Gold Cage

by Francesca Baez

  But Olivia doesn’t make us say it, and she doesn’t bother with her half of the script either. No how could you know, or but I’ve never told anyone that. Instead, she repeats her original query, this time with a bit less fire.

  “What do you want?”

  “Money,” I say. This part should be easy enough. “Monthly deposits, for as long as we see fit. In exchange, we won’t tell dear Richard about this. Harold gets to keep that juicy inheritance, and you get to keep life as you know it.”

  “This is illegal,” Olivia says simply, but without any fight left in her. Good girl.

  I’m about to go on when the bell above the cafe door jingles, a sound that’s been happening every few minutes, but this time it’s accompanied by a sudden silence from the other patrons. Olivia is facing the door, and I see her eyes go wide again, maybe wider than they did when we approached her, those thin lips opening as if to scream. Miel follows her gaze and the look on her face tells me everything, but I still have to turn and see for myself.

  Three men stand in the entrance, and I don’t have to check the tattoos on their arms to recognize them or who sent them. Marco, Dante, and Caleb. Once upon a time I might’ve called them friends. The ice in their eyes leaves no room for interpretation regarding the updated status of our relationship. Not to mention the guns they’re all brazenly waving around, safety off.

  Really? Right here in Buckhead, in broad daylight? But there’s no time to marvel at how badly we’re wanted dead. There’s barely time to grab at the Glock tucked into my waistband, just under my shirt. I make fast eye contact with Miel. She’s terrified, I know her well enough to recognize that, but she’s not letting it paralyze her.

  The guys are strutting towards us now, leveling their weapons at any patrons that seem to be moving toward their phones. Seeing our own drawn weapons, Olivia is shaking now, a full-body tremor with silent tears moistening her cheeks. Assuming we all make it out of this alive, I hope she’ll remember this fear. It’ll make our second conversation go by a lot faster.

  We aren’t dead yet, which means these guys don’t have kill orders. Bad news, that means he wants to kill us himself, which won’t be nearly as pleasant as getting shot down in a high-end coffee shop. Good news, that means we stand at least half a chance of getting out of here in one piece.

  I’m standing now, pointing my gun at Marco, the trio’s leader. I can feel Miel rising to her feet just behind me, her own weapon ready.

  “Don’t be stupid, Vega,” Marco says, getting too close, too fast. “It’s over, man.”

  I say nothing, not needing or wanting to waste energy on a comeback. For once, Miel keeps her mouth shut too. I can’t look at her over my shoulder right now, pass along a message through eye contact. I just have to hope that despite the recent chasm between us, we can still be in sync when it counts.

  We must be, because she’s my shadow as I dodge left, making a beeline to the order counter, where the underpaid cafe employees are cowering in their brown aprons and goofy caps. Miel slides over first, sending paper cups and plastic lids flying everywhere, and crouches behind the counter, gun raised for cover as I leap over. There’s a gunshot, chased by a dozen shrieks, but the bullet misses me by a foot, bursting open a huge cannister of coffee beans and sending them onto the floor in a cascade. Miel slides on the debris, nearly losing her footing, but recovers quickly and throws open the swinging chrome door toward the kitchen, dodging behind it. I wonder if the people working back here called the police, or if they fled out the back door long ago. If the police are on their way, Miel and I are just as fucked as our enemy.

  Another bullet, this one hitting the glass window of the kitchen door, shattering it. Miel gives a little scream and ducks, but quickly rises to provide cover as I make my way toward her. She shoots over my shoulder, and I see blood beginning to drip down her chin from a gash along her cheek where a shard of glass must have gotten her. There’s no time, no fucking time. I reach the kitchen door and we’re almost out.

  Then there’s another gunshot, and this one doesn’t miss.

