I deflected, not sure yet how to ask the question I wanted to ask.

  Smalls craned his head to look back at the clubhouse. It was completely nondescript, no sign that anything illegal or dangerous was on the other side of the walls. To a passerby, it would look just like any of the million chop houses and car garages that littered this part of town. But Smalls and I knew different. “These is dangerous men, kiddo,” Smalls said softly. “Hard men, you understand?”

  I kept looking at my hands, flexing and unflexing, over and over.

  Smalls continued, “The Punishers is guys that’s not to be messed with. They run half the damn city—well, they run everything that the Espositos don’t. Between them two groups, there ain’t a damn alleyway you could piss in without urinatin’ on someone’s turf.” He eyed me, searching for any reaction. For a guy who seemed as neurotic as he did all the time, he had a way of understanding right away what was going on in my head.

  I wasn’t ready yet for him to confirm his suspicions. I didn’t look up.

  “They seemed awful cool to ya, didn’t they, shorty?” Smalls asked.

  I hesitated for a moment. When I looked up at Smalls and nodded, he could see right away in my eyes what I’d felt.

  “I was afraid of that.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You know, I done found you more than five years ago? You was a mangled-lookin’ piece of shit, just a li’l kid all beat up in that back alley. I dragged your ass down to my tent and I wasn’t sure you would, but you pulled through. We done all right together, haven’t we?”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. He seemed so sad. I noticed his hands had stopped their incessant shaking.

  He went on without waiting for me to answer. “Yes, we sure have. But, shorty, you are too young
to do the kinds of things those men do. They fight some awful battles. You and me, we’re just little guys out on the edge. Those guys in there,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder behind us, “they wade through blood. They been fightin’ the Espositos for years, and it ain’t a pretty, nice little squabble. It’s war, son. You is way too little for any of that. I know you think you big, but you ain’t so big yet. Not yet.”

  He stood up and offered me a hand. I looked up at him from where I sat on the curb. He was frail, quickly graying, the years spent scrambling for survival starting to catch up to him faster than he could run away. When I clasped his hand, mine felt so strong and hardy in comparison to his.

  He was a father to me, in his own peculiar way. He looked after me. He did right by me.

  Smalls’ words echoed in my head for a long time. But I couldn’t shake the thought that kept playing in the back of my mind over and over again. I belonged in there.

  Chapter 4

  Natalia

  The trash bag in my hand was heavy and leaking gross liquid. I hustled as fast as I could towards the back, eager to toss this thing in the dumpster before I got coated in the disgusting cocktail of dishwater, half-eaten food sludge, and God knew what else was seeping through the thin plastic.

  Reaching the dumpster, I flipped open the lid with one hand and reared back, coiling all of my weight before launching the bag into the yawning bin. It landed with a crash. A rank smell whooshed out, attacking my nostrils. I backed away in a coughing fit, bent over with my hands on my knees as I hacked and struggled to regain my breath.

  When I had finally cleared my lungs, I turned and headed back inside. The kitchen was looking much the worse for wear these days. Nearly every piece of equipment was scabbed over with rust. The stovetop was missing almost all its knobs, half the range wouldn’t even ignite, and the sink had stopped draining properly years ago, causing a foul stench to emanate from the pits of the plumbing. It was a miracle a health inspector hadn’t come by to shut us down.

  I weaved through the kitchen and pushed my way through the double doors at the other end, headed to grab the last bag of trash from the servers’ station out front.

  Daddy’s office was on the short hall between the kitchen and the dining room. I saw the door was cracked open part way. A thin beam of light scythed out into the shadows. From within, I heard his voice, muttering like always. I crept up to the door and cocked my ear in its direction.

  “Goddamn Esposito motherfuckers,” Daddy grumbled. I heard the swish of papers passing through his hands. “Hope the whole goddamn lot of them get wiped out. Fuckin’ exterminate them. After everything they’ve taken from me…” His voice trailed off.

  I’d spent enough time eavesdropping on him to understand the gist of what he was saying. The Espositos were bleeding us dry. The restaurant would hardly have been profitable under the best of circumstances, but when we were paying wildly extortionary sums in “protection money” to the Esposito enforcers who came by each month, we were drowning in debt we couldn’t keep up with. Not to mention the damage they inflicted every time they came in to collect. They demanded free meals they hardly touched, sat around and drank our booze for hours without leaving a cent, and scared away all the other customers. I’d heard Daddy say more than once that the Espositos were parasites.

  Daddy had grown old and deteriorated just like the restaurant itself. Where it had mold, he had gray hairs. Where it had rust, he had wrinkles. The liver spots on his hands and neck grew uglier by the day, and his stoop had never been worse. It looked like just standing and breathing was torture for him.

  All that, of course, only made him meaner. He never stopped yelling anymore. It was always, “Natalia, hurry up,” or “Natalia, why haven’t you done that already?” I was working sixteen, seventeen hours a day just to keep the restaurant cobbled together. We were barely making it. Daddy had taken to retreating into his office at inconvenient hours to pour over the numbers and confirm exactly what we already knew.

