by Nicole Fox
He looked up at me with cold, calculating eyes.
“That depends,” he growled. “If you and your buddies get up and leave this bar right now, and never come back, then no, we have no problem. If, however, you insist on staying, then we are going to have to talk.”
I scowled, then threw back my head in terrible, mocking laughter. “Who are you to make us leave, huh? I’m enjoying myself, and I’d like to stay. How about you, boys?” I turned to call back to me fellows. They all cheered approval and raised their glasses. Emboldened by their approval, I decided to turn this little bastard’s demands over on their head.
“So, little buddy,” I said scathingly, “I think it is you who is going to have to leave.”
The man smiled. “Pity,” he said. “You seemed smarter than that.”
And then, he drew a gun.
“Watch out!” Thunder cried, charging up behind me and knocking me to the floor just as the gun went off.
BOOM!
It was not the first time I had heard a gunshot, but it was the first time a gun that had been leveled at me had gone off.
People screamed and started running. Distantly, I noticed the sparking as the bullet hit a light, and the bartender dove behind the bar. Thunder rolled away, freeing me, but rather than rushing towards safety I reared up like a snake and threw myself right at the man’s ankles. With a grunt, he toppled to the ground, firing wildly into the air. The hand holding a gun struck a chair, dropped it, and I saw the gun skitter away beneath the seats.
By this point, two shots had been fired, the bulk of the bar’s customers were streaming or had already streamed through the exit, and the bartender was crouched behind the safety of the bar, frantically dialing 911. Thunder was with me, but all the other prospects had fled with the crowd.
I leaped to my feet. So did the man. Our eyes met, and I saw my own brutal calculation mirrored in his own. Our thoughts matched: what to go for––the exit or the gun?
A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes, and I seized my chance.
“Run!” I roared, grabbing Thunder and hurling the two of us towards the closest door: the one that led to the kitchen. In a flash, I saw the man diving for the gun behind me.
We burst in. A chef, emerging with a tray-full of burger patties from one of those huge, walk-in freezers, screamed, threw his load into the air, and bolted for the exit––all the way across the kitchen.
“Come on!” Thunder said, urging me forward, but I hesitated. It was a long, open stretch of space, with little protection. And the armed man would be bursting his way through the kitchen door any second. I didn’t think we would make it.
“Wait!” I cried. “I have an idea!”
I grabbed him, seized the handle of the open door to the freezer, and flung myself behind it. There, I saw a heavy tower of cookware, and I ordered Thunder behind it.
“Push when I say go,” I hissed, and the two of us crouched, out of sight, just behind the freezer door.
A second later, the armed man burst in. He looked right, towards the back of the kitchen, straight ahead, towards the freezer, and then left, across the kitchen to the exit, whose door was still swinging from the chef.
He grinned, and marched slowly towards the exit, his gun raised.
“Ready?” I mouthed to Thunder. He nodded.
Any second, the man would pass next to the freezer door, the fog spilling from it licking his heels. He even sidestepped, closer to its threshold, to avoid the frozen burger patties, scattered all over the floor...
“Now!” I roared, and threw myself at the door with all of my strength. It swung, catching the man in the shoulder and sending him stumbling into the freezer. I kept up my momentum, slamming the door to close him in, with Thunder and his steel tower to block the door once he was inside–
No! The guy was fast! His hand shot out, catching himself against the frame of the door before I could knock him down. He steadied himself, regaining his balance, while all the while the door kept closing.
“Argh!” It slammed, with all the force I could muster, against his hand. Even over his scream, I could hear the cracking of bone, while blood spattered the floor in the deep ravine the impact had opened across his knuckles.
The door bounced back. It could not latch with his hand there. And while he was injured and roaring with pain, he was still armed. And dangerous.
“Get back!” I cried, ramming against the door again. It closed upon his hand again, crushing it, so that blood now flowed freely from the cut. His fingers twitched and curled, and white splinters poked out from his blackened skin.
