by Deja Voss
We get back in the SUV and I rip the cap off the bottle of rum taking a big chug from it, gagging as soon as it hits the back of my throat. She watches me with equal parts disgust and fascination. I pull a piece of pizza from the box, cheese dripping down the sleeve of my shirt and shove it in my mouth.
“Girl, I totally get it. Sometimes you just have to eat those emotions. Might wanna take it easy, though. If you puke, I’m totally gonna puke too.” She laughs and I make sure to keep my mouth full for the rest of the ride home. I definitely am not in the mood to talk about my emotions with her.
When we get back to her house in the gated community, there’s an old red pickup truck parked in the driveway. It looks completely out of place up against Riley’s pristine landscaping and white picket fence. “Who the fuck is that?” she mutters.
She puts her SUV in park, and jumps out of the driver’s seat. “You stay here,” she says.
I watch as she walks up to the truck. The door opens, and out steps Romeo in his leather cut. He says a couple words to her and she backs away with her hands in the air. My stomach flops knowing he probably has Ransom with him. There’s a knock on the passenger side window and I’m so startled I damn near go flying through the windshield, tossing my pizza up in the air.
I turn and look, and to my surprise it’s a woman. She’s got the whitest hair I’ve ever seen, so white it’s almost shocking, and even though her face is weathered and wrinkled, she’s beautiful. She pulls on the door handle and I brace myself.
The cold night air hits me quickly. “Hey Annabella. You know who I am?” she asks.
The instant I look into her eyes, I know exactly who she is. I’d know those eyes anywhere. “You’re Brad’s mom. You’re Anita,” I stammer.
“I am. I think it’s time you and I sit down and talk.”
“I know Ransom sent you. I just want to be left alone.” I reach for the handle of the car door but she wedges her leg in between so I can’t pull it closed. She grabs the bottle of rum from my hand and shakes her head.
“I’ll leave you alone, I promise. But not here. This is not a safe place for you to be, Annabella,” she says under her breath. “Just trust me.”
I don’t know if it’s the booze talking or if I know in my heart what she’s saying is true. I don’t like Riley. The only reason I’m here is because I have no other option.
“Listen, I know as much as anybody these guys can be real mother fuckers. I been married to Stoney for longer than you’ve been on this planet. I’ve been through some shit. You have every right to be pissed off. I don’t even know what the asshole did, but I’m sure you’re in the right.”
She smiles and winks at me. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long, Annabella. Can you please just come with us?”
I know I’m a little drunker than I’d like to be, especially to get in a car with a couple strangers. “Riley is gonna be upset,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“That bitch is evil, Annabella. Don’t let her fool you,” Anita says.
“I thought she and Brad were a thing?” I ask.
“Come on, we can talk about this somewhere else,” she says, looking over her shoulder. “You gotta come with us.”
“Alright.” I take a wobbly step out of the SUV and hiccough. “Can I bring my pizza?”
She laughs and grabs the pizza box as we walk up the driveway. She opens the back door of the truck and I hoist myself in, sprawling out over the backseat.
“Where are you going?” I hear Riley screaming from outside. There’s pounding on the window. “Annabella! Get back here! You can’t go with them!”
I peek my head up. I feel a little guilty. I feel a little scared. I’m too drunk for my own good and about to go who knows where with Romeo and Anita.
Romeo gets in the driver’s seat and Anita hops in the passenger side and slams the door.
“You’re gonna regret this Annabella!” Riley shouts. “These people are not your friends. They don’t care about you like I do!”
It feels really weird hearing her yelling like that. I guess I didn’t realize she was so attached to me. The only thing we have in common is Kid. I hardly know her enough to ‘care’ about her.
Romeo backs the truck out of the driveway, swerving onto the lawn to get around Riley’s SUV, and she just stands there shouting and waving her arms.
“You think I should go back?” I ask. “She seems really upset.”
Romeo laughs and I can see him smiling at me in the rearview mirror. “My sweet summer child. You just relax. We’re gonna take your drunk ass to Anita’s to sleep it off.”
“I’m not drunk,” I stammer. Anita holds up the half empty bottle, and I let out a loud burp.
“You smell like a fucking sailor,” Romeo says. “If you’re gonna puke you better tell me so I can pull over.”
“Thank you for the clothes,” I say. “I never got to tell you yet. I really like them.” I feel myself getting emotional and I try to stifle the urge to cry. This guy doesn’t know me from Adam and he’s already given me more than my own father. He’s done everything he could to make sure I’m happy and comfortable even after I showed up and started fucking up his club. “I’m so sorry I’m such a piece of shit,” I groan.
Anita laughs, and turns around in her seat. She reaches out and brushes my hair out of my forehead, just like my mother used to do when I was upset. “You’re fine, honey. You’re not a piece of shit. You’re just way out of your element. Nobody told you what you were signing up for. There ain't a playbook for this life. My son certainly didn’t bring you up to speed. If I’d have known what you two were planning, I would’ve gone down and snatched you up from West Virginia myself.”
