by Finn, Emilia
“Yes. And they both died for it.” For the first time in a long time, tears slide over my cheeks and drip off the tip of my nose. “They died because I wanted to talk to my wife and sing a lullaby to my daughter so she could go to sleep. They died because I disregarded everything I was trained to do, because I felt like the rules didn’t apply to us.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Eric.”
I push her hands off and sit back. “It was literally my fault. They died because of me. And then I got scared, because the parallels are too close. It’s too close.”
“What’s too close?”
“You and Mac! I’m in love with you, Katrina, and I love your son. Mac and Callie are the same age. Literally. They were born the same year. We were diapering babies at the same time, but you did yours here, and I did mine there. You were awake for the two a.m. feedings just like Gem was. And when you were struggling with an energetic four-year-old, I was burying mine. At the exact same fucking time! I left you because I’m terrified of it happening twice. A man shouldn’t be expected to do it even once. Twice is impossible.”
“Are they…” She swallows nervously. “Is Derrick still alive?”
“Yes.” I look up when she gasps. “Kane got us out of that room that day. We killed men, we hurt others, and later, when my team had a minute to plan, they ended that club and brought in the men who survived that meeting. Grudges haven’t been forgotten, Katrina, but for a minute there, I thought they had.” I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut. “I wasn’t running from you forever. I was just running long enough to catch my breath. But then I got home, and Derrick’s people had left messages on my machine. Aren knew about Kane and Jess. He knew about Jay and Soph. He knew about Cruz and Andi.”
“Did he… did he know about me?” Her face is so pale. “Does he know about my son?”
“No. Or if he does, he didn’t mention you. But it was enough.” I reach forward and grip her hands. “He has eyes on us, even if those eyes missed you and Mac. He has spies, and risking you wasn’t an option.”
“So you ran?”
“Yes.” I drop my head. “I ran, and I acted like I have no fucking clue who you are. We installed the best security system in your home that money can buy; I have your whole fucking life in my phone, and that watch you wear…” I turn her wrist. “It monitors your heart rate. I literally know where you are and if you’re breathing. Invasion of privacy? Yup. But do I care? Not one little fuckin’ bit. I never stopped caring about you, and I never stopped watching. But the thought of you being in danger was too much, so I walked.”
Silence overtakes the room for a beat while she glances between the photos in my living room, then my eyes. Like she needs the time to figure out her next move. Or approximately how many miles she has to move to escape me. “You’re a civilian now, right?”
“Yes.”
“And Kane is having babies.”
“Yes. But to be fair, that happened before the phone messages. He’s not panicking, but he’s not being complacent either. He’s taking measures to keep his family safe.”
“He’s saying he’s willing to risk it. He’s not putting his life on hold because of a threatening phone call.”
I look up and meet her eyes. “It’s more than a phone call, Katrina. It’s… They’re dangerous people. They have reach, and power, and good fucking memories. It’s been ten years, and that motherfucker still finds my new home, my new number, and leaves a message that he knew would get him slammed into solitary.”
“He must be really bored in prison.” Her lips twitch with a pathetic smile, but it drops again when I frown.
“This isn’t a joke to me. This is my wife and daughter, and now it’s you and Mac. It’s not a fucking joke.”
“I don’t think it’s a joke either,” she chokes out. “I think you’ve terrified me beyond sensible thought, and now I can’t think of anything reasonable or intelligent to say. You’re sitting here and telling me your family was brutally stolen from you, and then correlating that to me and my son. The son I’ve worked myself nearly to death to keep fed and safe. What the hell did you think would come of this conversation? A big kiss and a happy reunion?”
What did I expect to come of this? When Angelo came back down to his garage where I just happened to be hanging out and sent me upstairs to face my demons, did I expect this would be the end of our pain and the start of a brave new team willing to walk forward together?
Did I expect my problems to be talked away? Did I expect forgiveness or a blind eye turned to my mistakes?
Yes, I kinda think I did expect all of that. Or at the very least, I hoped for it.
