Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  He held it open for Berto and then Francine. It was dark out there, but he could see the white van, with Yashi and Deb inside, parked out on the street. They’d surveilled this place thoroughly upon arrival—taking nearly two hours to conclude that Berto had, indeed, come here alone.

  Francine had left his car at the shadowy edge of the half-filled parking lot, and Martell now led the way there as she drew her weapon, keeping it trained on Berto. She kept the handgun in close to her body, though, so that it wouldn’t catch the light or otherwise draw attention.

  She’d already given Martell back his keys after making sure that his trunk was completely clear. He unlocked and opened it now as Berto sighed heavily.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked.

  “Nope.” Francine smiled tightly at him. “It was either this or bag over the head, and darn it, I couldn’t find any bags.”

  Another big sigh. “Great.” He turned to climb in, but she stopped him.

  “Yeah, not so fast,” she said. “Take your clothes off, first.”

  The heavy eyelids did their vanishing thing again, and Berto glanced very briefly at Martell before he refocused on Francine.

  “Yeah, that’s not what this is about,” Martell interjected. “This is neither one of us wanting to get close enough to do a pat-down. So strip it to your briefs, Holmes, and if you’re not wearing briefs, sorry, the boxers gotta go, too.”

  “Jesus effin’ Christ.” Berto shrugged out of his jacket and held it out as if he were the lord of Downton Abbey and Martell were his valet. Martell took it—and dropped it on the driveway. Berto was not happy. “Hey. That’s an expensive sports coat.”

  “And I’m sure some grateful, homeless drunk will enjoy it very much before he pukes down the front of it,” Martell told him.

  Shaking his head, Berto didn’t bother trying to hand him his shirt. He dropped it onto his jacket with a dark look in Martell’s direction. His shoes followed, along with his socks.

  The man could’ve stood to say no five or six dozen of the times in the recent past that he’d been asked if he wanted to super-size his fries. He had maybe thirty extra pounds on him and was understandably self-conscious about it. He was not at all happy about having to take off his T-shirt or his pants. His pants went first—he was wearing silk boxers—and like a lot of too-heavy men, he had strong, muscular legs. No shame there.

  “Look, you can see I’m not carrying or concealing anything,” Berto said, running his hands across his chest and then down the front of his shorts.

  “Sorry, bro,” Martell said, “but the mere fact that you want to keep it on means you gotta take it off.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Francine suddenly said, handing her weapon over to Martell. “I’ll … just … Turn around. Assume the position.”

  Berto turned and gave her the classic perp stance, bracing his hands against the side of the car as he spread his legs.

  Watching Francine pat him down was a little weird. But Martell held that weapon at ready as she ran her hands across the man’s chest, under his man-boobs and his arms, and then down and around the elastic waistband of his shorts, and … ooohkay. She gave him a swift but thorough package and butt-crack check—all the while gritting her teeth so hard that Martell could almost hear them breaking.

  “Hands behind your back,” she ordered Berto, who glanced back at her as he complied.

  She had a pair of handcuffs that she pulled out of her jeans pocket, and she clipped them around his wrists in a way that was pure Top Cops. Or maybe Aardvark the Bounty Hunter or whatever mammal was currently bounty hunting on reality TV. She’d clearly done it before.

  “Get in,” she said, and Berto rolled himself into the trunk with one last baleful glance at Martell.

  Francine didn’t check to make sure all of his fingers and toes were accounted for. She just slammed the trunk closed and took back her handgun from Martell, stashing it wherever she usually kept it. “I still want to sweep him, but I’m pretty sure he’s clear,” she said briskly as Martell gathered up the man’s clothes. Despite what he’d said about the homeless man, that jacket was nice and those Italian leather shoes were expensive. And from what little he knew of Ian Dunn’s plan, Berto was going to have to look like Berto. Provided the clothes weren’t bugged, they would give it all back. “We can do it on the road. Let’s go.”