  We weren’t going to make it much longer.

  I sighed and started moving again to finish the last of the chores. It was dark outside and the front of the restaurant was still and quiet. One fluorescent light flickered overhead. I walked over to the trash bag plunked on the ground, hefted it up in my arms, and pivoted to make one more trip to the dumpster.

  It struck me every now and then that this wasn’t the life a thirteen-year-old girl was supposed to be living. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t play with friends. All I did was work. I guessed I should have been upset about that, but it had been the same way for so long that I didn’t even have the imagination to picture how my life could be different. As far as I knew, this was the extent of things. It would always be like this. Just chores and worrying and the grating sound of Daddy’s voice, barking at me to go faster if I wanted to keep a roof over my head.

  My arms were trembling with fatigue as I kicked open the back door and waddled, wide-legged under the burden of the heavy trash bag, towards the dumpster. I dropped the bag with a groan. Bobbing onto my tiptoes, I flipped open the lid—and screamed.

  A bloody hand had flopped out.

  My eyes registered every detail before I could look away. The hand was caked in blood that had grown crusted and dark, at least a day or two old. Two fingers were missing. They had been severed messily at the last knuckle. The hand was attached to the body of a tall, muscular man with tattooed arms and eyes rooted wide in shock and pain. His jaw had fallen open, too, revealing the gummy stumps where several teeth had been pulled out. Worst of all was the hole blown open in his stomach. It was a gaping, bloody mess. He’d clearly been tortured and murdered.

  I backed away, hands clasped over my mouth, stunned beyond belief. I tripped and fell to a seat on the stairs leading back inside. My whole body was shaking and coated in cold sweat. There was…a body…in our dumpster. What was it doing there? Where had it come from?

  I heard a lumping sound from inside. A moment later, the door screeched open and my father stuck his head out. His brow was furrowed. “What the hell are you doing sitting around out here, Natalia?” he demanded. I didn’t look at him. I just raised a shaking finger to point at the hand that still dangled on the outer rim of the opening to the dumpster.

  Daddy frowned as he followed my finger to see where I was pointing. When the realization hit, he froze. I heard his breath catch in his throat. “Come inside,” he said brusquely, grabbing my upper arm and dragging me indoors. He shut the door and locked it behind us.

  Inside, the fluorescent buzz seemed so loud in my ears. I was in shock. I’d never seen something so violent and awful before. I’d heard stories, of course. It was hard to escape that kind of talk given where we lived. But I’d always thought it was just that—stories, nothing more. Now, there were bodies in my own front yard.

  Later that night, long after Daddy had sent me upstairs, I lay restless in my bed in our little apartment above the restaurant. I couldn’t close my eyes. Every time I did, I saw that hand flopping out, bloody and horrendous. There was no getting away from it.

  Eventually, I gave up on trying to sleep. It just wasn’t happening tonight. I was too scared of what nightmares might be waiting on the other side of consciousness. That hand, finding new life and chasing after me…I shuddered. My stomach rumbled, and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day long.

  I slipped on a jacket and padded downstairs to scrounge a quick bite from the day’s leftovers. On my way to the kitchen, though, I noticed the light in Daddy’s office was on. He was talking to someone. I paused, unsure whether I wanted to listen in. But I knew I had to get closer when I heard him screech, “In my dumpster?”

  Sidling down the wall, I paused just outside the door and held my breath.

  “It was necessary, Antonio,” someone else in the office rumbled. There was no mistaking the slick confidence in that voice. It was a Esposito enforcer. No one else would dare talk so casually to my father.

  “My d
aughter found it! You couldn’t even have the decency to cover it up with something? Roll it in a rug? Christ!”

  “I suggest you lower your voice,” the man warned. I could hear Daddy’s throat catch. He wanted to protest, but he wouldn’t dream of doing it in front of the men who made our lives a living nightmare. “Now, if you’ll let me continue. We had to get rid of the thing. Those fucking Punisher assholes are getting aggressive, and we had no choice but to strike back.”

  The wheel of a lighter clicked, followed by a sharp inhale and the scent of a cigarette drifting into the hallway. “But in my dumpster?” Daddy complained.

  “We’re at war, Antonio,” the enforcer told him. “The Esposito family is not about to let those biker fucks dictate what goes on in this city. Everyone needs to do their part to fight back. That includes you. Are we clear?”

  My father said nothing. I heard the scrape of a chair as the man stood up. Pouncing down the hallway, my mind was racing with what I’d just heard. I didn’t know who or what The Punishers were, but the word “war” was pretty clear. It meant bodies, more of them, just like the one I’d found earlier that day. And if we were part of it, did that mean Daddy and I were in danger, too? I felt sick. Daddy was mean to me most of the time, but I still didn’t want him to end up in a dumpster like that man.