Neither This Nor That Box Set 1

by MariaLisa deMora

  “That right there? That steel in your spine? That’s what I’m talking about,” Whitewall said immediately. “Man you are, you won’t say that without feelin’ it, and how you feel it, you’ll handle it.” He scoffed. “Man you are, won’t ever think you’re up for the title, even if you’re already doin’ the fuckin’ job. President will sit on your shoulders like a custom suit from the Garden District. Love ya, brother, but you’re dead wrong.”

  Three hours later, Whitewall had been proven right, and the ending of the officer’s meeting had Twisted’s ass planted in his grandfather’s chair. Seat shaped and broken in through the years, he found it more comfortable than he would have believed.

  ***

  Twisted looked down at his hand and flexed the fingers. In and out. In and out. Bruised and bloody, his knuckles ached, and he could feel the swelling beginning to interfere with the way his joints worked. Clench and release. In and out.

  Shifting focus, he looked beyond his hand, again fisted tightly, and into the face of the woman on the floor. They were in the back room of the clubhouse. A room with a sloping floor that led to a drain set near the wall. With cement floor and walls, it was a space designed for a quick cleanup and intended for the use it was being put to right that moment. Intelligence acquisition.

  Through the clubhouse walls, he heard the muffled beginnings of a party outside. The funerals had been today, the club bearing the cost of everything, so the families didn’t have money struggles laid on top of their loss. A wake worthy of the men they’d lost would be rolling strong in another hour. These tentative sounds from the open area behind the building were the initial arrivals. Mostly prospects who lived at the house, eschewing a rental or apartment in town in order to remain on-call for the club they were earning their way into.

  Guitar music rang out, an energetic strumming of the six-strings, followed by a rhythmic pounding on the soundboard to add percussive tones. A moment later he heard the distinctive sound of an accordion’s wheeze, the bellows expanding and contracting with the movements of the unseen musician’s hands. Harmonica blues bled through the walls as he leaned down, gripping the bitch’s throat with one hand, pulling the other back, cocked and locked for action near his ear.

  “Tell me,” he growled and watched as Sabrina’s eye rolled in her head, trying to see a way out of this. Blood matted the hair on the side of her head, and one eye was swollen shut, giving her the look of a deformed monster. Outsides match the insides now, he thought. Her bottom lip was split in two places, blood-smeared front teeth showed as her mouth gaped. He knew her breath was a scarce commodity and every movement from her tried to buy more. “Tell me, bitch. This can end now, if you talk to me.” He heard an agonized gasp from her, and then another while she writhed in his hand.

  Rattling noises from the party outside filled the room. That was followed by the bright hiss-and-scrape sounds of steel thimbles dragged in a bold movement across a galvanized scrubboard. Zydeco music was more delicate when performed by fingertips than the broad bowls of spoons, this choice meant their brother, Busk, would be playing tonight. There was a tink of a tuned triangle being struck, punctuating the melodic phrase of the song the musicians were beginning. Sabrina gasped again, and he tightened his fist around her throat, watching as red bled into the white of the one eye he’d left her.

  “Fucked my brother.” His thumb slipped in the blood coating her skin, and he adjusted. Tink. “Killed eight good men.” One of the men who’d ridden away from the bar had died after rolling up to the house in Mandeville, blood leaking down his leg until his tank hit empty. Staggering as he stepped off his bike, falling facedown to the gravel, he'd been dead before he toppled over. Tink. “Killed ‘em sure as if you pulled the fuckin’ trigger.” Wheeze. Squeeze. Tink.

  “You ain’t gonna make it, honey,” Twisted said quietly, not surprised she didn’t react. Gauging by the purple in her face and her fluttering lid, she was nearly out of it. Relaxing his fist, he looked over his shoulder to where Po’Boy stood near the door, hands jammed into the front pockets of his jeans, his stance uncomfortable, but the look on his face resolved.