“I wanted you to know my truths. And to know that I never stopped loving you.” I don’t reach out when she stands and moves across the room. She acts as though she’s scanning the photos on my shelves again, but this time, it’s purely about avoidance. “I’d rather that you were pissed at me, but alive. Rather than in a relationship and dead. I’d rather not keep this secret from you, when Gem and Callie literally were my life for the longest time. They’re part of the very fabric of my soul, and hiding them is disrespectful. So if nothing else, I’m glad you know, and you also know that you need to be careful. My world isn’t safe, so now you’ve been warned.”
She turns back after a long minute and nibbles on her thumbnail. “Is there ever going to be a time where those people aren’t a threat to you? Derrick and whatshisname?”
“Derrick Ireland and Aren Aristov.” I pull in a long breath and let it out on a stilted exhale. “I honestly don’t know. Soph is taking care of some stuff; she’s doing what she does best with computers and may or may not be moving files around. She swears she’s taking care of them, and since I don’t know the details, I’m not guilty of anything that may or may not go down.”
She chokes out a soft laugh. “Sounds… nice and neat. And like a good defense should something happen and the case go to trial.”
I shrug. “I don’t know what she’s doing. I don’t care, so long as it’s silencing them and keeping you guys safe. Realistically, you shouldn’t be here right now. It’s already dangerous.”
“So that leaves us…?”
I shrug. “At an impasse, I guess. Nothing has changed.”
She watches me for a while as a heavy wind picks up outside and the heat inside turns this place into a sauna. When I say nothing more, she nods, then inclines her head. “I’m truly sorry to hear about your wife and baby.” Her eyes meet mine. “Really, I am. I don’t know how you survived that. There’s no way I could. I wish things could be different for you, and the worst part is,” her voice catches, “if they were, then we never would have met. I wouldn’t know what this feels like.” She presses a hand to her chest. “I’m so sorry, Eric.”
I nod in understanding. She’s saying goodbye. “I love you, Katrina. Be safe.”
A cry tears up her throat, but she turns on her heels and dashes away, leaving me all alone in my apartment, my world, my head. I pick up my phone before she’s out the door, then I hit my very own version of a panic button to let Ang know she’s coming down and that he needs to walk her back to the diner. Two blocks is both near and impossibly far. It’s easy, but immeasurably dangerous for someone I care about. So I call him to take care of my girl, to get her home safely when I can’t do it myself.
Then I fall back against the cushions and stare at my ceiling.
28
Eric
“Incoming.” Spence’s murmur comes from behind his hand of cards. He does nothing more but glance to his phone when the security system outside his building shows us we have someone on the property.
It’s no one he has to be afraid of.
But someone I’m kind of terrified of.
“Also, why aren’t we playing poker like real men?”
“Because I don’t know how to play poker,” Jess snaps from my left. “Anyone got a four?”
“Go fish.” My lips twitch at the fact we’re a group of
hardened men; we’ve seen shit and done worse, but we’re softened like a big bag of cotton candy because the women don’t know how to play a real game of poker. So we play a children’s game instead to keep Jess busy and not focused on the fact she can’t see her feet.
The skinny girl is losing her ever-loving mind because she doesn’t fit into itty bitty jeans anymore. But instead of being annoyed by it, I find it cute. Jessie is having a thug’s babies, but I’ve obviously learned nothing from my mistakes over the years, because I’m following her everywhere she goes, granting her every wish, stopping barely short of rubbing her feet, and instead of doing my job – the job I’ve handed over to Sophia – I’m more focused on calling home and making sure everyone is okay.
“Hello?” Gravel crunches beneath a pair of shoes just outside the main door. “Yo, anybody here?”
“In here.” I toss a four at Jess and grin when she glowers. “I gotta work. Be good. Don’t shoot anybody.”
“I got it, Cap.” Kane sits back beside his girl and slides his fingertips along the back of her neck in slow patterns. He’s her man, and he’s got her under control, but I still consider her a little bit mine. My responsibility. My little sister of sorts. “You gotta take care of your own gangster.”