  * * *

  I should be vacuuming the carpet upstairs. There’s a trail of cookie crumbs leading directly toward Miel’s room. Instead, I’m potentially feeding into the problem. I’ve got a German chocolate cake in the oven—technically just a regular chocolate cake at this stage,—and I’m sitting on the kitchen floor, watching through the tiny glass window like a hawk as the batter ever so slowly rises up into baked fluff. The little bell goes off after exactly thirty minutes, letting me know it’s go time, but as I stare at the dark shape inside the oven, everything inside me screams to wait just another minute or two. I nibble on my bottom lip nervously as the seconds tick past the recommended bake time. Who am I to tempt fate? In the background I hear Hernando and Brock scrambling around, muttering anxiously. Vega and Miel must be back, and these two have been doing nothing all day but goofing off on the Xbox. No wonder they’re panicking. Ever since that photo was published a couple weeks ago, Vega has been working everyone to their limit.

  There. Something inside me clicks, and I jerk the oven door open, grabbing the cake out as fast as I can. Even through the thick mitt I can feel the comforting warmth of the scorching-hot metal pan. I set it down gently on the counter and examine it closely, giving the chocolatey flesh a gentle poke with my fingertip. Moist, firm, perfect. I exhale into a huge grin. Did I finally do it? Did I finally master the painfully basic chore of baking a cake? I hear the front door open and shut, and footsteps heading to the kitchen.

  “Hey guys,” I call out cheerfully, not caring that Vega will be pissed at me for not doing my chores, or that being this excited over a damn cake is embarrassing, even for me. I pick the cake back up and spin around to show off as I hear the kitchen door swing open. “Look what I—”

  Blood.

  The cake slips easily out of my mitted hands, tin landing on the floor in a triumphant crash. I don’t see exactly what happens to my masterpiece. All I see is blood, staining the front of Miel’s shirt, drying on her chin, still dribbling from a sharp cut across her cheek. More blood, soaking through Vega’s shirt sleeve, slipping through the cracks between the fingers of the hand he’s pressing hard against his bicep. There’s a stubbornly silent grimace on his face, and my feet stumble forward of their own accord. I’m vaguely aware of a chunk of chocolate squishing under my foot, but my senses are busy being overwhelmed by all the fucking blood.

  Miel manages to give the illusion of throwing Vega my way without even touching him. I swear I haven’t moved, but somehow I’m in front of him, my hands raising to touch him, then freezing confusedly in midair. They don’t know what I’m doing, feeling, thinking either.

  “This is your fault,” Miel spits at me, jerking her bleeding head at the wounded Vega. “Fix it.”

  My fault? How the hell? But Miel is already spinning on her heel and marching out of the kitchen. Hernando and Brock look at Vega hesitantly, but he just nods at them.

  “I’m fine here,” he says, making my heart falter. Am I really supposed to handle whatever this is? “Brock, see that she patches that cut up right and that she’s not hurt anywhere else. Hernando, we weren’t followed, but I need you to get online and make sure we got away clean, especially with the cops. And make sure Olivia Duvernay isn’t talking.”

  Olivia Duvernay? Paper towel trophy wife? How the hell is she involved in any of this? Hernando and Brock are both nodding curtly, running off in their respective directions, and suddenly it’s just me and Vega and all the blood, the walls of the kitchen closing in tight around us.

  “What happened?” I make myself breathe out, as Vega heads toward the big kitchen sink. Now that everyone else is gone, he seems to be letting just a sliver of the pain he must be in onto his face. “Is it really my fault somehow?”

  “No, Miel’s just being a bitch because she’s pissed and in pain,” Vega says, and I can tell he instantly feels bad for saying anything negative or humanizing about
his right-hand gal to me. “Listen, you don’t have to worry about this. Just go upstairs for a while, I’ll be fine.”

  He releases the pressure of his hand, and I glimpse the roundish shape of the wound as a waterfall of fresh blood begins to pour out.

  “Is that a gunshot?” I ask in a shrill stage whisper, although the answer probably should’ve been clear from the start. “Miel too?”

  “Yeah, this is,” Vega says through gritted teeth as he presses the damp, bacteria-laden kitchen towel up to the gushing wound. “Miel got some broken glass to the face. Seriously, Selina, I can handle this on my own.”

  Clearly not, I want to say, tempted to grab that filthy rag off the open wound here and now.

  “No, Javier, let me help,” I say instead, shoving down the beckoning images of gunshot, blood, darkness, pain as deep as they’ll go. This is not the time for a flashback. “There’s a ton of first aid shit in the bathroom upstairs, can you make it up there?”