“Let go!” I cried, and with every scream, I bashed the door again. “Let go! Let go!”
Why did he cling on? I’d close him in, and we’d all be safe.
And then I noticed. His sleeve, caught on the latch, keeping the mutilated remains of his hand pinned there.
I lunged forward, sneaking out from behind the cover of the thick metal door just long enough to grab it and yank it free. I seized upon it. The man roared, and for the briefest moment, our eyes met.
Hatred is what I saw there. Pure, unadulterated hatred.
BOOM! The door slammed shut. A split second later Thunder was there, shoving the tower of cookware forward so that it blocked the door to the freezer.
Thump! I heard a muffled cry of agony as the man threw himself against it, but our barrier held. He did not fire his gun. He must have been afraid of the ricochet.
“I’ll kill you for this!” He bellowed, his voice muffled by the door. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
I stared, momentarily frozen, at the door frame. It was splattered with blood, as if someone had brought a hammer on a tomato on the very spot.
Now, it was Thunder’s turn to save the day.
“Come on!” He ordered, shoving me away from the ghastly sight and out through the kitchen. We burst into the free night air, leapt upon our bikes, and were outta there.
If I had seen my own face that night, as we were riding away, I would not have known if I were wearing a smile or a grimace of terror. I had just had my first real sip of violence, my first real drink of blood. It had made my heart thunder, and made me sick to my stomach,
And yet, I’d found I’d liked the taste.
BACK IN THE PRESENT, my own heart thundered. That’s how powerful this memory was––and all brought up by that single man’s voice. The president of the Crooked Jaws. A once-lowly prospect, who had had his hand brutally mutilated in a barroom brawl, by another lowly prospect––one who’d had no business starting that fight at all.
By me.
And now, all these years later, I was paying for it.
“What do you want?” I demanded. Despite my terror, the phone was steady in my hand.
“Oh, no, dear Dominic. It’s what you want,” Marco sneered. “You see, I have two people you love here with me. And if you ever want to see them alive, and uh, unspoiled, again, you must come alone, unarmed, to the Crooked Jaw Compound at midnight tonight. Understood?”
My thoughts were whirling. “Two people?” I gasped. “What do you mean, two people?”
I heard a chuckle. If a death’s head could laugh, that was what it would sound like.
“Midnight, Jasy-Baby,” he sneered.
Click.
I stared at the phone, now dead in my hands. Two people? Two people? What did he mean?
I glanced around at my men, all assembled to find out what was going on, to see if anyone else was missing. Fernando. Dorian. Tristan. All of them. Who the hell was he talking about?
Suddenly, my heart stopped. Erica!
Frantically, I dug for my own phone, wanting to call her, to prove that my fear was unfounded. As I ripped it from my pocket, I noticed a little blinking light––that voicemail from before.
“No...” I murmured. I pressed to play it back, and held it to my ear. This time, my hand was trembling.
“Dominic? Dominic!” A terrified, jumbled voice slurred. “Pleas
e, I need your help! They’re after me, and––”
A muffled jumble as the phone was yanked from her hand. Then, I heard something even worse than Erica’s desperate cry: Marco’s laughter.
“Better hurry, Jasy-Baby, or your little piece of ass is gonna have a new cock to suck.”
Click.
“You bastard!” I roared, clutching my phone so hard in my fist that the screen cracked. “You filthy, evil, motherfucking bastard!”
Tears of rage in my eyes, I hurled the phone across the room, where it shattered against the wall. Marco’s phone––the one he had used to call me––followed a split-second later.
My men looked at me in horror.
“Boss,” Tristan murmured. “What is going on?”
“They’ve got Erica and Thunder, that’s what,” I gasped. My voice sounded harsh and ragged. I had never heard it sound like that before.
“So what are you going to do?” Asked Dorian.
“They want me to go to the compound, alone and unarmed.”
The group gasped in alarm.
“But boss, you can’t! They’ll kill you!”