“Ma’am I shot your husband,” I say. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“We all wanted that motherfucker dead for years now,” she says, grabbing my hand. “Nobody had the balls to pull the trigger, though.”
“That’s enough,” Romeo says, turning up the radio. “We’re not talking about that shit tonight.”
She winks at me as she slides back up into the front seat. “We’re totally talking about that shit tonight,” she whispers.
“Why did you guys come for me?” I ask. “Why do you care so much?”
“Because that’s the kind of people we are,” Romeo says. “We take care of our own. You might think we’re a bunch of assholes, and we are… but you’re a part of our lives now, like it or not. You’re stuck with us. And I’m sure you’re probably 100% in the right on this one, so if you want me to go rough your boy up, I will.”
I chuckle. “I don’t want you to rough him up. I just needed to get away for the night. I feel so alone. I don’t have anybody. I don’t have a job. I don’t have a car. I don’t have any friends of my own. I don’t have any money. Since the day I got here, I’ve relied on Ransom for literally everything, and it’s horrifying. Am I just supposed to lay down and let him do whatever he wants in exchange?”
“Baby girl, you have everything,” Romeo says. “You are beautiful, you are kind, you’re tough as nails, and that man is lucky you even give him the time of day. It ain’t about what you have, it’s about who you are. I tell my daughters that all the time. Life ain’t transactional. It ain’t about what you bring to the table. If your heart is good and you love somebody with everything you got, that’s more than enough. You don’t ever have to let a man hurt you just because you think you owe him something.”
“He’s fucking right,” Anita says. She lights up a cigarette and stares off into space. “If I had somebody like Romeo to tell me this shit when I was your age, none of us would even be in this situation right now.”
Romeo reaches over and she looks back at me with a sad smile. “We’re almost home, love.”
34
Romeo leaves the truck running and I get out and walk up the lit pathway to Anita’s front porch.
Anita’s house makes Riley’s mansion look like a double wide. I can�
��t believe Kid grew up in a place like this. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking this house might have been built on the deals my father and Stoney made with the Diamonds. All that dirty money, all that pain money, all that hurt.
I half expect a maid to be waiting at the front door to greet me. Everything is pristine from the landscaping to the matching furniture on the wrap around porch.
Anita and Romeo talk for a few minutes before he pulls out of the driveway, and I can’t help but wonder what’s really going on between those two. The way he talks to her, the way he looks at her, I feel like it has to be more than duty to the club.
She pops open the pizza box and he grabs a slice, shoots me a thumbs up, and off he goes into the night. It’s just her and I now, and I can’t help but feel a little nervous. I know she knows all about me, but I did try and kill her husband. I have to wonder how safe I really am.
She unlocks the front door and I follow her inside. I’ve never stood in a “great room” before and the sheer size and stillness of it is overwhelming. The floors are marble and the ceilings are so high. The walls are trimmed with gold foil, and a chandelier hangs from the ceiling.
“It’s hideous, isn’t it,” she says with a laugh. “Tacky as hell.”
“This is where Brad grew up?” I ask.
“Not his whole life. To tell you the truth, Brad and I both fucking hate this house. It always felt like a bribe from my husband. He couldn’t be a good father or husband so he just started buying us stuff. The more extravagant the gift, the worse the crime we think he committed. It was the only way he knew how to repent for his sins.”
Looking around at all the fine details from the accent rugs to the massive fireplace set in stone, I know if what she’s saying is true, Stoney for sure committed all sorts of atrocities.
“You probably thought my son was raised in a barn. Sure as hell acts like it.” She puts her hand on my shoulder and leads me through the house until we get to this narrow doorway. It looks like a place you’d keep your furnace or some sort of utility closet, but she opens it, and it leads to a dark and tight hallway.
“I didn’t find out about this room until a few years ago,” she says. “That’s when things really started going downhill. Brad must’ve found it long before I did, though.”
The smell of dust fills my nose and I start to cough. She pulls the string on a light, illuminating the tiny room at the end fo the hallway. The office is so small you have to tilt your head or you’ll hit it off the ceiling. The walls are lined with filing cabinets and there’s a safe in the wall.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Detailed records of every crime my husband ever committed.” She pulls open a filing cabinet and grabs a folder out of it, tossing it on the desk. “I don’t even know what’s in this one, but I’m sure it’s mortifying.”
I pull open the folder and slam it closed immediately. Bile rises in my stomach and I know for a fact it’s not from the alcohol. The terror in the woman in the photo’s eyes as Stoney stood beside her grinning with a knife in his hand is an image I never needed in my brain.
“You knew about all this and you stayed with him?” I stammer. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I back away from her slowly, feeling for the exit to the room. I didn’t want to be here to begin with, but now I really want out. Any woman who could stand by a man who had filing cabinets full of this stuff is just as sick as he is.
“Annabella, calm down. I’m not the enemy here.” Her voice is calm and stern. “You haven’t been around long enough to know how things work in the club.”
“How things work in the club? Like you let these men do whatever they want without consequences or judgment while you stay at home and pretend like everything is good? I’m not a doormat, and I certainly can’t be bought.”
