by J Bree
He answers the phone with his usual brand of confident asshole. “Did you get that boy to squeal like a bitch in heat yet?”
I scoff. “The rumors are true, the Graves are a tough bunch to crack open. I’m not calling about him anyway. Odie told me something and it’s grating on me. Have you had any of your men go missing lately?”
He covers the mouthpiece of his cell and mutters something, then I hear Harbin’s muffled voice come down the line. “Now’s not the time or place. Come see us for a drink later.”
Obviously their asshole Prez is around, or one of his most loyal brothers. Frustrating but I let it go. “I’ll come grab a drink after the meeting is over. Is your Prez there or is it his little bitch VP getting pissy about you talking to me.”
Roxas chuckles and says, “The second option. Look, I know you’re solid but your friend isn’t. Things are tightening up around here, if you catch my drift.”
I do. “No problem. Just a warning that you need to check all of your guys and make sure they’re all accounted for. I’ll catch that drink with you later.”
I hang up and light a cigarette, needing something to take my mind off of the situation. How far can I let D’Ardo go without calling him out on it? How far can I let him drag me down with him?
I don’t fucking know because I’ve always lived my life by our motto and to know that he’s turning his back on it… I’m not sure I can live with myself if I don’t try to talk him out of the shit he’s getting into.
Starting with the kid.
I burn through three more cigarettes and am ready to spill blood by the time I pull up at the old sawmill where the meeting is being held. There’s at least forty cars here already, each member bringing enough of their men to duke it out over who has the biggest dick.
My money is now firmly on the kid.
That backbone of hers is something to be admired and respected, no matter her size or age. Fuck, if D’Ardo didn’t want to own her he’d be trying to kill her for it. He can’t fucking stand the Crow, and he’s the only other member who has the backbone and drive to stand up to D’Ardo’s tyrant ways.
Even if he is some bored, rick playboy who wandered into the Bay one day, just for shits and fucking giggles.
I get out of the car but I wait there for the meeting to be over, no point in dealing with the posturing bullshit of these dickheads and their flunkies. I burn through two more cigarettes and all my damn patience before they finally start making their way out of the building.
The Boar and his bikers leave first, glaring at me like I give a fuck about their opinions of me. I give them all a sarcastic as fuck salute and run my hands over my cleavers. The Boar ignores me, the staunch fuck, but his men all follow the movement and grow wary. Yeah, I could throw it at them and my aim is good enough to hit their throats with ease.
Next is the Lynx and her family, her husband holding her arm and ignoring her when she licks her lips at me. Never in my fucking life would I fuck a mobster bitch, not even before I had my girl. The Lynx’s pussy probably has teeth, she eats through men that fucking fast.
Hard pass.
The Tiger is useful enough and I nod my head at him with as much respect as I can muster. The Ox is a cunt, so are the Bear and the Fox.
The Viper leaves with D’Ardo and the kid follows behind them with her head held high and her eyes on her watch. Yup, she has that terrible fucking curfew to get back to. I give her a subtle jerk of my head and she gives me one back when D’Ardo stops eyeballing her to come over to me.
I’m still fucking pissed at the fuck.
But last to come through, the Crow and the Coyote leave together.
I brush past D’Ardo, ignoring his grunt of annoyance, and head toward the tech-wiz dickhead.
Can’t ignore me now, asshole.
I fucking hate the Coyote.
Yeah, our business relationship didn’t start off the best thanks to D’Ardo fucking him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I had very little to do with that. All I did was go to visit the new blood in the Twelve, I had no idea D’Ardo wanted to play with him.
It was impressive too. D’Ardo had spent months and more money than most Mounties see in their entire lives trying to find the nuclear shit he was after, and yet a few hours of this guy on his computer and bam, there’s all the info he needed wrapped up with a bow?
I need that sort of reach in my arsenal.
“Nope. No. I’m not fucking helping you, man. I’ve got a strict ‘No shithead’ policy these days.”
