by Naomi West
I lead the men toward the south side of the gate, hefting my shotgun and making myself numb to the violence I’m about to be a part of. I remember the first time I went on a raid like this, when I was so scared I could barely think, so scared I didn’t understand what the hell I was doing with a gun in my hand. I kept wondering if I would wake up at the orphanage and all of this would turn out to be the dream of a lost and scared fourteen-year-old kid. But once you’ve fired one bullet, firing the second gets easier, and by the thousandth, you don’t remember how hard it once was to pull the trigger. But there’s added pressure on this job. I have Simone to think about.
Goddamn, but I need to be with her again.
Beast and his men have sawed a gap in the gate near some bushes, just big enough for us to squeeze through. I crawl through first on my elbows and knees, army-style, and Beast follows close behind. Pushing branches out of my face, I creep into the backyard of the mansion, shotgun raised in front of me, ready to fire. The yard is empty. I make it all the way to the back door before seeing anybody. And when I see him, my blood turns to ice. It’s the man himself, Gerald Hightower. I’ve seen him in blurry photographs but never in person.
After hounding us for months and making our lives hell, I expect somebody more mean-looking. But if it wasn’t for his reputation, he’d look like any other normal guy. He’s average height with a plain face except for a mole on the left side of his chin, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. He’s bald on top with a gray strip around the side of his head. I’m guessing he’s fifty, maybe a little older. We meet eyes for a second, and then he drops his mug of hot chocolate and dives for the hallway. I fire my shotgun, shattering the glass of the back door, and then the mansion turns into a warzone.
“They’re here!” Gerald roars. “Men! Men!”
Demons start firing from second-floor windows. Gerald scrambles into the hallway. I kick through the back door, running across the kitchen. When I reach the hallway a Demon springs out on me, a short man with a twisted broken nose wielding a pistol. I pump the shotgun into his chest, sending him flying into the wall where he slumps, his chest smoking and bleeding. I run through the house, checking the corners, searching for Gerald. I’m at the end of the hallway near an old-looking library when I hear somebody muttering and metal cranking.
I barge through into the library, surprised to find it much bigger than it seemed from the outside. I follow the voice and the sound of machinery down a narrow book-lined hallway until arriving in a small interior room, bare except for a desk which has been pushed aside to reveal a cellar entrance. A secret fucking passage!
I take out my walkie-talkie. “Beast, there’s a secret passage in the—”
Something hot and sharp punches me in the side. I stumble, almost fall, and then swing around wildly. My fist catches Gerald in the face. I feel blood seeping through my T-shirt, into my leather, dripping down my hip. I punch Gerald again, again, ignoring the tearing feeling where he’s stabbed me. His knife drips with blood. I stamp on his wrist, making him drop the knife, and then bring the barrel of the shotgun to his head.
My finger’s on the trigger when he grabs the barrel with his free hand and pushes it aside. I fire, blowing a hole in the floorboards and revealing a section of the hidden passageway below. He’s stronger than he looks. I reckon if I wasn’t pissing blood out of the side of my belly I could take him, but when he brings his fist down on the wound, I see red and all I can do is fire blindly. I fall back, firing, and then when the shotgun starts to click on empty take out my pistol. The pain starts to fade and my vision clears, but by then it’s too late.
Gerald is gone and I’m lying flat on my back staring up at the ceiling, gun cradled to my chest just in case a Demon comes in looking to finish the job. But when someone crashes through the door it isn’t a Demon. It’s Beast, with Poker Face at his shoulder. “Boss!” He kneels down next to me, looking at my wounds. “Fuck, fuck. Get some bandages. Anything to stop the bleeding! We need to get him to the hospital!”
“The tunnel,” I whisper, as the world turns dark, my eyelids feeling far too heavy to hold open. “Gerald . . . the tunnel . . . send some men . . .”
My eyes close and the world turns to complete blackness, but not before I see Simone reaching out to me. She grasps with her fingertips, trying to stroke my beard, trying to wrap her arms around my shoulders. “You left it too long,” she whispers, her voice sounding oddly like the growling of a car’s engine. “And now you’re dead.”
She fades into the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Simone
After the exchange with Markus, all I can think about is a glass of wine. I even go as far as getting the wine bottle from the rack on the cupboard and placing it on the counter, but of course I don’t pour a glass, or even open the bottle. I rub my belly and whisper, “I guess you don’t want to be drunk yet, right, bud?” I keep waiting for a kick even though I know that’s months away yet.
I sit on the couch and turn on the TV, watching a nature documentary but really watching my phone, waiting for Rocco to call. Even if he hasn’t called and has shown no sign of calling, I still keep expecting my phone to go off. He’ll tell me he can’t take being apart anymore and we’ll fall into each other’s arms and . . . But it doesn’t ring. It never rings. I think about calling him as a pack of wolves chases an elk on TV. My pregnancy hormones have heightened my mind so much that as I half-watch the hunting scene I find myself wishing I was the elk and that Rocco was the alpha wolf. I want to be hunted by him. I get excited just thinking about it.