  She climbed into the car, but she got into the passenger seat, which was weird, but okay. He’d drive. Maybe like Deb, she was tired. That entire encounter couldn’t’ve been easy.

  As Martell slid behind the wheel, she said, still in that clear, crisp voice: “Unless you want to fuck me first, here in the parking lot.”

  Martell glanced over his shoulder, into the back, where the seat cushions were the only thing separating them from the trunk. No doubt old Berto could hear every word they spoke. Particularly when she enunciated that clearly.

  “As tempting as that sounds,” he said. “Dunn’s waiting on us.”

  But when Martell looked back at Francie, he saw that she’d covered her face with hands that were shaking.

  Crap. “But if you insist,” he said. He started the car with a roar and kept his foot slightly on the gas so that his POS was even noisier than normal. Just to be safe, he turned on the radio, too. It was set to a local AM station, and happy, joyful salsa music pounded out of the ancient speakers.

  But that was good. It was probably deafening in the back. And those lyrics sung in Spanish would be perceived as an extra fuck you to old Berto. That felt pretty right, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Francie whispered as her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “For what? Being human? It happens to the best of us,” Martell whispered back as he put his arms around her, held her close, and just let her cry.

  * * *

  Aaron didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  But when Ian found him, sitting in the living room with the lights off, headphones on, he sat down, too.

  So Aaron embraced the military acronym KISS—keep it simple, stupid—and used language that he knew his brother would understand: “Leave me the fuck alone.”

  There had been times, in the past, when Aaron had said that without meaning it, but this was not one of them.

  Ian, being Ian, pushed. “I know you’re mad at me, but I’m not sorry for doing everything in my power to make sure that you, and Shel, and Rory are safe.”

  Aaron took off his headphones then and looked at him. “You don’t give a damn about Shel and Rory. You do whatever the fuck you think you need to do to take care of me. Shel and Rory are just appendages that you now have to deal with. Attachments that I drag around—that’s how you think of them, that’s how you treat them. You have no idea what it means to be in a relationship, to be part of a real family—so you have no idea of what’s best for me. In fact, you still think of me as your appendage—a responsibility you’re forced to drag around.”

  “That’s not true—” Ian started.

  “The fuck it is,” Aaron shot back at him. “Look at you, sitting there. What, you came to talk to me, to counsel me, impart your wisdom—to tell me that life’s too short not to accept Shel’s apology? What the fuck do you know about the kind of relationship I have with my husband? It’s a partnership, douchebag—and you’ve never, not once in your life, had that. It’s not king and subject, or father-figure and child, or owner and encumbrance, or however you think of it. It’s fifty-fifty—no, it’s a-hundred-a-hundred, because you give everything, and you get everything in return. And you don’t keep the kind of secrets that you made Sheldon keep from me. You fucking don’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ian whispered. “The choices that I had—”

  “The choices you had,” Aaron cut him off. “Listen to you. I not we. We had choices, Eee, last year, when Francine found her sister. We made the choice to put Pauline into a hospital, even though we knew that her medical records would lead Davio back to me. We chose to try to save her life—to save Rory’s l
ife, even though we knew that Davio was going to come after me again. Me. I’m the one he wants to end. But you shut me out. You took control. You decided that you knew best, so you made the rest of the choices all by yourself, because you knew damn well that I wouldn’t have let you go to fucking prison—”

  “There was no time—”

  “Is that what you tell yourself? You know what I think?” Aaron told his brother. “I think you liked being there, in prison—running that kind of a long con. And I gotta assume that’s what you were doing there, that you weren’t really only working for Manny—that your plan was to bring the Dellarosas down from the inside out, because you’re Ian fucking Dunn, and that’s what you do.”

  Ian didn’t say anything, which was the closest Aaron was going to get to an affirmative.

  “And I think that you think being in prison is also a fitting punishment for all of your various sins,” Aaron continued. “It’s a grand, beautiful, selfless sacrifice, so win/win, right? Plus, you’re safe when you’re in there—same way you’re safe when you’re on a mission—because you’re not yourself. It’s not real, even if you let people get close. Kinda like what you’re doing right now with Phoebe.”