  They’d traced Sabrina down easily, too easily. She hadn’t even tried to make herself scarce. Nabbed and hauled her out of the back door of a beauty salon when she’d taken a bathroom break from gabbing with her clique, they’d brought her to the club the day after the shootout. They hadn’t located Fred, however, thank Christ. Twisted didn’t know what he’d do if he found out Fred had shit to do with Papaw’s death.

  His brothers hadn’t found the shooters yet, either. Those imposters were so far in the wind not even a breeze of their passage remained. Yesterday, he and Leswayne had pulled out chairs from a table, sitting down opposite while each had a dozen men fanned out at their backs. Each man in the room had bristled with anger and rage, for very different reasons. Leswayne and the Vicar’s Wrath because someone had impersonated them; charlatans going so far as to have cheap knockoff patches made and sewn onto vests. A lot of trouble to set-up a story, even for a pissed-off bitch like this one. Twisted and the Incoherent angry because they’d lost so much. Life’s riches stolen away in a moment for no reason they could lay hand to. No reason except a bitch who had a vengeful streak.

  A soft voice joined the ebb and flow of the music building in the backyard of the clubhouse. Words and melody coming together to create beauty, offering comfort to those grieving. Squeeze.

  He took two steps forwards and slammed her back against the wall, knocking loose what little air she had left in her lungs. I’m done with her. With his fingers tightening again around her throat and without looking away from her ruined face, he spoke to Po’Boy. “Get a barrel, brother.” No reason for him to be here for this, Twisted would send him away, and he could pick a disposal vehicle. A scrape of the door, and then the room shared its empty vibe with Twisted, and he knew Po’Boy had eagerly taken his instruction.

  “Can you hear me, Sabrina?” Eyelid fluttering, he took that as a sign that she had regained enough of her senses to pay attention. “You’re dyin’ here today.” He knew she’d heard him when she jerked, trying to get away. With her wrists secured behind her back, and lifted to her toes as she was, there was no leverage she could find to wrench herself away. “You choose the way. Easy or hard, darlin’? Happenin’, you got half a zeroes chance of leavin’ here any other way. But, you can choose.”

  Tink. Laughter. A woman’s voice made him wince in sudden fear, staring at the blank wall until he recognized it as Junebug, Busk’s ole lady. Cool as ice, and club to the core, if she heard or saw anything, she’d hold it close. Knowing it wasn’t just her life on the line, but her ole man’s too since he’d vouched for her. Tink. Whispered words, “I can…” Tipping his head to one side, he looked down at Sabrina.

  “You say something, bitch?”

  “I can stop…”

  “What can you stop, Sabrina?” He let up the pressure, giving her a tiny bit more air, but maintaining control. Total control. Wheeze. This from the bitch in his hand. Squeeze. His hand to her throat.

  “Re…tribution.”

  “The fuck you think you’re orchestrating, bitch? You do not pull the strings on my brothers and our shit. Count of five, what can you stop?” Bikes in the distance, closing in on the clubhouse, riders coming to pay respects. My brothers. The scent of wood smoke hung in the air; he knew there’d be a pot already boiling, ready for the mudbugs to be dumped in, seasoning rolling through the water, lifting to the surface, then sinking underneath, still there, just unseen. In his head he saw Papaw, lying on the floor, his only real family, gone because of this bitch. “One.” A beat on the drum box followed by the sound of the thimbles dragging up and down the rubboard. Tink. “Two.” Wheeze.

  “Big Nico.” Her voice rattled on a ragged exhale, her pulse jackrabbit fast under his thumb. “RICO.” An involuntary squeeze of his hand made her eye widen, pupil dilating. “Blamed…Jimbo.”

  Fuck. That meant this ran m
uch deeper than he had thought. Than any of them thought. He’d hoped it was just this bitch wanting some of her own back, feeling put out that he’d taken what she gave away, then took the same from her sister. This information put an entirely different twist on everything. “You sure? Big Nico bought today’s action?”

  Eager to please, she nodded as best she could with his fist wedged up under her jaw as it was. “Nico…wanted you…there. Fred…” Voices raised outside, an exchange too far away to make out the words. “Fred was my call.” Twisted ran what he knew through his head, pulling in all the details.