The problem is dealing with the little fuck’s mouth. “Name your price, I’ll pay it in advance.”
That gets his attention. The Crow scoffs at us both but keeps walking, his eyes on the Jackal like they always are. Those two circle each other like sharks in bloody water, always wanting to be the biggest predator. I have on occasion been drunk enough around D’Ardo to tell him they should both just whip their dicks out, it would be quicker to just measure them.
He didn’t take it well, the moody fuck.
“What if I want seven figures for it? Still gonna pay?” The Coyote says, the smirk on his face making me lose my calm a little.
“The job isn’t worth that. Let’s say you’re not a little cocky asshole and charge fairly, I’ll keep the jobs coming. All of them with prepayment.”
D’Ardo is outright seething over by my car. I ignore him the say way he was ignoring me while I was looking for my girl. Payback is a bitch and all that.
The Coyote gives me a slow look up and down rubbing the non-existent scuff on his face. The guy definitely couldn’t even work up a patchy excuse of a beard and yet here he is trying. “Are you also building a bomb? I don’t have the heart to keep helping with that kind of shit.”
I give D’Ardo a proper fucking glare at the reminder. “No. No bombs. I need a lead on some biker activity. Nothing to do with the Boar so you’re not going to get spanked at your next meeting for it either.”
He smirks. “Like I give a fuck about old, dirty bikers. Fine. Come see me. Bring the Wolf, she had a job for me too which is a little strange. She’s usually doing everything she can to pretend I don’t exist.”
I don’t fucking blame her.
She already has one psychopath stalking her, she doesn’t need any more. Plus this guy would hack into her shit and follow her every move. She doesn’t need that going on at all.
D’Ardo stalks over, snapping at his men as he pushes past them, “I’m taking the Wolf to see you tomorrow, you little fucking creep.”
Great.
A pissing contest over a kid who doesn’t fucking want it. “Get in my car, Coyote. I’ll drive you back to your little bunker and you can do my job.”
He smirks at D’Ardo and saunters past all his men, perfectly unafraid of them all. D’Ardo turns on me the second he’s in the Mustang. “What the fuck are you doing?”
I turn on him and every last one of his pathetic little poser flunkies take a big fucking step back when they get a look at me. “You wanna try that again? Because I’m not one of your men, you don’t get a say in what I do, and when your bitch-ass stopped taking my calls I decided I had to find another avenue to get what I need.”
His eyes take on that crazed sheen, the one that says we’re about to come to blows.
Good.
Fuck him.
“If you’ve got a problem then you need to say it now, brother, because I have shit to do.”
I step away from him, knowing he’s got nothing to say to me, and he waits until I’m back at my car before he calls out to me, “You mean you need to go back to the docks and fuck your little whore? You’re pretty fucking dense pick some pussy that’s already been broken in.”
Brother or not, no one will speak about Odie like that in my presence.
No one.
His men don’t see me coming, they’re bleeding out on the ground before D’Ardo notices I’m not playing around and my cleavers are out. He smirks, thinking this is like eve
ry other one of our fights, but he’s fucking wrong.
Nothing about this is like old times.
I will gut him for talking about her like that, for turning into a deranged fucking shit without me noticing, for not answering my fucking calls while she was out there being raped and tortured by the cartel he pays for drugs.
He takes a swing at me and I duck, ramming my shoulder into his stomach and taking him to the ground in one move. He grunts at me, kneeing me in the ribs but I’ve always taken pain well. I’m above that shit, slamming my fist into his face until I know I’ve snapped his fucking teeth.
“Alright, you grumpy fuck, get off me.” He wheezes.
I don’t listen. I don’t stop hitting him until the sweat is running down my face and the Coyote is yelling out at me from the car.
“You know there’s cameras here and the Twelve are obligated to come after you if you kill him, right?”
Fuck.
