by Mary Calmes
“I’m here to collect cash,” I told the two men, “not peddle my ass.”
They moved toward me, and realizing that there was no way I could reach either the elevator or the stairs, I got ready to fight. But a door opened and a man stepped into the hall. He was more quarterback size—built leaner but still, even in the suit he was wearing, massive. I didn’t want to mess with any of them.
“Who’re you?” the bigger of the bodyguards asked the newcomer.
“Harris,” he said softly.
Both the men were bigger than the third, and both of them took a step back at the same time, which I found very interesting and really intimidating. Just the new guy’s name gave the other two pause? Jesus.
Several minutes ticked by. I had no idea how long the four of us would stand there, but I didn’t want to move and bring everyone’s attention back to me.
“I’m done,” one of the two huge men muttered. “I didn’t see anything. Fuck Hawkins, I work for Shapiro.”
“Me too,” the second guy agreed, and they both turned and headed back to the suite. They both had to step over the prone figure of Tyler Hawkins to do it, and it would have been funny if I weren’t still freaked out. Seeing my chance to get out of there, I bolted toward the elevator.
“Wait.”
At the tone of his voice, the command in it, I stopped, even though every part of my brain was screaming at me to run.
As my savior strode toward me, a sudden smile broke on his face, and the way he held out his hand, I found I could breathe again.
“You handled yourself nice,” he complimented me, warm hand closing around mine as he stepped in front of me, staring down into my eyes.
The fact that I had to tilt my head back to keep the man’s gaze told me that he was bigger and taller, and this close, I was dead if he decided he wanted to hurt me. “How do you know?”
“I watched.”
“How?”
“Camera.”
Asking more questions could be fatal, so I stopped and just held his hand.
“Conrad Harris,” he said, and I noted his sparkling iridescent green eyes.
I caught my breath. I had not really seen him when I was in fear for my life, but I noticed then, when he smiled, that the man was gorgeous.
“Who are you?”
“Trevan Bean.” I managed to get out my name.
He let go of my hand, put his on my shoulder, and steered me the rest of the way down the hall. At the elevator, he asked me where I was going.
“I dunno.”
“So, you wanna eat?”
I looked up at him, thinking about what was smart and what was not. “Yeah, let’s eat.”
He nodded. “Cool.”
And that I had not second-guessed his motives, I came to find out, was a very good thing. Because it was not that he was a bad man or a good man, he simply was. He was contracted to do a job, and that was all. He protected you, killed you, or left you alone based on who was paying him to make a choice on your behalf. The man was not particularly emotional, violent, or compulsive. He was just Conrad. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night and he was there in my bedroom, watching me and Landry sleep, he said, because it calmed him. By the same token, sometimes he simply disappeared in the middle of a conversation. I would turn around and he’d be walking away from me. He confessed to me “why?” when I was really drunk one time and he didn’t think I’d remember.
“Sometimes just breathing the same air as you soothes me, and sometimes I get this overwhelming urge to snap your neck. When I want to see you, I see you; when I want to kill you, I walk away. Some people I don’t walk away from, T, so never let anyone tell you that you’re not special. You are very fuckin’ special.”
I always remembered that line of his, the fine line he walked that at any time, at any point, he could stumble over. He was very dangerous and very loyal, and I liked him more than he really knew. I realized, too, that everyone in my life was slightly insane.
“SIR?”
Looking up, realizing I had been daydreaming, I found a nurse squinting at me. “Sorry, um, Benji Matthews? He was brought in a couple hours ago, I think.”
Her expression went from irritation to sympathy in seconds. She reached out, put her hand over my right one, which was sitting on the counter. “Let me get the doctor for you.”
“Oh, no.” I felt the air rush out of my body. “No no no.”
She looked so sad.
I tried to breathe. We weren’t even that close, Benji and I, not even what you would call friends, but I felt responsible. I had put him in Ellis Kady’s sights.
“You did not,” Conrad assured me half an hour later as we sat side by side in the chairs in the waiting room. I had my head in my hands after we spoke with the doctor, and he was gently rubbing between my shoulder blades. “You did your job, T. Kady wasn’t paying you, so you didn’t take his action. That’s business, plain and simple. Luis did the same. Unfortunately, the one who was stupid is also the one who’s dead. If Benji had been smart he’d still be alive.” But I couldn’t shake a feeling of responsibility. “Hey.” I felt his hand squeezing the back of my neck. “Look.”
Tipping my head up, I saw Gabriel, my boss, walking toward me. He had Ira Mann and Francesco Galan with him. I just watched as he and the others sat down in the chairs across from me and Conrad.