  Big Nico was president of a single chapter club based from Georgia, the South Coast Devils, a name Twisted always thought was fucked-up since any map could show you that where they were based, Valdosta, wasn’t near the coast. Nico’s club had pulled a fuckton of fed notice over the past year, and no one knew why. Nico couldn’t seem to dig his way out of the hole he found himself in. His costs kept going up. Then he made mistakes trying to sort that shit by being aggressive when Twisted could have told him to pull back. At that point, it would be time to reduce any points of failure, make it so those places were reinforced by trusted brothers, or just pay frequent visits to shore up the men’s belief and faith in the leadership.

  Sabrina didn’t have anything to trade. Involving Freddy was her play. This is on her. Tink.

  Men’s trust had to be earned; their faith would be unwavering only because the object of that belief never faltered. If you falter, you lose everything. Can’t stop now. Twisted stood, eyes closed tightly because this wasn’t something he wanted to do, definitely didn’t want this fucking vision stuck in his head. Squeeze. He wiped the sweat from his face with his forearm and held on. It didn’t take long. By the time Po’Boy came back with a barrel strapped to a mover’s dolly, it was done.

  Twenty minutes later he was behind the clubhouse, standing with a wall at his back, brothers surrounding him. No one asked about the woman who’d been brought here in a van. No one mentioned his battered hands. No one introduced business to the conversation; that would be his to bring up, and for now, he wanted to remember the fallen instead. Wanted to immerse himself in the melancholy sounds of squeeze box and rubboard, wailing mouth harp, singing strings on a fiddle, and the shuffle of soft steps. It might take a while, but he knew eventually he’d stop hearing Sabrina’s heels drumming against the wall. Stop feeling the convulsive jerk of her body at the end. Stop remembering the moment her pounding heart slowed and stopped, flesh growing still under his hand.

  Fake it ‘til you make it. Gotta give a good show. Knowing he wouldn’t be unaccompanied long, he made his way to the area near the bonfire where the grass had already been beaten flat by stamping feet. Chin up, eyes closed showing a deep trust in his brothers, Twisted gave himself to the music, turning and stomping to the familiar rhythms. Sure enough, before they were halfway through the first chorus, a hand settled on his waist, defining the space between their bodies and he opened his eyes to a brown-eyed mulatto girl swaying next to him. Pretty little thing. Struttin’ her stuff. Box lookin’ to catch the eye of the club’s new president. She just bought her evenin’ with that play, he thought as he reached out and slipped his arms around her.

  Not giving one fuck who the bitch belonged to, when the mood struck him, he took her off to one side and bent the bitch over the back of a bench seat. Removed from a van and placed on the grass near the bonfire, it was the right height for a quick standing fuck. Shorts to her knees, her booted feet close together, he opened the front of his pants and pulled out his dick. Rolling on the condom was quick, and then he slammed into her. Hot and wet, she was loose as fuck, but he could make that work tonight. I’m livin’, he thought as head back, he stared at the stars wheeling overhead while snapping his hips forward. She jerked and moved unexpectedly, and he glanced down to see Po’Boy feeding his dick into her mouth, her head angled to the side.

  “Live it up, brother,” Twisted said, right before the girl’s eyes shifted sideways in her head and then all he could see was Sabrina’s one unruined eye, rolling frantically while she tried to talk around the constrictor of his hand. Fuck. Looking down, he concentrated on watching his dick slide in and out of the bitch’s box. “Live it up.”

  Chapter Five

  Princess

  Her entire body trembled. She was able to make it out of the car and to her front door, somehow managing to hold herself together and stay in control. But, when she fumbled the key a third time in the lock, that grip slipped, and she barked a harsh, hoarse, “Fuck.” Her voice sounded foreign to her ears, pained. She closed her mouth with a snap, cutting off any other words she might have said, not wanting to hear more evidence of her pain. A deep breath strengthened her, and she leaned her elbow against the door, using that propped angle to steady her hand, forcing the key into the slot. Once inside, she thumbed the lever on the deadbolt, locking the door behind her with a deep sigh. Safe.