  Ian looked up at that, and Aaron laughed.

  “Yeah, you really think I didn’t know?” Aaron asked. “And the stupid thing is that you have no clue, no idea just how much you honestly care about this woman. Or maybe you do, and that terrifies you. So you’re just going to run your same old pattern with her. Use her, then push her away. You fucking coward.”

  Ian finally spoke. “You done?”

  “Yeah, I’m done,” Aaron said, putting his headphones back on as he got up and walked out of the room. “Now leave me the fuck alone.”

  * * *

  After the scathing dressing-down from Aaron, Ian went back into the kitchen. Or at least that’s where he’d intended to go. Grab some quick protein from the cold cut drawer to keep his stomach from rumbling as he closed his eyes and shut down his brain for a few minutes, because Jesus, after that verbal battering, he needed it.

  Instead he blinked and found himself upstairs, standing outside of Phoebe’s bedroom door. Knocking. Softly. In case she was asleep.

  “It’s unlocked,” he heard her say, so he opened it. Peered in.

  She’d sat up and was peering back at him.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, her voice rich and warm with her concern. He had a flash of a very vivid, very recent memory, of kissing her as she wrapped herself around him, her body soft and warm and welcoming.

  No, it’s not okay, actually, because my brother just ground my face in a truth that I’ve known for years—that I’m irreparably broken. Everything I do, I do for him, in part because I feel as if I let him down—badly—back when he was a kid, and in part because, with his love for Shel and Rory, he has something beautiful and precious that I know I’ll never be able to have—because I’m irreparably broken.

  “Yeah,” Ian said. “Still no word from Francie. Shel’s gone to bed, and Aaron’s still really angry and upset … and I’m …”

  A fucking coward.

  “Come in,” she said.

  So he did, leaning against the door to close it behind him.

  “This isn’t a booty call,” he told her, and as soon as the words left his lips, he realized how stupid he sounded.

  Phoebe laughed. “I’d be impressed if it was. You haven’t been gone all that long.”

  He moved closer, needing contact. “Do you mind if I …?”

  She answered by shifting over and flipping back the edge of the covers.

  He’d carried his socks and boots with him when he’d gone looking for Aaron, but he hadn’t put them on—which made taking off his jeans that much easier. He now shucked off his T-shirt, too and slid back under the covers.

  And there Phoebe was—warm and smooth and soft—exactly what he wanted and needed. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him so that they were spooning, their legs entwined. He had one hand against the fullness of her stomach, the other filled with as much as he could hold of her generous breasts. Her ass was tight against him, and she glanced over her shoulder and up into his face, her eyes filled with amusement.

  “How youthful of you,” she said.

  “It’s part of that whole crazy thing,” he admitted. “I’ve had a major hard-on for you since, well, you want me to be honest?”

  That got the rise out of her that he expected. “No, because women love it when men lie.”

  Ian kissed her neck, not only because he wanted to, but because it was the next step in this dance they were engaged in—a dance that, according to his brother, was going to end with him pushing her away. But, God, right now he wanted her closer—as close as humanly possible. She was a perfect mix of solid and soft, and she smelled unbelievably good. “Since I walked into the prison interview room and caught you checking me out. That was pretty hot, you know.”

  “But then you got to know me and grew to want me for my brilliant mind and snappy sense of humor,” she said. “Which was even hotter.”

  She was smiling, and Ian knew that she was expecting a light-hearted, flirty response—for him to say, Oh, much, much hotter, and then kiss her as he ran his hands across the silk of her skin.

  It was what he should’ve done, but Aaron’s words were still bouncing around in his head, so he went with the truth instead. “I could’ve resisted you, if you were just a beautiful woman with, you know, a killer body. Not that I don’t appreciate it, but I’ve always been able to walk away from that. Apparently, though, I have no defenses against the way you make me feel.”

