by Meg Jackson
“Well, at any rate, we’re happy to have you here,” she said, hoping to sound genuine. Cristov and Damon exchanged a glance. When they looked back at her, Cristov’s eyes were cold, but Damon looked impassive as ever, maybe even a little forgiving. For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to look at Kennick.
“You should know,” she said as he turned to leave once more, apparently through with the conversation. He barely turned back, but she’d take it. “Kingdom’s not doing so well. I hope…I hope these all work out for you.” She raised her arms full of folders. “It would really mean a lot to our town, if we could get some new businesses and…and just maybe, you know, try to turn things around a bit.”
She knew she wasn’t exactly doing the town any favors by advertising its rather glum financial state, and that any smart businessman would have heard that and immediately pulled all the brakes, but she felt compelled to make up for the way she’d offended them earlier by laying the truth out, full disclosure.
There was a pause as Kennick studied her over his shoulder. But when his face broke into a crooked grin, she felt her breath leaving her body in a relieving sigh. She hadn’t released how much her shoulders had tensed, how much she’d wanted him to smile at her again.
“To answer your earlier question,” he said, eyes flicking to his brothers quickly before turning back to her. “We sure as hell are. And damn proud of it, too.”
With that, he turned around fully, and spreading his arms like a bird moved in between his brothers, clapping them on the shoulders and striding down the hall, each step matched up perfectly. Kim looked down, head buzzing.
It would take her a while to look through all this paperwork, even if she was doing it just to slake her own curiosity. Plus, she’d be able to see whether or not there was anything the men had missed. She’d hate to think of anything getting delayed over uncrossed T’s or undotted I’s. Kingdom didn’t have time to wait. She wouldn’t make it to the gym. But man oh man, was she looking forward to that pint.
4
The voices in the trailer were a mix of masculine, barely hushed, and feminine, loud enough to brawl.
“I told you to get the fuck out of here,” Mina yelled, followed by an exasperated grunt.
“C’mon, Mina, we’ve known each other forever. Don’t tell me you’re interested in some other asshole.”
“It’s none of your business who I’m interested in, Jenner. The only thing your sorry ass needs to know is that I’m not interested in you,” Mina hissed.
Cristov, Damon, and Kennick exchanged looks, waiting right outside.
“Let me just…oof!”
The door swung open and Jenner Surry stumbled forward, holding his gut in both hands. Mina’s face appeared behind him, fury painting her cheeks red, her green eyes flashing.
“Fuckin’ lowlife,” Cristov sneered at the doubled-over man, who met his glare with one of his own.
“Screw off, Volanis,” Jenner said, slightly breathless but regaining himself quickly.
“Leave our sister alone,” Kennick said, looking steadily at the man. Jenner was about thirty, brown-eyed and blonde-haired, tall and wide – but Cristov and Kennick towered over him, and Damon’s muscles put Jenner’s to shame.
“She’s doing a good enough job taking care of that herself,” Jenner said, rising to his full height. “Bitch won’t ever get married with that attitude.”
Damon advanced, fists tense already, but Kennick held him back with a hand on his arm.
“What’s your angle, anyway, Jenner? Think that if you marry Mina you’ll be able to wrangle Kennick’s title?” Cristov asked, spitting on the ground. “That’s not how that shit works.”
“I don’t need to marry a Volanis to get what I deserve,” Jenner huffed. “But you boys would be mighty grateful to still be in the family when it happens.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Mina shrieked from the doorway.
“What you deserve,” Kennick smirked. “You’ve got a problem with perspective. From where I’m standing, you deserve something, but it’s not a chance at rom baro.”
“You’re gonna fuck this up, Kennick,” Jenner said, moving within punching distance of the man. “We should never have come here. I wouldn’t have dragged the whole kumpania to the one damn town we shouldn’t be in, just to settle some dead man’s score.”
Damon bristled again, and caught Cristov’s eye. A smile spread across Cristov’s face as he moved behind Jenner, out of his line of vision, and crouched down.