  Dropping her messenger bag to the floor, an empty water bottle inside clashed against something and she flinched at the noise it made, muscles all over her body screaming as she tensed to run. Safe, she reassured herself, I’m safe, doing her best to ignore the speeding pounding of her heart. When she was certain she could stand on her own, she pushed herself away from the wall. Dragging footsteps changed to soft padding as she clumsily kicked off her shoes on her way across the room and headed towards the hallway leading to the back of her house.

  Sagging to sit on one corner of the mattress, she rested on her bed for long minutes staring at nothing, wrapped in the visions pouring through her head as she relived everything. Images and smells, touch that bled into pain rising to levels she never knew existed, the last twenty-four hours ran in an unstoppable loop through her head. Unable to close the doors on her memories, she sat blind to everything around her, sinking deep into the agony of the things she’d endured. Her breathing gave evidence to her rising emotions as it hitched and shuddered at irregular intervals, never quite turning back into sobs, but the threat was present.

  Finally exhausted, her eyes sagged closed, the darkness allowing the images to slide away, bringing her back to herself. Sore all over, she hurt, found that even breathing was agonizing, and knew a hot shower would help make it not hurt so much. A shower would require undressing, and as she moved to accomplish this, she found it was a chore to make her arms move, those reluctant limbs making it a struggle to lift the hem of her shirt, pulling the stained material up and over her head.

  The shirt snagged on something, causing pain to shoot through her face, and suddenly she was fighting the fabric half hooding her head, struggling to breathe as she ripped it off, flinging the shirt as far away as she could. Now the sobs returned in earnest, no longer threatening but overwhelming, crashing in on her as she dropped her face into her hands. Feeling the wetness dampening the dried fluids on her face, the slickness sickening as it reminded her of so many things she’d rather forget. All for nothing, she thought, twisting her hand and wiping across her face with one wrist.

  She reached up with her other hand, fingers gingerly tracing across the artifact she’d taken away with her. The physical reminder of a mistake so damaging, she might never get past it. The souvenir that would serve to keep her safe going forwards. Please, God. Pain followed her touch, less sharp this time, the small piece of metal moving in small circles in response to her prodding.

  Standing, she slowly stripped out of her jeans, groaning as she used the toes of her feet to edge them off her legs, leaving them on the floor next to the bed. In her underwear, she tottered to the bathroom, heat from the raised, red marks on her skin exaggerating the chill in the air, making her shiver. Lights still off, legs as exhausted as the rest of her, she stumbled over nothing. Arms flying out to catch herself on the sink, she took the last step forwards while leaning on the basin. A dark shape hovered in the mirror in front of her, the silhouette unfamiliar and she nearly screamed before the figure moved with her flinch, and she realiz
ed she saw herself.

  Dragging in a deep breath that spread agony through her ribs, she closed her eyes and reached out a hand, fingers fumbling a moment before she flipped the light switch. Illumination bloomed in front of her eyelids, and she stood there, chin tipped down, waiting for the time when it would feel right to look at the woman in the mirror. Saliva flooded her mouth as her mind ran back through the events of the past few hours. Arriving at the arranged meet, forcing herself to walk through the door and into his house, knowing she would be forever changed when it came time to exit. I’m alive. Upright and breathing. Swallowing convulsively, she lifted her chin and opened her eyes.

  At first, her gaze didn’t know where to pause, what to look at, what to focus on first, and her eyes jittered, darting back and forth, tracking and tracing and marking the changes in her appearance. Blood and bruises darkened her pale skin, and her short-cropped hair was matted to the side of her head in places. Fingerprint-shaped purple marks dotted her throat and jaw, the unmistakable outline of a hand raised in a red welt on her cheek.

  When she could no longer take it in, no longer stand to look at herself, she let her eyes sink closed, blindly reaching out for a washcloth from the stack on the counter. Hands to the taps, she ran cold water, dampening the cloth, and then, beginning at her hairline, slowly and methodically cleaned her face. Her lids flickered open periodically, allowing her to check her progress, moving mostly by feel until she came to the unfamiliar outline at her brow.