“God, you are so much like your mother it’s not even funny,” she says, stepping closer to me. She strokes my cheek and I bite my tongue so hard it starts to bleed.
“None of you people know my mother. If you did, you would’ve protected her. You all disgust me.”
“Honey, nobody knew anything back then. We were all young and dumb. I was just trying to raise my son and try and figure out a way out of this life. The only thing I wanted was to see to it Brad didn’t end up like his father. When your mom disappeared I was jealous. I thought she finally had her chance to break free. If I knew what happened to her, what happened to you, I would’ve done everything in my power to come and find you. I mean it.” Her voice wavers a little, and she wipes tears from her face. “I know it sounds like a sob story, and I know you probably saw things nobody should’ve ever seen. If I could take all your pain away, I would.”
She wraps her arms around me, but all I can feel is anger radiating from my body. This room is making me claustrophobic, this woman and her dungeon of secrets disgusts me.
“Get me out of here,” I say. “Get me out of this fucking house.”
“I know you think I’m a monster,” she says. “I would, too. But there’s so much you don’t know, Annabella. There’s so much I have to tell you. Promise me you’ll give me a half hour. If you don’t want to be here anymore, I’ll get you a hotel room and I’ll leave you alone.”
I follow her back down the hallway into the kitchen. She motions for me to sit down at the island while she fills an electric teakettle with water.
“You probably think I’m a real piece of shit. Some pathetic bitch who stood by her husband just because he bought her pretty things.”
“I don’t know what to think right now,” I say. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. Brad was the only reason why I stand here today. He was the only reason why my mom and I got to enjoy so many years of freedom together. “I know you raised a kind son, somebody with real character.”
“And that’s the highest compliment anybody could pay me.” She pulls out a box of teabags from the cabinet and opens it up in front of me. “He is a kind man, and he does have real character, but sometimes his stubbornness gets him in some major trouble. I knew he was going to end up in jail someday, but his crimes were never harmful. They were never hateful. It breaks my heart that he could get his ass out of jail right this instant if he rolled over on his dad. That room full of shit is enough to buy him a one way ticket home for life.”
I pull out a mint teabag, thinking maybe it’ll calm my stomach and sober me up a little bit.
“Why doesn’t he, then? I mean, it’s not like they’re going to put Stoney in jail at this point. He’s not a danger to himself or anybody else. Brad shouldn’t be in jail. He doesn’t belong there.”
How I wish with all my being he wasn’t in jail right now. If Kid were here, he’d know exactly what to say to make me feel better. He’d listen to all my issues with Ransom and help me figure out how to get back to trusting him again. I just know it.
“My husband did a very good job of getting everyone wrapped up in his bullshit. That room of evidence isn’t just his way of being cocky, although, I’m sure there’s a lot of that mixed in there. My husband made damn sure every single man in that club committed a crime that could get them sent away for a long time, and he documented that shit like a court stenographer. If you start tugging on one of Stoney’s threads, the whole club comes apart. He never said it out loud, but we all know it. These men have been living in fear for their own freedom for as long as this club’s existed.”
“So Stoney’s the guy who started the club… and he’s the guy who could end the club,” I say. “Sounds like a feature, not a bug.”
“My husband might be a sick man. He might be the scum of the earth. But he isn’t stupid. Towards the end he started getting a little sloppy, and I think that’s what has the guys sweating, but he always made sure he’d get the last laugh. If he went down, everyone was going down with him.”
“Even Ransom?” I ask. I know that man is good at heart. I know he’d never purposely do anything to hurt me. I know he’s a kind man, but I don’t know if I could turn
my cheek to him committing atrocities like Stoney did.
“Do you love him?” she asks.
I’m afraid to say it out loud to her, but my face definitely doesn’t lie. Just thinking about him makes me feel safe and happy.
“Do you love Stoney?” I retort. “Is that why you’re still with him? Because you love him so much?”
She laughs and shakes her head at me while the teakettle begins to squeal. “I’m with Stoney because I hate myself for all the hurt he’s caused in the world. It’s too late for me to make him a better man or take back all the things he’s done, but it’s not too late for me to make sure he never does it again. It’s not too late for me to make sure my family is safe from his bullshit. It’s bad enough my son is in prison. I’m gonna make damn sure they never take anybody away from me again. That goes for Romeo and Ransom and Driller and you and your sister. Everyone in the club.”
All of my petty insecurities about Ransom suddenly feel so little. So petty. This woman spent the back half of her life with a man she couldn’t stand because she knew it was better than letting him out of her sight. She made her life’s mission protecting the people she loved, even if it meant letting her son go to prison or sacrificing ever finding true love for herself. She’s not a monster. She’s a martyr. And here I am just being a drunk little brat in her kitchen, moping around because my boyfriend had sex with someone before he met me.
“I think we should burn it,” I say. “Nobody has to know.”
Her eyes grow narrow as she fills my mug with boiling water, a thin smile across her heavily lined lips.
“Let’s burn all the evidence and then eliminate the source. Then you can finally be free, Anita. You can finally let yourself relax. Maybe even get to know Romeo a little better?” I raise my eyebrows dramatically and wink.