“Keep talking, Jenner,” Kennick hissed, seeing his brothers’ movements and approving. “You keep on talking about dead men, I dare you.”
Jenner took another half-step forward, and Cristov shuffled in close.
“Your fuckin’ father may have been halfway decent leading our clans,” Jenner hissed, “but we need a new chain of command. Surry’s been in this kumpania just as long as Volanis. About time you saw your reign’s running out. You’ll see. First time these townies get the taste of gypsy in their mouths, it’ll be a damn war zone. And you’ll be the one to blame. You and your woman-murdering daddy.”
That was all Damon needed. Pushing past Kennick, he advanced, and Jenner instinctively shrank from the massive form closing in on him. The back of his knees met Cristov’s body as he knelt behind Jenner, and when Damon pushed hard on Jenner’s shoulders, he lost his balance, toppling over Cristov and slamming into the ground with a grunt. Cristov scrambled to his feet, cleaning the dirt from his hands by slapping them together. Jenner sneered, red on his cheeks, before getting up, haggard from having the wind knocked out of him.
“You…” he said, wagging a stiff finger at the three brothers, shaking with pure fury. “You’re gonna fuck it up. I don’t have to do shit. Just sit back and wait.”
“Do that on your own time, fuckwad,” Cristov said.
“And leave me alone,” Mina chimed in, a wicked smile on her cherubic face. Jenner straightened his shoulders, throwing them back as he turned and stalked away, hiding the pain in his lower back – though not very well.
“Dick,” Damon muttered.
Kennick merely shook his head.
“This is bad news, boys,” he said. “Division like this…it’s not good for our kumpania. We don’t need to lose sight that we’re all one. Maybe I should have…”
“Don’t,” Damon interrupted. “If it was a Surry whose name needed to be cleared, you would have brought us here, anyway. Jenner doesn’t understand that. But you know his familia would be embarrassed to hear what he’d just said to us. He’s the only bad blood.”
“For how long,” Kennick wondered aloud. “How long ‘til he gets his fingers into them…”
“They’ll stick by you the way they stuck by our father. You know, no one really wanted to come here. You didn’t even want to come here. But everyone agreed to – for Pieter. For you. For us. Jenner…he’s not a team player. He’d lead this kumpania right into hell if it was in his own best interest.”
“Still,” Kennick said, looking at the last trailer in the park, set right next to the woods. “We need his cousins for the plants.”
“We don’t,” Cristov scoffed. “I got that covered, Nick.”
Cristov was the only one who ever called Kennick by his childhood name, Nick.
“And Sam and Nal aren’t exactly Jenner’s biggest fans,” Mina pointed out. Sam and Nal Surry were Cristov’s right-hand men when it came to tending their stock of medicinal products. Cristov grew it, and Mina prepared it into teas and edibles. It was high-quality, medicinal grade product, and it beat shit out of the synthetics that were flooding the market. Synthetics were dangerous, the exact opposite of medicine. There was no question; most of the buyers weren’t exactly looking to cure their rheumatoid arthritis, but at least they wouldn’t get addicted and go insane because of the chemicals and impurities of low-grade synths.
“You worry too much,” Cristov said. “Aren’t we supposed to be getting ready t
o go?”
Kennick grunted and nodded, but his mind was still stuck on Jenner's accusations. It was true, there had been some reluctance when Kennick pressed the issue of coming to Kingdom. The town, small and rural, had left a bad taste in many a mouth. But it had been agreed, in the end, that it would be right and just to fulfill Pieter's final wish.
He remembered the growing unease he'd felt as the caravan of trailers approached the town. With a population just under 10,000, the whole town of Kingdom seemed like it was on the outskirts. Small farms dotted the Delaware landscape before yielding to a more suburban area of one-story shotguns and split levels. The town's schools, one elementary school and one high school, sat kitty-corner to each other just off the main road.