Gabriel exhaled after a few minutes. “You all right?”
I nodded.
His eyes flicked to Conrad and then returned to me before he reclined, arms on the backs of both chairs that the men with him were sitting in. Francesco leaned forward after a second.
“I don’t like you, you don’t like me; that ain’t shit now.”
I waited for what he was going to say.
“Everybody got hit today except you and Vargas. Adrian thinks Vargas was safe ’cause he wasn’t on the street. Anybody who was where they usually are got wasted.”
Jesus.
“And maybe they’ll go after Vargas later, but not you, right? Never you.”
What was I supposed to say? I knew why; everyone knew why. It was because of the man sitting on my right. Nobody in their right mind would mess with Conrad Harris. He’d kill you and anyone who was with you. He was not a man you messed with. Ever.
“Kady wants Adrian’s businesses, all of them. It ain’t just the house that he hit; he took care of other things, too, other places.”
I understood. It was a clash above my pay grade.
“There’s a lot to Adrian’s business,” he assured me. “But you know that.”
“I do.”
“Come here,” Gabriel said, getting up and walking to the window that looked down on the parking lot.
When I joined him, his hand went to the back of my neck.
“So, Adrian wants you promoted. He likes you, admires your loyalty, and appreciates the fact that you’re smart. Most of all he likes that you’re calm and cool under pressure.”
“Thanks. Tell him.”
He nodded. “Listen, don’t let Francesco or any of those other fucks tell you that you being a fag means shit to Adrian—he doesn’t give a damn. He cares about money and results and that’s it. I told you that you’re the best runner I ever had, so in turn you’re the best runner Adrian’s ever had.”
“Okay.”
Long exhale from him before he turned his head to look at me.
My eyes were locked on his.
“Adrian wants you to learn other parts of the business, but I want you out.”
I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “What?”
“I know you heard me.”
“No, I don’t think I did. You want me to leave?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“I have a different future in mind for you.”
I squinted at him.
“Right now… you could just step out of this, out of this life, and start what you want.”
“That can wait.”
“Maybe it
shouldn’t.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”
“What? Be out?”
“Yeah.”
“But that’s what I want.”
“I can’t,” I assured him. “There’s no way.”
“Sure there is. You can walk away before people know your name.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“What’s keeping you?”
My eyes locked on his.
“Shit.” He shook his head because he knew. There was no way he didn’t.
When there had been nothing and nowhere to turn, there had been Gabriel.
At the time I was working three jobs just to eat and pay rent and help my mother. But I knew I was coming to the end of what I could keep asking my body to do. A change was coming, and it would not be a good one.
Utterly exhausted, I had been running for days on no sleep and barely any food because I didn’t even have a break long enough to allow me to run over to my mother’s house and let her feed me. I had no time. But my brain was still working, as was evident on the night a runner tried to shake down my boss. He came in with his collector, his muscle, and he wanted two grand. My boss said it was only one. After listening to the back-and-forth arguing for ten minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I cut everyone off, explained how my boss owed twelve hundred and not a penny more or a penny less, and told them all to shut the fuck up. The collector grabbed me for being a smartass, but I was not in the mood.
I wasn’t proud of the beating I gave the guy, but he started it. I had my boss pay the runner, and then I threw both the runner and his bleeding knee-breaker out of the diner. I was next when my boss fired me. Later that night, I was on my way home when I saw the car out of the corner of my eye. They had followed me for two blocks, so, figuring it was payback time and not wanting to postpone getting jumped, I stopped, turned, and got ready to face whatever was going to come.
“You the wiseass from the diner?” the guy asked me from the lowered back window.
“Yeah. Who the fuck wants to know?”
“Me, you little shit,” the man barked at me as he got out of the car. I noted the designer Italian suit, the Tiffany cufflinks I had seen in a magazine, and the glossy black dress shoes. He was wearing a wool and cashmere trench coat that cost more than my rent. I had never seen a more stunning man. “Come here.”
I moved fast because whatever he wanted, I was down for. Though not handsome in the way that everyone agreed on, he exuded power. You could feel it rolling off of him. And I realized in that instant that I didn’t want him, I wanted to be him.
His name was Gabriel Pike, and he had come to talk to me.
“Sure, man,” I agreed and smiled at him.
“Get in the car.”
He could have killed me—I was a lamb to the slaughter—but instead he took me to dinner. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a steak.
The questions came fast when I was done wolfing down my food.
What was a teaser bet, a parlay bet, what were the odds on a three-team parlay? If it’s Detroit and Atlanta and the spread is ten points….