I’m still fucking tempted but maybe this is enough of a reminder to him. Maybe he’ll pull what’s left of his head in now I’ve rearranged his face.
He’s coughing blood and bleeding down his shirt when I step away, wiping my hands down my own shirt. I don’t look at him again as I step away, swooping down to pick up all of the cleavers I’ve left in his men. One of the guys is still gurgling on his own blood and I stomp on his throat with my heel to finish the job.
I pause with my hand on the handle of my car door, glancing back to where he’s still trying to get himself upright. “Listen to me brother, and listen well. You ever say that shit about her again and it’ll be your last words. I’m not your fucking pet. You don’t own me, you’re not my boss. We roll together, that’s it. Either you sort your shit out or we’re done.”
He glares back at me. Well, I think he’s glaring. His eyes are all sorts of fucked up now and he’s going to struggle driving back down to the docks like that. I could help him, drive him back like the last time we got into it, but I wasn’t lying to him. I’m fucking done.
I light a cigarette and wish I had a fucking whiskey as I start the Mustang, ignoring the wide eyes the Coyote is giving me.
“I thought you guys were tight?” He finally says as we hit the road.
I keep my eyes on the road, too much wildlife out here at night. “We are. Sometimes he needs a reminder that even the Jackal can’t take the Butcher. Sometimes he forgets where he started.”
He started in the same group home as me, learning how to fight and kill and survive from me. I wasn’t expecting him to become so fucking power hungry though. I guess because I never wanted that shit I never expected him to want it either. Little did I know he’d want to become the king of all things evil while I just wanted a quiet, blood-soaked life with a bombshell to go home to.
Fuck, I want to go home to her.
“So tell me about this job of yours? I can figure out my price and you can wire it across before I get out of the car.” The Coyote says, touching the dash and fiddling with the buttons.
“Keep your fucking hands to yourself. I’m craving blood pretty hard right now and there’s no cameras here to stop me from gutting you for getting your greasy fingerprints on everything.”
He smirks and holds up his phone. “This thing records everything around me and sends SOS texts when I’m threatened. The Crow is about to call and check up on me thanks to you.”
Sure enough the phone rings. He snakes and bullshits his way through it, calling us friends. I could fucking puke at the sound of that shit.
When he hangs up I ask, “How does the Crow’s dick feel up your ass? I always assumed you were sucking him off on the sly, wasn’t expecting you to be getting reamed as well.”
The Coyote laughs. “Man, he’d have to take his fucking suit off for that shit. He doesn’t have it in him.”
Chapter Seventeen
Odie
I’m bored.
There’s only so much wandering around the house and drawing with the same blue pen I can do before my mind craves more.
I try watching the television but nothing holds my attention. I have a cleaning day, scrubbing out the bathroom and then ripping apart the kitchen to clean that as well but the entire apartment is spotless so there isn’t any real satisfaction once the job is complete.
I can’t take it.
So I watch the food channel for days, soaking in the American ways of cooking and trying to find the perfect recipes for pizzas and burgers. Those are Illi’s favorites, whenever we order in he always chooses them. The problem is I hate the bread here so I don’t want to use that for my burgers so I make a very rational and not at all impulsive decision.
I learn how to bake my own bread.
The first few days it goes terribly and I worry that Illi will be upset that I’m wasting the supplies in the house. He doesn’t, in fact while I’m frowning over the flat mess that my loaf turned into he throws a pen and notepad in front of me and tells me to write a list of whatever I need.
Which is great because I don’t want flat bread.
Day four I make the perfect loaf. Illi eats half of it with dinner and I preen like a child.
Day six I make bread rolls and we have burgers. He tells me they’re the best he’s ever had but I’m sure he’s lying. He does eat three of them so… maybe.
Day eight I make sourdough and eat it with cheese and cold meats. It’s like being home again and I sit on the living room floor on the rug and cry.
Illi tells me no more bread after that.
I find myself bored again.