Two miles down, the suburban part of town broke open onto a small Main Street that was more shuttered than not. Kennick had done his research in advance, already making offers on a number of properties to lease in the town center as well as further out towards the highway. But reading about Kingdom's bleak financial state paled in comparison to seeing it: it looked like a ghost town in the making. Of the few shops that still looked to be open, most were actually bars or pubs.
All the same, it was still a rather beautiful town. The large swaths of forest that surrounded the town, edging into every backyard, were lush and green in the early summer heat. Two streams sandwiched the town between them, now running fast and high with the spring's abundant rainfall.
The storefronts on Main Street were charmingly old-fashioned, and despite the dust and “for lease” signs in the windows, there was a hint of what had once been lingering in each one. Many of the now-defunct businesses still had hanging signs that declared the ghosts of themselves on antique wood and chipping paint: “Kristy's Stationery and General Store”, “All You Want Hardware”, “Ricotta and Basil: Fine Italian Dining”. A tiny library tucked between a still-open frame shop and a closed-down butcher shop gaily advertised a summer reading program.
The municipal buildings at the end of Main Street, of which there were two, screamed small town. All white exterior, white columns, white balustrades. The Town Hall appeared to also house the DMV, Town Clerk, Post Office, Mayor's Office, Town Council, and just about every other possible government office one could imagine, while the courthouse next door doubled as the police station. A single poster hanging from a streetlight outside the town hall invited readers to the weekly farmer's market, held in a small park nestled between Main Street and the woods that began not four blocks away.
Out past the main street, the town grew slightly more industrial, and far less charming. There were a few car repair shops, a pawn shop, some office buildings and advertisements for an insurance agency, a pediatrician, and a tax agent. A diner called Sid's boasted a whopping six cars in its parking lot and promised, on its retro-style sign, “Best Eats 'Til Dover”.
And then the town dwindled again, houses few and far between, and it was here, just before the town ended entirely, that the kumpania had made their new home, in the very same trailer park that Pieter Volanis had brought his caravan to thirty years prior.
The gypsies made quick work of clearing up the place, which had fallen into a sorry state in the few decades since they'd last occupied it. With a bustle of energy and loud music to accompany their labors, they set up a new home for themselves in the span of an afternoon. There was business to attend to, applications to fill out, shipments from vendors to check on, connections to be made, and a bevvy of other responsibilities, all doled out to whomever was ready, willing, and able to lend a hand.
Even the oldest and youngest members of the kumpania made themselves useful. The unease lingered amongst the different families that made up the caravan, but they covered it with cooperation, companionship, and, at the very end of their first day, a party fit to raise the dead.
And, in effect, wasn't that the whole idea of returning to Kingdom? They would raise the dead, and demand the truth. Be it whispered or shouted, it would be heard. And then they would be free.
5
The mayor was already well-situated by the time Kim arrived at the bar. By the smell of his breath and the woozy appearance of his eyes, he was quite well-situated indeed. He sat at a table near the bar with four men, all of whom were business owners or employees in the town hall. Kim would be the only woman. That was not unusual. Ordering a beer from the bartender, she hoisted herself into an empty stool at the Mayor’s side.
“Kimmy! You made it! But you already have a beer. Bad girl, I told you I was buying,” Mayor Gunderson said with mock disapproval.
“You can get the next one, Tom,” she said, slipping into a more casual lingo now that they were out of the office. Across the table, Paul Tiding was smiling at her, and she respectfully returned it, wishing heartily that he wasn’t there. Paul, who worked for the town council, had been trying to get into her pants for years. She was not interested, and as often as she told him so, he never stopped trying. He was persistent. She supposed, in some people, that was an admirable trait.
Ed Kerry, owner of the town’s only supermarket, Phil Topher, banker at First Delaware, and Bob Talkee, council member, made up the rest of their little party. From the look that Bob was giving her, Kim knew she was less than welcome at their informal round table. He was of the old order, and didn’t see what place women had in a bar, with men, talking politics. Or anything else, for that matter. Kim sipped her beer, staring daggers right back at him, though her anxiety yanked at her stomach and begged her just to go home and leave it be.
