Greatest MC Romance Box Set

by Blair Grey

  I spoke to Javier on a weekly basis. So far it had kept me from going insane. “Sleep hasn’t been my friend. No.”

  “Nightmares waking you up?”

  “Once.” It was a bad one too. “But mostly I’m having trouble getting to sleep. I blame the tension of knowing I’m at the cusp of what I’ve wanted for some time now and the knowledge that I have a gorge the size of the Grand Canyon to jump over to get there.”

  “Now, that is a normal problem, I do think. I would venture to guess that if you put a name on this problem, it would be that of your father.” He waited and stared at me through the screen.

  I hadn’t thought about that. “When I was a kid of ten, and my father came into my bedroom that first night, I knew something was about to change in my life. I don’t know how I knew that, but I knew it without any doubt in my mind at all.”

  “Had your father come into your bedroom on occasions before that?” he asked. “You know, to tell you goodnight or read you a bedtime story?”

  “No. My mother did all that. My father wasn’t usually home when we went to bed. He would come in much later. Oftentimes he would make so much noise that it would wake my sisters and me up.” And then we’d hear him arguing with our mother. And sometimes the sounds of slaps would ring out. That’s when I would pull the pillow over my head to try to pull myself away from the situation.

  I’d been talking to the man for a few months and still, I couldn’t tell him everything about what I’d gone through as a kid. No one knew my whole story. Not a soul.

  “Change feels bad to you then,” he stated. “And that makes perfect sense with what you’ve experienced. But all change is not bad. Think of a time when something changed for the good. Try to replace that in your mind and leave the bad time out of your thoughts.”

  Easier said than done. “The thing is that the negative experiences outweigh the positive ones.”

  “Then make more positive experiences for yourself, Paul. It can be as simple as going to get yourself an ice cream. Maybe you wanted to get one at one time when you were a child, but your parents didn’t allow it. It made you sad that you were denied that simple pleasure. So, go get yourself one. Change that bad memory into a good one.”

  He made it sound so easy. But it wasn’t easy at all. “An ice cream ain’t gonna fix what ails me.” Alcohol worked best. Even though I knew it didn’t work well at all, it was something. And something is better than nothing.

  “You never know until you try.” Wagging a finger at me, he went on, “You have to try some of the suggestions I make, Paul Glass. You cannot just talk and expect things to start to align in your mind. You must do. You must try. You must believe that you can succeed. You can get through this. Allowing it to happen is your problem.”

  He’s right.

  Like a crutch, I held onto my past. It made me who I was. A jokester who preferred laughing over crying described me to a T. “So, get some ice cream or anything else my parents denied me might help. Okay.” I wasn’t sure that the fifty bucks a week I spent on this was worth it. But I had to try something. The sleepless nights and nightmares that woke me up and left me unable to go back to sleep were wearing me down.

  I snapped at a poor dog who ran in front of my bike the other day. I was so furious, that the Pitbull ran away, whimpering after I’d yelled at it.

  Anger issues were a thing I hid well. No human ever got the brunt of it. It was always some animal I would scream obscenities at or an inanimate object I would destroy with my bare hands. But it was out of control, whatever the case.

  “Along with that, I would like you to try to revisit that boy you were that first night the abuse began. But instead of letting the memory play out the way it happened in reality, I want you to use your grown man’s mind to change what happened.” He ran his finger along his forehead as if cutting a line on it. “Open your brain up and input new memories. Go back in time, so to speak, and change the outcome of what has hurt you for so long.”

  “Come on,” I rolled my eyes. “You can’t change the past. You can’t pretend it never happened.”

  “You can make yourself believe that it didn’t happen the way you’ve always thought it had. You can turn that memory around in your mind. Try it. You will see that it can be done. Put yourself right back in that place and time and you can change what happened. So, tell me what you would’ve done differently if you’d had a mature brain to work with when you were ten.”

  “I’ve thought about this more than once.” During the sleepless nights, while I struggled with why I’d let that happen to me, I had come up with a simple thing I could’ve done the first time that would’ve saved me from all of it. “I never said a word. I could have yelled for my mother. If anyone had come into my room, even one of my little sisters, he wouldn’t have gone through with it. He never wanted any witnesses. He never said that, but I knew it.”

  “Your father didn’t threaten to hurt someone you loved to make you stay quiet about what he’d done to you?” His expression dubious, it was obvious he thought I wasn’t telling him everything.

  Which I wasn’t. But my father hadn’t had to tell me a thing. He knew I would be too ashamed to tell anyone that I’d let him touch me. He counted on my shame. But one day that shame took a backseat and I did tell my mother about the things he’d done to me and we’d left that very day.

  “My father knew me. He knew me better than I knew myself. At least for a while. It was me who told my mother what had been going on and she packed up our clothes and we left everything else behind. She took us to her parents’ house in Baltimore and we never saw our father again.” If only my sister had told our mother what he’d done to her, then maybe she wouldn’t have taken her life.

  “So, here is the exercise I want you to practice this week,” he coached me. “Go back in your mind to that night and this time you will shout for your mother as soon as your father opens the door. Did you wake up when he did that? Or did you wake up a bit later than that?”