I think about calling him, but I don’t. I can’t take that ring, ring, ring to voicemail again.
Instead I switch on over to a sitcom. I watch that for a little while, feeling restless. Markus has really pissed me off. Men like him have always annoyed me. There were a few like that at college, up their own asses and certain that if they acted like men did in romantic comedies they could do anything they wanted to women. It’s like they have this tier system in their head where flowers equal kissing and paying for dinner equals sex, all the way to a holiday giving them carte- blanche access. I spend some time fantasizing about a meeting between Rocco and Markus, how Rocco would just look down at him and Markus would melt like a coward.
When my apartment buzzer sounds, I’m certain it’s Mom. She’s come around to give me a piece of her mind. I ready myself for an argument I have no interest in having. I know Mom. If I ignore the buzzer she’ll just hit it again and again, leaving me no choice but to eventually cave in.
But it’s not Mom’s voice which comes to me through the speakers.
“Miss Ericson,” the man says, his voice gruff. “Sorry to call up like this, but it’s—”
“Is he okay?” I snap, a sudden premonition hitting me. “Please tell me he’s okay!”
“He’s been stabbed.”
“I’m coming down!”
We take my car, the biker driving as I sit in the back gnawing my fingernails down to stubs. I can’t stop thinking about Cecilia and Shotgun, how history is repeating itself, things have come full circle . . . And soon I’ll feel the stabbing pain that crippled Cecilia for so long. I jump out of the car and rush into the hospital, running past nurses and doctors and patients until coming to a room with bikers huddled around the door. “Where is he?” I demand when Beast steps forward.
Beast nods at the door.
I walk past him and push the door open. Rocco lies on a single bed, hospital sheets pulled up to his waist, looking completely unlike himself in the crisp paper hospital gown. Tubes are hooked up to him and his eyes are hazy as he opens them. He has a drugged-up look to his face, but he seems lucid enough. He smiles when he sees me, and then winces.
“What happened to you?” I whisper, tears in my eyes. I go to the side of the bed and place my hand on his.
“Stabbed,” he replies. “No real damage, apparently. Though I could’ve died from blood loss if I’d been brought in later.”
> “You could’ve died . . .” The tears stream freely down my cheeks. If there was any doubt how I felt about this man, seeing him laid up like this crushes it.
“I shouldn’t’ve said that,” he mutters. “Goddamn meds.”
“I can’t believe . . . oh, Rocco.” I lean down and kiss the back of his hand. “Seeing you like this, I can’t even . . . I’m sorry, I’m trying to get everything out and it’s coming out all jumbled and messed up and I can’t—” I stop, taking a deep breath.
Rocco laughs, and then winces again. “You need to stop doing that,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“Being all flustered and cute and making me laugh. It’s not fair. I’ve got a knife wound in the side of my belly here, in case you didn’t notice. I know that for a snooty rich girl like you that might not be a big deal—”
“I won’t be talked to in that tone by a peasant, Rocco,” I say. We meet eyes. I giggle. He laughs.
I slap him softly on the arm. “Stop laughing, right this second. No more laughter.”
“I’ve missed you,” he says. He pauses, chewing his lip, and then goes on. “But you shouldn’t be here. It was wrong of them to bring you here.”
“I thought you asked for me,” I say.
“I did. But I was half-conscious. I’ve been steering clear for a reason. You need to leave. It’s not that I don’t want you here, Simone. It’s just—”
“I love you!” I cry. “Sorry to interrupt your grand speech, but I love you, Rocco. I have to say it. I can’t keep it inside anymore.”
“You love me?” He sounds astonished.
“Of course I love you. I know it doesn’t make any sense.” I lean forward and kiss him on the cheek. “I mean, maybe to other people it might not make any sense. But it does to me. I love you more than I’ll ever understand. It’s like . . . okay, I know how this sounds, but it’s like there’s an invisible rope always linking us, and even when we’re apart I feel you. You’re always with me. I never want to be apart from you.”
There’s a long pause as Rocco watches me, and then he says, “I love you, too. I never knew what love was until we met. I never knew it when I was growing up and I never knew it afterward. But you’ve changed me. I don’t know how. You must be a damn magician or something. You’ve changed me, Simone.”
I grasp his hand with both of mine. It feels so good to be close to him, to feel the heat of him next to me. “I have something else to tell you.” I don’t mean to say it. Now isn’t the right time to drop this kind of bombshell. But it’s also exactly the right time. Even if he’s injured, the connection between us has never been stronger. For the first time in weeks, I let myself think about what the future might be like. Maybe I won’t raise this child alone. Maybe we really do have a chance at some kind of life.
“What?” he asks.
“I’m . . .”
I hesitate as a thought occurs to me. What if this scares him away? What if he doesn’t want a kid, with me, with anybody else? But I can’t refuse his dark eyes, or the way he strokes my fingers, or the emotion in his face. Once I thought this man was just a brute, a violent biker, a topless man in a naughty calendar and nothing more.
I swallow, and then say, “I’m pregnant.”