I replied, “Yes, they probably will.” This time, my voice had steadied. Of all the horrors that were tearing through my thoughts at that moment, the threat of them killing me was so trivial it almost seemed comic. “But I have to go.”
“Why? You don’t need to. Thunder will understand.”
I inhaled deeply, and studied the trail of blood leading out the shattered window. “It’s not about Thunder anymore,” I murmured. “Or even Erica. I love them, and will do whatever I can to rescue them. But that’s not why I must.”
I closed my eyes, thinking back on that memory that had just flooded my consciousness. A useless fight picked with an unknown enemy. His hand, crunching and snapping in the door jamb like no more than dried kindling. The look of hatred, when I finally met his eyes.
“No,” I continued. “I must do it because I started this fight. I need to be the one to end it––and to rescue the ones I love.”
Chapter Eleven
Erica
Earlier that day
I––who had seen gunfire, knife fights, and bullet wounds, criminals, wild sex, and assault––was about to do the scariest thing of all since breaking up with Brian.
I was going to tell my mother.
We agreed to meet at a restaurant. I figured a public space would diminish the chances of her creating a scene. I also didn’t want her at my house. Perhaps I was imagining it, but I would swear I could still smell cigarettes and gasoline and leather, buried in the very fabric of my sheets and towels. Fortunately, my father was away on business, so I would only have to deal with her.
I got there early, wanting to feel settled and in control by the time she arrived. Even though it was barely midday, I ordered a cocktail––a nice mango mai tai––to further soothe my nerves. It was funny. I would have been less jittery if Dominic had shown up at my door with yet another bleeding friend. The prospect of telling my mother what had been going on unsettled me terribly.
Don’t get me wrong. My mother was a kind, generous woman. She just tended to have very high expectations. And she had supported Brian and me from the get-go.
Bursting through the door like a ray of sunshine to a cantankerous sleeper, she arrived.
“Erica, darling!” She exclaimed, waving at me as if she was not obvious to spot and rushing over. She sat, snapped her fingers impatiently for a menu, then looked at me with avid glee.
“So, darling¸ tell me––how’s the wedding prep going? You know, Mrs. Appleton is supremely jealous––her daughter’s twenty-eight and single! Now, are the flowers ordered already? You want to make sure you get the best, dear. It really shapes the whole wedding––”
She continued, unperturbed or even oblivious to my lack of response. The coward in me wanted to let her keep talking. Hell, I could smile, nod occasionally, allow her to pay the bill, and manage to escape the whole affair without saying a word.
But if my adventures with Dominic had taught me anything, it was that I did not have to be a coward if I did not want to.
“Hey, Mom, listen. I have to tell you something” I said, trying to get her attention. I had to repeat it twice before she finally registered that I was speaking.
“What is it, dear?” She asked at last.
I took a deep breath. “Look, Mom. The wedding’s off. Brian and I broke up.”
She stared at me for several seconds, her mouth hanging open and her face on freeze-frame, like a program on a computer that’s crashed because too many demands have been put on it.
Finally, her processing caught up with my news, and she managed to gasp, “What? Why?”
I shrugged. “I caught him cheating on me.”
My mother was aghast. “Oh, honey, are you sure?” She demanded. “These sorts of things can be complicated. Are you sure he was cheating on you?”
“Yes, Mom,” I stated. “I caught him balls deep in his slut-of-a-secretary.”
She gasped––and not at the content of my statement. “Oh, Erica, don’t be vulgar!” She whined. “Still, boys will be boys. Are you sure it’s not better to forgive him and move on? He’s still a good man, you know. Good job. Good prospects. Good genes.”
I stared at her in horror. She had just found out that a man had betrayed her daughter in one of the most fundamental ways possible, and now she was defending that man.
The old Erica––the one who had fallen in love with Brian, and who had let others cow her all her life––would have withered against these profound manipulations. She would have cried and apologized and at long last allowed herself to be convinced.