I scoff and toss the last of my cards onto the table. “Yeah. Yours is scarier.” I turn away when Kane’s eyes twinkle with fun. His other hand comes to her swollen belly while Jay sits to his right and watches them with that same awe in his eyes that he had the day Jess announced.
He’s psyched that there are babies on the way.
“Fuckwhit?”
“Yeah, I’m coming. Jesus, kid.” I meet him at the front door and buzz the locks open. Mac stands at the glass with his Space Jam cap pulled on backwards, hair in his tired eyes, but a quirky grin pulling up one side of his lips. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He walks past me with attitude and zero thanks for holding the door. His shoulder slams against mine, but the snicker on his breath says he’s in a good mood today. He could be coming here to whale on me. I guess it’s my lucky day. He stops at the doorway to the room I was just in and glances from face to face. Kane, Jess, Jay, Soph, Spence. And then my empty chair. “Bishops. Ladies.” He flashes a peace sign and walks away knowing he just disrespected Spencer on his own property.
“Motherfucker! Get back here and say my name.”
“I did.”
“I’m not a Bishop, you little prick.”
“Oh, I know.” He acts unafraid, but his steps speed up when Spence tosses his cards down and his chair scrapes back as he stands. Laughing, Mac leads the way to the far side of the building, to the storage room we’ve kept the little Smith & Wesson in since his first time here. There’s no way in hell I’m sending him home with a gun, but we keep this one here for him, separate, locked up, safe. He learned on his first day how to shoot, and by the second, he was grouping.
His mother will straight up murder me if she ever finds out about this, but I kinda figure she already wants to murder me for lying and breaking her heart, so what’s one more mark on my record?
Pissed and safe is better than dead, and there’s nothing anyone can say that’ll convince me otherwise.
We collect his gun and rounds, and I grab extras for myself. I toss cash into the drawer for Spence, then lock it all up again and lead Mac into the yard outside. “How’s your mom?”
“Twenty-seven seconds.”
I slow my steps and frown. “Huh?”
“It took you twenty-seven seconds to ask about her,” he laughs. “Yesterday, you lasted fifty-something seconds. I thought you’d be getting better at this, not worse.”
“Shut your mouth, wise ass.” I push him through a doorway until we’re back on gravel and face a massive yard – formerly a farm – stacked with all sorts of adult jungle gym shit. Hay bales, temporary walls, dummies that have their faces already blown off, and dead ends even I still get fucked over in.
“Explain to me again why you don’t just go to her? You still like her; she still pretends she doesn’t like you. It’s kinda perfect, right?”
“It’s none of your business.” I lay our things on a steel workbench that rests against the back of the building we were just in. “It’s grown up shit and none of your business. You need to focus on kid shit.”
He extends an arm toward the yard around us. It’s cold as hell, and the hat he wears can’t possibly keep him warm, but he still smiles and ignores his red nose. “Kid stuff…like shooting ranges?”
“Exactly.” I pass him the unloaded pistol, then a full magazine on the table. “Show me.”
Nodding, he holds the empty gun in his left hand, then picks the magazine up in his right. He has struggled to get it in before, but he learns fast, because he pushes it up with a smooth slide until it clicks into place. Without prompting, he racks it with a fast click-click, then turns to me with serious eyes. “Ready.”
“First go. You’re getting better at this.”
He shrugs. “No time to fuck it up. Also, my mom is fine. Same as usual, work, stress, stress about stress, then stress about the cheesecake cups she’s eating to battle the stress, which adds stress because she thinks her butt is getting a little jiggly.”
Katrina’s ass is exactly right the way it is, though, of course, I can’t tell her kid about that. “Does she smile?”
His dimples pop when he smiles. “Sometimes. Sometimes not. Mostly she’s just quiet. I’ve had a couple extra PT sessions the last couple weeks.”
I look down. “Your leg bothering you?”
“It’s not anything bad. I’m just juggling a lot with school, the gym, running here most days, then work.”