I need to find an outlet for all of my energy but asking Illi for anything else seems… wrong. Rude and unappreciative for all he already gives me without asking for anything in return.
So I make pasta.
That lasts two days before Illi declares over dinner, “No more carbs, I’m going to get fat at this rate. Can you learn how to grill meat or make sweet potato fries?”
Bleh. I hate sweet potatoes. He laughs when I scrunch my nose up at him. Though he’s right, I’m finally back to my old size now I’ve been eating all of my attempts at the perfect dinner.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him about maybe getting some colored pencils, but I can’t. He got home a little after dawn, covered in dirt and blood and grease, and our ‘dinner’ together is at 8am. I’ve switched over to his waking hours easily and I find I can’t sleep unless he’s in the bed with me. Such a strange thing.
"Is there something you need, baby girl?"
Damn him. He can read me so easily and yet I struggle to ever know what’s going on in his head. I can’t ask him for anything, but maybe I can find another way. "I was wondering if we could go out today, to find me some… ah, employment. I know you said it’s not safe here, but maybe I could go somewhere it is safe.“
He sets his fork down with a frown. "You want a job? What do you want to do?"
I smile at him, nervous and trying to hide it. "I need some money. I found a place in the nicer area of the Bay, over by-"
"What do you need money for?" He cuts me off, drinking his beer. We’ve discovered beer doesn’t have the same effect on my stomach that the harder liquors do so he’s switched to one of those with dinner.
I frown and poke at my food. "I would like to buy something. This employment, it is temporary. It’s in a little cafe and I could make tips until I have enough money for what I need and then I can come home."
His lip twitches upward when I say the word home but he still looks angry.
"Baby girl, whatever you need, I will give you. Anything. No getting a fucking job just to buy something you want. Tell me, I'll have it here in under an hour."
I clear my throat and swirl my fork in the pasta. "I don't want to inconvenience you any further. You have already done so much for me. I can work, I do not want to be a burden to you any further.“
He carefully sets his beer down on the table and stalks over to where I sit at the other end, looming over me. My heart skips a beat but I f
eel no fear. He still looks the same as the first day I met him, a monster made of all muscle and tattoos, but I know now that looks are deceiving and he might be a killer but he’s no monster to me.
He takes my hand and tugs me until I stand up, then he catches my cheek in his big palm and cradles my face. I stare up at him and, for the first time since I arrived in America, I feel the flutters of arousal in my stomach. It scares me.
He leans down like he’s going to kiss me, but instead he murmurs, “What do you need, baby? I'm your man, I’ll get you whatever you need. That's how this is going to go. Money is not an issue for us, baby girl. I'm good at what I do."
I know it’s not a real issue. I have seen the obscene amount of money hidden in the panels that slide away on the walls, but I’m still uncomfortable having him buy me things.
He’s already done so much for me and all I do for him is… bake.
His eyes narrow into a stern look and I finally tell him, ”I would like some paint and canvases and a few brushes. I miss painting, I want to do a portrait of some of your tattoos. They keep dancing in my head while I try to sleep."
I didn’t mean to say so much, definitely not the part about his tattoos but once the truth starts to come out all of the details follow it.
His thumb runs over my cheek gently and then he steps away from me. “Grab a coat, baby. We'll go shopping for everything you need. Everything, we'll bring the whole fucking store back home if that's what you want."
A quiet laugh spills out of me. "I don't need much, mon monstre."
Mon monstre.
My monster.
A blush takes over my cheeks and I step away from him, whirling towards the coat rack to find something that will work for me to leave the apartment. Butterflies swell in my chest and I feel giddy, it’s such a strange sensation.
“Grab the black one, baby girl. We’re taking the beamer.”
Illi holds my hand the entire way down the stairs and helps me into the car as if I am a delicate lady and not about to leave the house wearing all of his clothes. I look ridiculous but his eyes follow me as if I’m wearing Chanel and dripping in diamonds.