  Phoebe didn’t seem to know what to do with his honesty. She was disarmed to the point of silence, which was good because he’d freaked himself out with that one, too. Feel? Feel? What the fuck? And really, what was the point? Aaron was right. Ian knew exactly how this was going to end.

  But Phoebe turned toward him and kissed him, thoroughly, and as Ian kissed her back, he tried to drown out his brother’s accusations. He thought about Berto. About Francine, who was talking to Berto probably right now. About Phoebe having both saved his life and fucked up his plan by telling the Dutchman that they were married. Married, Jesus. You fucking coward. About where to charter a luxury speedboat—a big one, with room for cargo—for the least amount of cash. About whether the Dutchman would take the bait and call him in the morning. About the best way for Ian to guarantee Phoebe’s safety when he did—

  Phoebe stopped kissing him. “I can hear you thinking.”

  Ian sighed and forced a smile. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  Phoebe shifted over, further onto her side so that she could see him better. “You want to talk?”

  Ian laughed.

  She laughed, too, before she kissed him again, but sadly, then, she stopped kissing him.

  “Okay,” she said. “I get that you have way too much testosterone to want to talk, but we could either both lie here, awake, or …” She pushed his hair back from his face, running her fingers through it. “Tell me about Berto. And Francine? What happened between them? I mean, don’t feel you have to share anything with me that isn’t important, but …”

  “No,” Ian said again. “You should know. You’re involved with this mission now, like it or not, and he’s going to be a part of it—so the whole messed-up dynamic’s going to be in your face for the duration.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s see if I can’t explain this in as few words as possible. Ready?”

  “I am,” she said, now playing with the hair on his chest, which felt unbelievably good.

  He gave her what he thought of as the Dragnet version. Just the facts, ma’am.

  Aaron and Shel’s secret relationship, started in high school.

  The sex tape that threatened to out them both.

  Francine’s sacrifice.

  Berto’s rage and jealousy as he accepted, without question, her obvious lie—that she was the one in that tape, having sex with Aaron.


  “Berto took a loaded weapon with him,” Ian told Phoebe, “when he went to confront Aaron—who ended up locked in the trunk of Berto’s car, outside of one of the Dellarosa family warehouses. He’s not really sure what happened. He was pretty certain that Berto brought him there to kill him, but before he escaped from the trunk, he heard shouting and gunshots. We still don’t know what happened, whether it was an accident or intentional or what, but it was Berto’s gun that was fired. When Shel and Francine showed up—they were searching for Berto so they could tell him the truth before he did something stupid; too late—they found him trying to keep a homeless man from bleeding out.”

  “Oh my God,” Phoebe murmured.

  “The man died from his bullet wounds,” Ian told her. “It was then that Berto even more fully embraced the dark side. He called his father instead of the police. And Davio came and got rid of the body—covered the whole thing up. In return, Berto went to work for his family.”

  They were both silent then.

  And Ian could have let it go at that—he’d told her what Berto had done, and how, try as he might, the man couldn’t take any of it back. He couldn’t fix the mess he’d made.

  But Ian found himself opening his mouth and saying, “The bitch of it is, that what Berto did, by not trusting Francine …? I made Aaron do the same thing to Shel.”

  Phoebe looked searchingly up at him. “Is this what they’re fighting about?”

  “No,” Ian said. “That’s … me continuing to screw things up for them.” Jesus. He rolled onto his back again, so that he wouldn’t have to meet her gaze. “What happened back then was, well, after the sex tape went viral—at least at Brentwood—Aarie got kicked out of the school for sexual misconduct. It wasn’t an issue of gay or straight; the rule was no sex. At all. Turns out his scholarship had a morality clause—which should’ve tipped me off at the start. Aaron didn’t belong there, and I don’t know what I was thinking when I made him accept that scholarship.”

  Phoebe propped her head up on her elbow, which put her back into eye contact range. “You were probably thinking, Yay, a scholarship to a good prep school. This was the award that made it possible for you to stay in the Navy, right? After your elderly aunt died? The one that Aaron was living with …?”