Rocco’s eyebrows go up like a cartoon’s. “And it’s mine?” he says.
I repress my annoyance. “Of course it’s yours,” I say softly. “I haven’t been with anybody else since we were first together. Why, have you?”
“No,” he says quickly. “I haven’t even wanted to.” He pauses, and then goes on: “I’m going to be a father. I can’t . . . This is incredible news, Simone. This is the most incredible news I have ever heard. This changes everything. We can’t carry on with this dance anymore, can we? We’ve got to make a go of it.”
“Do you mean that?” There are tears in my eyes again. I can’t stop them. I don’t even try to stop them.
“Of course I mean it,” he says. “A child, a life. I’m not mad, am I? This really does change everything.”
“It does,” I confirm. “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”
Suddenly he tries to lean up in bed, tugging at his tubes. “You have to get out of here! Right now! I can’t have you here, Simone, not with a baby inside of you. What if the Demons see you here, and they . . . You need to leave, right now! Take the boys who’ve been watching you and hide someplace until this is all over. You have to promise me that. Leave town. Go down to Venice with Cecilia. Promise me. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I say, wanting him to lie back down. “But when will it be over? Will it ever be over?”
“It has to be,” he says, voice firm. “There’s no choice now. I’m not having my kid come into this world with his father at war. No damn way.”
“His father? How are you so sure it’s a boy?”
“Or her. I don’t care one way or the other. A life, a life we made. It’s almost too much to believe. You have to leave, now, please. Don’t stay another second, otherwise I’ll want you to stay all night. Leave, and I’ll end this.”
“But your injuries . . .”
“Screw my injuries!” he snaps. “A job needs doing, and I’m gonna do it. It’s as simple as that.”
“Okay. I’ll go to Cecilia’s.”
I kiss him and he kisses me back, a warm, stolen moment, and then I’m in the hospital parking lot walking toward my car with the bodyguards walking just behind me.
It all happens so fast I have no chance to react. I half-turn and see the bodyguards on the floor, blood pooling onto the concrete. A nurse screams. And then hands clamp down on my mouth, an arm wraps around my neck, and I’m kicking and begging them to let me go.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Simone
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man says as I try to chew at the ropes around my wrist. I lower my hands and look up. The van door is opening, a man standing with a pistol in his hand, aiming it into the van. He’s around fifty or sixty, a gray strip of hair around his head and a giant mole on his chin. He’s wearing a leather jacket which looks slightly ridiculous on him. “I mean it. If you try and escape, I’ll be forced to kill you. And I really don’t want to kill you. I have no desire for things to go that way. Yet, anyway. Oh, did you know I’m the one who put a hole in Rocco’s side? He’s doesn’t seem so tough anymore, does he?”
I climb onto my knees and spit across the van.
“Whoa, whoa!” the man says, laughing cruelly. “What would your mother think if she could see you now, Cecilia? What would Shotgun think if he knew his little whore was fucking his best friend? He’d be very disappointed in you, I’m sure. If there’s a heaven, he’s clambering to get back just so he can punish the two of you, you sick freaks. Now come on, get out of there. Don’t make me send my boys in.”
They think I’m Cecilia. Suddenly I get the mad urge to laugh in his face. They think I’m Cecilia! My entire life has been spent living in Cecilia’s shadow and now they think I’m her. I almost scream that I’m not Cecilia, that we couldn’t be more different. But then I see Demons riding down to Venice looking for my sister, see them throwing her into the back of a van just like they’ve done with me.
I struggle to my feet and walk from the van, my body aching all over from the bumpy ride. “That’s a good girl,” the man says, patting me on the shoulder. “I’m Gerald Hightower, by the way. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
“I expected more!” I hiss.
Demons stand in a semi-circle around me. There are twenty or so, all looking tougher and meaner than the last, all looking as if they wouldn’t have any problem with doing some serious damage to me, or performing some seriously twisted acts. My bound hands stray to my belly. If they’ve hurt my baby, I’m going to kill them.
Gerald takes a step back, raising his hands. “We’ve got a feisty one here, gentleman.”
Behind Gerald is the Crooked Demons’ clubhouse, a devil sitting above the neon sign which flashe
s into the evening. It looks like a small casino, lights flashing all over the place. From what I can tell we’re twenty or so minutes from the hospital, but admittedly my counting was interrupted by every bump in the road. We could be anywhere. I don’t notice anything in the distance apart from a few scattered warehouses and some sparse forest.
“Let’s get her inside,” Gerald says, waving a hand at his goons.
Three men grab me and drag me into the clubhouse, through the bar and then into the kitchen, and finally into a storage cupboard filled with boxes of dried food. They force me into a wooden chair and tie my hand bindings to the chair legs, pinning me uncomfortably. I try and keep calm during this, telling myself I have to do whatever they ask if I don’t want my baby hurt, and yet knowing that when the real horror starts I won’t be able to keep my composure. The lone man in the forest was bad enough, but at least there was some hope there. He was alone, and he was an idiot. This is worse. I’m in more danger than I’ve ever been. I’m under no delusions about that.