“You doing good there?” I snatch up two pairs of safety glasses from the box on the end of the table, pass him one pair, then slide the other to the top of my head.
“Yeah. Franky and Mom won’t let me put in too many hours, but I have an official job now, and my tips are sorta starting to fill that jar on our fridge. It makes her happy to see me busy and outta trouble, so I do what I have to, and squeeze everything around that.”
I look to my watch. “What time do you have to be outta here?”
“I have an hour, if I’m running back to town. Or ninety minutes if you wanna give me a ride.”
“I’ll give you a ride to the garage, not to the diner.”
He shrugs. “Suits me. That gives me longer on this, and Mom will never have to know I was here.”
Suits me.
I let him hold his gun, nodding with approval when he points it toward the ground. With my hand on his shoulder, I steer him toward the yard we’re going to be practicing on today. “This is your first time out here, so don’t worry about speed. Worry about hitting your targets. Accuracy is the most important thing we need to learn, because a man with a gun is dangerous, and shooting off rounds in any direction is straight up fucking homicidal. Get the accuracy, and next time, we’ll work on speed.”
He holds the S&W with two hands and reminds me of a fighter the way his shoulders come up to guard his chin. It’s strange how he can be both, a fighter and a shooter. Fists and guns. Both painful. Both deadly. And he’ll be been trained as well as any of the men inside the building behind us. “Don’t waste your rounds. If you don’t hit your target with every shot, we pack it up and go back inside. I don’t want a single rogue shot.”
He nods. “I got it.” He accepts the ear plugs I pull from my pockets, shoves them in until the pink foam pokes out of his ears, then slides his glasses on. “My mom told me something last night. Something kinda important.”
“Yeah?” We’re definitely focusing on accuracy over speed as we walk the track. Normally we’d run it; we’d have moments of sprinting, of jumping, rolling, diving. But all we do right now is walk, stop at a checkpoint, then once Mac fires off his perfect shot, we keep moving. “What about?”
“About a little girl named Callie.” His eyes come to mine. They hold sympathy, fear, a little con
fusion. He’s just a boy, pretending to be a man. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a kid? She’s my age, but you didn’t think it was something you could have mentioned?”
Instead of answering, I counter with my own question. “Why’d your mom tell you? The whole point is to keep you safe, not give you nightmares.”
He shrugs, slows at the next target, and makes his shot. “I caught her in a weak moment, I guess. She wasn’t crying or anything, not like actual tears, but she was sad. I heard her come home after work, so I got up to take a piss, and when I came out, she was sitting on the couch just kinda staring at the wall. I asked her what was up.”
We stop at our third target; he makes his shot and makes it look easy, then we continue on. It could almost be a Sunday stroll, if you ignore the shitty weather and the gun.
“She didn’t wanna tell me, but I think she needed to offload. I try to make it easy to think of me as grown, because there’s no way in hell she’s going to offload to a kid. So I sat down, held her hand, and gave her space to speak. She told me she can’t stop thinking about a little girl named Callie. She has pretty green eyes and light brown hair that curls at the ends.”
“She said that?”
“Uh-huh. She said how she can’t let it go; she can’t stop thinking about her, so I asked who she is.”
“How do you feel about that?” I wait for him to make his next shot, hiding the pride that grows in my chest at his perfect accuracy. “Are you mad I didn’t tell you?”
“Not mad.” He shrugs. “I mean, it’s not really my business, right? I don’t think I’d have changed my mind about you if I’d known. I might have slowed down on suggesting you date my mom, if only so I could make sure you didn’t bring trouble to town with you, but I still like you for her. I still think you’re her match.”
I scoff. I haven’t been into the diner in months. I didn’t follow Katrina when she left my apartment last time, but I got reports back from Angelo, who walked her back, and Jay and Soph, who watched her arrive back at the diner. I know she’s safe. I know she’s alive. But that’s all I get. I have to wait for her now, because whatever we have, whatever we might have been, it’s all in her hands now.