  It’s not until we’re halfway up the stairs, dripping blood on the sparkling white steps, that I realize I called him by his first name. Why the hell would I do that? I hope he didn’t notice.

  In my giant bathroom, I get Vega to sit on the edge of the tub, where most of the mess should hypothetically be easy to wash down the drain. I dig the first aid kit out from the back of the cabinet. Despite my eye-rolling, Kate insisted on keeping this stocked all these years, and right now I’m grateful.

  Once I’ve gotten all the shit I don’t recognize spilled over the already-messy counter, I freeze, unsure of what comes next. Why did I even drag myself into this? He gave me such an easy out.

  “The bullet is still in there, so you’ll have to get that out before you can do anything else,” Vega says, seeing my hesitance. He forces a humorless laugh. “I don’t suppose you’ve got some good moonshine hidden around here somewhere? I think we could both use some.”

  No, but I do have something better. I jerk open a drawer and find the orange bottle behind a mess of nail polish and half-used tubes of mascara. I check the label real quick. The expiration date was a couple weeks ago, but those are all bullshit anyway, right?

  I shake out a couple pills into my open palm and offer them up to Vega.

  “What’s this?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “Oxy,” I say, pushing my hand closer.

  “Have you been taking this?” Vega asks gruffly, even as he takes the pills from my hand and swallows them dry. I fight the tingle that threatens to dance up my spine when his fingertips brush my palm. We haven’t been this close since we kissed in the del Reys’ stable.

  “No,” I say, shaking the nearly full bottle in his face before tossing it demonstratively in the wastebasket. After everything that happened five years ago, I’d never touch drugs again. I don’t know why I still keep anything even remotely tempting around, honestly. Maybe as a punishment, a reminder of my past sins. Bang, bang. Blood. I give my head a tiny shake to clear it and turn back to Vega. “Okay, now what?”

  “Alcohol,” he says, nodding toward the bottle of rubbing alcohol sitting front and center. I reach for it, and when I turn back Vega is undoing his buttons, shrugging out of his shirt.

  Shit. For a second, I’m paralyzed, eyes fixated on the way crimson blood trails down his toned arm. And his bare chest, each defined ridge and valley glimmering with perspiration—

  “Selina,” he interrupts my reverie, and I startle back to attention, feeling my cheeks heat. With trembling hands I’m glad I can chalk up to the absolutely non-sexual tension of the situation, I unscrew the cap of the plastic bottle. Vega stretches his wounded arm over the tub, and I lean in close, slowly pouring the liquid over the bloody hole in his flesh.

  “Fuck,” he hisses, and he’s too naked to say shit like that. He’s in pain, I remind myself. But what fun is pleasure without a little pain?

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  I turn away quickly, because I just know that whatever is happening to me must be all over my face. I have to focus on the task at hand. Vega, my captor, is hurt. Javier, the man who is ruining my life, needs my help.

  I have to focus.

  What’s next? The bullet has to come out. Do I use tweezers? I have some on my vanity.

  “Just use your hands,” Vega groans, and a twisted rush of heat settles at my center. Women’s pain has always been sexualized for the pleasure of men. Maybe I’m just being a feminist by finding this man’s agonized moans so confusingly arousing.

  FOCUS.

  The bullet. I have to use my hands.

  Over the sink, I pour the last of the rubbing alcohol onto my right hand, then join Vega back at the tub. Did he really think he could take care of this himself, standing over the kitchen sink with nothing but dish soap and greasy rags? I begin at a distance, standing as far from him as I can, but he reaches his good hand out and pulls me closer.

  Blood on my shirt.

  I lower myself down onto the edge of the tub beside him, swinging my legs around to face the opposite direction.

  Blood on my shoes.

  Inhale, exhale.

  Vega lays his wounded left arm across my lap, blood trickling down onto my jeans, gaping gash right in my face, and I can’t believe I have ever felt anything but nauseated by this situation. Still, I’m here, and I desperately want to be the type of person who can come through on her word, even now. Even when my word was to help my enemy.