  “It was pitch black when I woke up. He never said a single word. Not any of the five times he did that to me, did he say a thing.” My body went ice cold as I recalled every last detail. “I would wake up from what I thought was some kind of a sex dream. My dick would be hard. But it was that way because of what he’d been doing to it. I would gasp each time I woke up with that dark figure touching me that way. His only sound would be a soft shush as he kept on doing what he’d been doing. He wouldn’t stop until I made the little grunting sound that escaped me when I had an orgasm. They were dry, nothing came out of me but that little noise. Then he would get off the side of my bed and leave. My underwear would be on the floor next to the bed and I would get up, put them back on, then lie awake in my bed until Mom came to wake me up to go to school.”

  It seemed that staying quiet was hereditary. My father had done it. I had done it. And my sister, Sandra had done it. Only Stacy had been left alone. I knew that for sure. She’d been a baby of only one and a half. If he’d have touched her, she would’ve cried, and he would’ve gotten caught.

  The thing that bothered me was that he’d never gotten caught or even told that my mother knew what he’d done. Instead, she used adultery as the charges to get a divorce. She never told anyone about what I’d told her – not even him. She told them all that he’d been having affairs like crazy and she’d finally found out.

  She didn’t even talk to me about what had happened to me. I guess she’d done something along the lines of what Javier was telling me to do. She made up a different memory in her mind and decided to believe that one and let the far more disturbing one get lost in the deep well of memories she had that it could hide amongst.

  I had lots of memories as well that I could try to hide the disturbing ones in. “I’ll give it a shot, Javier. Thanks for the advice. You have a good day.”

  “You, as well, Paul. Talk to you next week.”

  With the session over, I set to work, trying to find something on Dean St
rong that I could use to make my brain okay with taking his life. Plus, it helped me not to think about myself and my unpleasant past.

  Strong had been with the DEA for eight years. He’d been a part of many drug busts during that time. What I’d found so far made him seem like a great agent.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere online as all the information on him was from the DEA website, so it was spun to look good on them. Calling up Axel, an Iron Cobra member who owned the strip club, The Executive Viper, I was sure Dean had tried to shut the place down if he was being a nuisance to the Iron Cobras. I knew he would help me if he could.

  “Afternoon, Garrett,” Axel answered my call.

  “Good afternoon to you, Axle. I’m looking up stuff on this Dean Strong guy. Since all there is online is stuff that’ll make the DEA look good, I haven’t found even a smidgeon of dirt on the guy.”

  “Yeah, they like to keep their agents looking pretty pristine,” he agreed. “I can tell you that the man has issues with the ladies. He’s arrogant, cocky, and thinks he’s God’s gift to women. I’ve witnessed him grabbing and touching some of my girls when they weren’t into it. He wears these stupid disguises so he must think no one knows it’s him, but we all know.”

  “That’s pretty disgusting.” But it wasn’t enough to make me want to kill the prick.

  “Yeah, well, there’s more,” he told me, sparking up hope for me. “This one dancer got closer to him than anyone else did. But she came to me and asked that she never have to deal with him again.”

  “He must’ve done something bad to her,” I commented.

  “Not her,” he let me know. “He was bitching to her about this woman he works with – a fellow agent named Johansson. I’m not sure of the first name. But I do know that she has blonde hair because he referred to her blonde hair and blue eyes that he’d said made her think of herself as some angel from above and not a flesh and blood woman.”

  “Wow.” I had blonde hair and blue eyes and I had never thought of myself as an angel from above. But I had known women who had thought that way, regardless of their physical attributes. “I can see that happening.”

  “Well, he was pissed because he gave this Johansson woman what she needed - meaning he took her by force. And the agency put him on probation for a year for doing it. But no formal charges were ever brought against him.” He sighed. “This motherfucker has some sort of a lucky star over his head. He gets away with more shit than you can imagine. He’s a shoot first and ask questions later kind of man.”

  It sounds like he’s a fucking rapist and that is an offense I can see taking a life over.

  Chapter Four

  Nicki

  When I got to the apartment in Baltimore, I found my new look waiting for me inside. Apparently, I was to look like the girl next door. Plenty of t-shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes were in the closet. Lots of scrunchies were in the bathroom and the makeup they’d given me was minimal. I was to just fit in and not be noticed.

  After showering, I got ready for my first day on the job after meeting with the Baltimore police officer who’d been assigned the case. She had little to no clue who’d left the car full of drugs in the Walmart parking lot.

  All I knew so far was that whoever parked the car was smart enough to make sure there were no security cameras around to catch them doing it. The car was in the impound yard though, so my next task was to check it out.

  No one had gone over it with a fine-tooth comb yet, I’d be the first. I liked it that way. People had tendencies to move things around and that made it difficult to know much about who had been inside the car.

  Dressed in an outfit from the apartment, with my badge on a lanyard around my neck, I tucked it inside my t-shirt to be sure no one could see it. Blending in, meant not letting anyone know that I was an agent.