“So, what’s up?” Kim asked, her voice giving no indication to her discomfort. She hoped their conversation would somehow allow her to discuss the business proposals she’d spent the last two hours going over. They excited her. Well, most of them did, anyway.
There had been seven applications in total. Some were quite traditional. A hair and nail salon, a tattoo parlor, a cheese shop. The last one had particularly interested Kim; there wasn’t another cheese shop between Kingdom and Dover, and she knew that the richer towns nearby were full of yuppies and well-to-do people who would probably come out just to pick up a nice gruyere.
The application to open a veterinary practice had surprised her, but she thought it, too, would help attract business to the town. She wasn’t quite sure what an “exotic grocery” was, but there was an application for that as well, and it described a shop that would specialize in imports of caviar, cured meats, wines and coffees, among other things.
The only application that had made her pause was the last in the pile: a strip club. She didn’t know if that one would make it very far past the Town Clerk, but deep down she knew…it would draw money to Kingdom, too.
She was excited. Even if they were gypsies, all of the myths and legends about the famous nomads couldn’t be true. It was the modern day; they weren’t baby-stealing, fortune-telling, swindlers anymore. Hell, there was even that reality show on TLC about gypsies. And if they were so invested in opening businesses in the town, they must have some idea about sticking around. Even if only for a year or two, the amount of money that they could bring in for the town might help stave off the swiftly-falling debt ceiling for another decade.
She couldn’t wait to tell Mayor Gunderson and the rest of the men. Especially that asshole Bob. This time, he wouldn’t be able to say shit about a woman not contributing something meaningful to the conversation.
“Gossip,” Ed said, leaning in slightly, a smile on his mouth. Ed Kerry was probably the only openly gay man in the town’s upper echelon of business owners and government officials, and he made no attempt to hide his flamboyant side, much to Bob Talkee's quiet, but clear, disdain.
“Bad gossip,” Mayor Gunderson cut in, a scowl on his face, his mood changing quickly in that way only drunks and people with bipolar disorder have.
“Seems like we’ve got some new residents,” Phil explained, taking a deep swill of his beer. “Gypsies.”
“Oh,” Kim said, only somewhat unhappy that
she hadn’t been able to bring that revelation to the table. She also wasn’t happy about the Mayor’s immediate attitude on the subject. She’d never counted him as much of a bigot, but then again, they’d never had a gypsy invasion in town. At least, not while she’d been alive and working for him. “I know. I met some of them today.”
“You did?” Ed asked, his interest peaking. “How did that happen? What were they like?”
“Three men came by with some business applications,” Kim said, happy to see that even Bob was listening to her with all his attention. “They’re going to be opening about seven new places in town. And they were – well, normal, I guess.”
Normal and God-help-me hot, she thought, blushing at her own mind. She hadn’t been able to forget Kennick’s face, his impressive stature, the way his lips spread in a grin that seemed damn inviting. It made her feel hot under the collar just remembering it. She hadn’t been so immediately attracted to a man since high school, when she’d fostered a raging crush on the school’s lacrosse star, Cal Strongbow.
“New businesses?” Mayor Gunderson sneered. “We don’t need their dirty money.”
Kim frowned. They sure as hell did need their money – dirty or not.
“Actually, it all seemed pretty straight up,” she said after taking a sip of her beer. “They completed all the applications meticulously. And, honestly, the businesses they’re planning could do wonders for Kingdom. You know, a veterinary practice, an importers, cheese shop.”
Kim purposely left out the tattoo parlor and the strip club. It didn’t seem the right time to introduce those trickier subjects.
“I doubt they’ll be planning to employ any locals though,” Phil interjected. “Those people like to keep the money in their own pockets.”
“Even so,” Kim said, pointedly, “people just travelling through will want to stop and pick up some cheese, or foreign coffee or whatever. And there’s not another cheese shop between Starling and Dover. Anyone in, like, Hamilton Falls or Springtown will want to come and shop there.”