  Kate was always religious. Love thy enemy, she used to say, when the loss was fresh and I was channeling all my grief into rage against the shooter. She dropped that line pretty fast once I threatened to slap her next time she said it. I would never hurt Kate, of course. But I would never love my enemy, either.

  Focus.

  Blood on my legs.

  I grip Vega’s bicep with my left hand. His arm is thick, warm, and he inhales through his teeth at the touch. He said he’s done this before. Has he been shot a lot? He’s acting like this barely hurts, when it must be one of the worst pains.

  Max didn’t even scream. Didn’t cry. He didn’t have time to hurt. His eyes were glassy when he hit the floor. In my arms, he was still breathing, but I was the only one in pain.

  My fingers are shaking as I reach my right hand toward the wound. I have to do this. He needs me.

  “Hey,” Vega says gently, and my eyes somehow manage to focus on his face. When was the last time I spoke? My mouth feels sewn shut, my tongue stone. Javier is holding my gaze. “Are you sure you can do this?”

  No.

  “Yes,” I breathe out, and I mean it. If I can help, I’m going to help. Even if the man in pain is my tormentor.

  Biting the inside of my cheek, I force my hand to steady and dig my fingers into Vega’s flesh before I have time to let myself think about it. Hot. Wet. I can feel his muscle pulsing around me, or maybe I’m just in my head. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself focused. Find the bullet. I have to find the bullet. Vega is silent, but his good hand reaches out to me, lands on my knee. As I dig around inside his body, his fingers dig into my thigh, squeezing through the pain.

  There’s something warm in my mouth. Blood.

  Blood.

  My fingertips feel something hard. Bone? My vision threatens to blur, black out. No, it’s small. The bullet! It takes a few tries to catch the scrap of metal. My fingers have never felt thicker. Vega’s grip is going to leave bruises on my thigh. He’s trying hard to bite back his pain, but the way I’m digging around in his open arm, even he can’t help but breathe heavy.

  Got it.

  Thank fucking god.

  I pull it out as fast as I can. As soon as my hand is free, my fingers give, and the bullet falls into the porcelain tub with a nearly musical tinkle. I watch it skid down the stream of blood and catch in the drain.

  My hand is covered in blood.

  “You’re doing great,” Vega says, and his hand isn’t on my leg anymore. His voice is thin. He shouldn’t have to be the one doing the pep talk
ing.

  I shouldn’t be doing this for him at all.

  What now?

  I need to disinfect the wound again. The rubbing alcohol is all gone. My eyes skim over the mess on the counter. Hydrogen peroxide. My bloody shoes skid on the floor, but I’m in the zone now. I’m outside of my body, taking care of this shit like I know what I’m doing. My hand wraps around the brown bottle and I’m pouring liquid over the wound again. It bubbles, and Vega hisses, and now it’s time to seal the gash up. Band-aids won’t cut it. My hands dance over all my options, leaving red stains on every one. There’s a suture kit, there, under the Pepto. Kate really did think of everything. Was she just paranoid, or did she know from the start I was destined for trouble? I grab the black silk because I don’t have time to research my options, and in any other situation I’d take black silk over green nylon or blue polyester, too. I meet Vega’s eyes for a quick moment, and he gives me a nod. I wonder if he usually stitches himself back up. I wonder if Miel ever does it for him. I wonder how many messy scars are hiding on his body in places I can’t see.

  The stitches don’t go by quickly. It takes forever and Vega keeps moaning in pain, but I can’t seem to make it better, no matter how hard I try. When we’re finally done, I pour some more hydrogen peroxide, just in case, and tape a thick patch of gauze onto the hopefully repaired wound.

  Then it’s just us, sitting on the edge of the tub, surrounded by blood—blood—and scattered medical supplies and the unending moment we just went through together. Vega’s bad arm is still stretched across my lap, my fingertips still resting gently on his hot flesh. My eyes flutter up to his, which are already on me. We just look at each other for a moment, like we never have, like I’ve always been afraid to. I’ve never felt such closeness to someone, not even naked in bed. What happened between us just now was something… intimate. Intimate and inevitable, despite my best efforts. I’m caught halfway outside of my body, halfway outside of the present. I don’t know which half of me it is that leans in, quick and impulsive, and presses my lips against Javier’s.