But I wasn’t that Erica anymore.
“No Mom,” I interrupted. “He was a douchebag. He was cowardly, and he lied and tricked me.”
“Well,” she simpered, patronizing, condescending. “Is there something you did to drive him away? Perhaps...not satisfying him, in the way a man needs?”
Yikes. There was a question no one ever in the history of the world wanted to be asked by her parents. I scowled.
“No, Mom,” I repeated. “I am perfectly capable of satisfying a man.”
This was also a statement which the old Erica would not have been sure about. But now, after Dominic, I knew.
Our meals arrived. I found I was not hungry at all, and yet I still defiantly stabbed a piece of it with my fork, chewed, and swallowed.
My mother’s meal remained untouched.
“I’m just afraid that you might be acting too hastily,” she commented. “I mean, to call off a whole wedding, just for one minor transgression?”
“It was not minor,” I said. “Besides, when I told him I wouldn’t take him back, he tried to rape me. Is that really the kind of man you want married to your daughter? The future father of your grandchildren?”
“He offered to take you back, and you still refused?” She gaped. “Erica, how could you?”
“Are you listening to me?” I demanded. I was starting to get angry now. “Brian was not a good person! If I’d married him, I would have spent the rest of my life hating myself!”
“Oh, Erica,” sighed my mother, shaking her head and clicking her tongue. “No man is a good person. They’re all horrible, really. The point, then, isn’t to look for a ‘good’ one, but to find the one that can give you the best life possible. Brian could have done that. Don’t you see? You’re not getting any younger, dear.”
As I stared at her, I felt, for a moment, pure hatred for this woman. I opened my mouth, ready to rip her to shreds, to tear down her stupid little world-view and reveal it for the hypocrisy it was.
Then, I noticed, the smallest, most insignificant of things: her lipstick was smeared. The expensive paint on her fingernails was cracked, revealing dull, yellowing, aged nails. At the base of her hair, dyed a strong blonde to indicate youth, was a nest of gray, just peeping through. Next to her chair rested a three-hundred dollar handb
ag, in which an expensive designer wallet waited, containing cash, a half dozen credit cards, and a bent and wrinkled picture of her, my father, and I at the beach––from about twenty years ago.
She prizes that moment––a space in time when she was happy. When we all were happy.
Twenty fucking years ago.
So instead of swearing at her, or even hitting her––as I had been close to doing––I reached out and took her hand.
“There are good men out there,” I told her. “And I––each of us––deserve one. I’m not going to give in and settle, just for a comfortable life. Is it dangerous? Yes. But, Mama, it’s worth the risk.”
She looked at me, blinking slowly under the fluorescent lights of the restaurant. Her eyes seemed to be filling with tears.
“Oh, Erica.” She said, then my phone rang.
I considered not answering it––this moment with my mother and I was special––but then it occurred to me that it might be Dominic. Feeling excited, I retrieved my phone and clicked to answer.
“Hello?”
“Erica!” The old and extremely unpleasant voice of Mr. Blade said into my ear. I wrinkled my nose, and held up my finger to my mother, asking her to wait.
“Hello, Mr. Blade. How are you?”
“Fine...fine. Well, actually, I’m not. There’s an emergency at work, and I need you to come. Dawson didn’t file those reports, and now the whole company is behind!”
“But, sir!” I protested. “It’s Saturday! Surely you could ask Patricia, or Barry––anyone, really.”
“Busy!” He lamented. “All busy!” Then, his voice changed, becoming somehow sinister. “I just thought that, given your spotty performance this past week, you might appreciate an opportunity to, you know, make some of it up. Take one for the team, so to speak.”
I winced. Mr. Blade was a right old prick, but he was still my boss, and even if I didn’t like my job, I wanted to be a good employee. It was not like he didn’t really have a point.
I sighed.
“Alright, sir. When would you like me to come in?”
“Oh, quick as you can! Quick as you can!” He said. Then: “I’ll be waiting for you.”