  They’d given me a small, tan Toyota Corolla to drive. I was the epitome of plain. So when I drove up to the impound lot and got out of my car, no one batted an eye at me as I went up to talk to the officer on duty. I flashed my badge then put it back into my shirt. “I need to see this car.” I slipped the girl inside the box a piece of paper with the license plate number for the black, Chevy Impala I was there to see.

  Taking a set of keys off the pegboard, she slid them under the plexiglass to me. “There you go, Agent Johansson. Just drop the keys here off when you’re done.”

  Walking back, I found the car then unlocked it to begin my search. The car was registered to a dead man, so following that link was a dead end. When I opened the door, the smell of popcorn hit me smack dab in the nose. “Someone had a thing for popcorn.” I looked in the panel of the driver’s door. And there I found a clue right off the bat. Pulling a zippered plastic bag out of the pocket of my jeans, I pulled a set of disposable gloves out of the other one and set to work gathering clues.

  Clue one – a Styrofoam cup, medium-sized, from a local convenient store called, Rudy’s Corner Store. I loved it when businesses put their names of things like cups.

  Our driver had made a stop to get some popcorn and a drink before parking the car and hadn’t bothered to throw the empty cup away.

  I wasn’t too surprised by that though. They’d left the keys in the gas tank. Why not leave some trash behind for the person who was supposed to pick the car up to have to deal with?

  It isn’t often that the person responsible for picking up a drug-filled car is beaten to it by the authorities. One thing was for sure, someone was in a shitload of trouble with their bosses.

  The line of responsibility would travel all the way back to the person who’d left the car to be picked up. They might’ve left the car in the wrong place. A miscommunication could’ve occurred.

  This could mean that the person who was in trouble for not having the car would be seeking the person who’d left the car. And they might be seeking that person in the same place they knew them to hang out.

  Rudy’s Corner Store.

  Three, long, black hairs were on the headrest. Plucking them out, I added them to my bag. Some spearmint gum wrappers lay on the floor near the gas pedal.

  And finally, I saw the empty popcorn box in the back floorboard. Another Styrofoam cup was back there too. This one had a little liquid left in it. The smell told me it was root beer.

  The tendency to have a couple of drinks, a box of popcorn, and a pack of gum just to take a car from point A to point B told me I was looking for a heavier person. And by the coarse texture of the hair, which I would have to drop off at the lab, I thought I needed to look for a male. Probably a male in his late twenties. The gum was a brand known to be a favorite of that age group as well.

  With a pretty clear picture in my head, I went back to my car after dropping the keys off with the poor girl whose job it was to sit in a box all day.

  Not many bad guys hang out in the light of day. The car had been found in the parking lot by the attendant at fifteen after one in the morning. The attendant had made a pass by the same area only thirty minutes earlier. He knew there was something fishy because of the late hour and he’d been on his phone with a girl who was working as a cashier inside the store. She’d told him that it had been two hours since anyone had come inside the store at all. So, he knew whoever had parked the car that far away from the store hadn’t gone inside.

  With no one to be seen in the area, he hung out near the car for a few minutes. Something bothered him about the whole thing, and he called police who came and found the keys in the gas tank. And things had transpired from there.

  I wanted to check out the corner store before it got late. Then I would come back later to see who was hanging out. Pulling up to the store that was easy to find and only a few blocks down the street from the place the car was left at, I thought it to be well lit as it was nine at night.

  It wasn’t the kind of place bad guys would be hanging out. It was clean and the lady behind the counter greeted me as I came inside, “Hi. Welcome to Rudy’s Corner Store. You let me know if you need any he
lp, now.” Her southern accent stood out.

  “You’re not from here, huh?” I looked at the candy aisle.

  “I’m from Mississippi. You can tell, huh?” She laughed. “I’ve been in Baltimore for a year and still everyone can tell that I ain’t from here. My boyfriend, Max, says I’ve got to ditch the accent. It makes me stand out too much.”

  There were few people who cared if someone they were with, stood out too much. Drug dealers were one of the few who cared about such things.

  Picking up a pack of the same type of gum I’d found in the car, I went to see if they had a popcorn machine. “I think your accent makes you unique. Well, in this part of the country, it does. I’m sure you don’t stand out at all where you’re from.” I found the machine full of freshly popped corn. “Did you make this recently?”

  “I did. It’s good too. You should try some. If you want, I can give you a sample cup so you can try it before you buy it.” She pulled a small cup from underneath the counter.

  Going to take it from her, I found her to be extremely pleasant. “Thank you. I’ll take you up on that.” Looking around, I didn’t readily see the section with the fountain drinks. “I’d love a root beer fountain drink. Do you have those here?”

  “We’re out of root beer right now. But there’re plenty of other flavors.” She pointed the way to the soda fountain.

  “That’s okay.” I put a few kernels of popcorn in the cup then tasted them. “This is good. Can I see what sizes you have?”

  She held up a two by four with several sizes of popcorn boxes glued onto it. “The extra-large is the best buy. It’s more than twice the size of the large but it’s only a quarter higher in price. It’s my boyfriend’s favorite. I always make him a fresh batch when he has time to come see me when I’m working the late shift.”

  “That’s nice that he comes to spend time with you while you’re working so late.” Most people would be sleeping while others worked the late shift. “Does he have a day job?”