I was stunned. We were talking about betting? Gambling? What the hell?
Did I know what the over was? The under? What was the payout on a two-bet parlay if the odds were three to one? What were the odds on a six-team parlay?
He didn’t stop, just went on and on, and I answered just as fast as he questioned. Then he finally asked me the most basic thing of all: how did a house stay in business?
“Basically, the people who lose pay the people who win, and the house collects the juice,” I told him.
“You gamble, huh?” He was grinning at me by then.
“When I have the money,” I answered and shrugged. “Which is fuckin’ never now.”
He had scrutinized me and then offered me a job. They needed a new runner, since the last one had to be retired for skimming. I didn’t ask him to define “retiring.” I didn’t care. I had his spot. It was my only interest. Gabriel knew what I could do based on my brain; it was all I needed to know.
“I WON’T leave you,” I assured my boss, the man who had saved me from ruin and probably jail time, as I stood beside him at the window. My options had been limited when I turned twenty-one, and there had been no other avenues open to me but nefarious ones. But there was crime, which I did, and then there was stealing and hurting people. That was a road I had never taken, a corner I had not turned, all because Gabriel Pike had talked to me and given me a chance. “Tell Adrian, okay?”
He nodded slowly. “You don’t give a shit about Adrian.”
“No,” I agreed.
“If you stay, it’s done. You get that. There’s no out once you say you’re in unless Adrian says.”
“I know that,” I assured him. “I’m not some punk kid, Gabe. I know the fuckin’ score.”
The hand that was suddenly on my shoulder, squeezing tenderly, calmed my racing heart.
“What can I do?”
“I really need you to lay low, just stay away from me, from us, and—”
“We can’t make money if we don’t keep up business as usual.”
“Adrian has it covered; I just need you to disappear for at least a week, all right? Really, I don’t wanna see your face.”
“I can help.”
“And you will; you’re gonna be doing a whole lot more. Adrian wants you at a new level, but for now, until we get things figured out, until we know who Kady reached out to… I want you gone.”
I was going to argue, but he surprised the hell out of me when he grabbed me. Never, ever, had he hugged me—especially not me, the gay boy—in front of the others.
“You stay safe. Call me if you get in a bind, but otherwise, I want you invisible.”
I nodded into his shoulder.
When he pulled back, I passed him the envelope with the thirty grand in it, and when he leaned close, he slipped one that he pulled from the breast pocket of his suit jacket into my jacket pocket. He had obviously come prepared.
“I don’t need money, Gabe.”
“I want you to have it. Adrian said make sure you have money, so there, just take it. There’s five grand to tide you over in case we close up shop for a month.”
I did not have the expenses they had, but I didn’t argue. Any cash put me that much closer to my restaurant. “A month would be crazy.”
He didn’t argue the point. “Do you have a piece?”
I shook my head.
“Have Conrad get you one.”
“Okay.”
“Anything he has will be better, cleaner, than what I got.”
“Yes.”
“You have your knife, though.”
I cracked a grin, teasing him. “I always have a knife; I’m Cuban, man.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Gimme a break, your last name is Bean.”
“’Cause my father went for the Latinas even though he was a black man.”
He chuckled. “And where’s your father now?”
I tipped my head at him. “In heaven, watching over his boy.”
His brows furrowed. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “Drunk drivers should just be taken out and shot.”
“Agreed.”
My eyes absorbed his face.
“I’ll see ya,” he said quickly, giving my shoulder a hard pat before he turned and walked away from me.
Ira, who never spoke, was suddenly in front of me, hand on my cheek for a minute before he followed after Gabe.
“Be careful, kid,” Francesco said when he reached me, slapping my face gently. “And I never meant anything when I hassled you. It didn’t mean shit.”
I knew exactly what Francesco wanted from me—if he could be certain no one would ever find out, if I would allow it, if it would stay between us. The way his eyes always slid over me, the sound of his breath when he leaned close, how often he teased me abou
t sucking his dick. I knew. I wasn’t stupid.
“And if you need a piece, you call me. I’ll get you something untraceable, like the others.”
But Gabriel had already told me to ask Conrad, and I would have gone that route anyway. Francesco, regardless of what he said or tried to imply, was not my friend. He could not be counted on like the man who might one day, accidentally or purposely, kill me.
“I’m sorry Benji’s dead. I’m sorry about all of them. Make sure you call his folks, okay?”
I was startled and watched him as he left, jogging down the hall after Gabe and Ira.
“Mr. Bean?”
When I turned, there was a doctor, and he wanted to know how to get in touch with Benji’s family. I told him I needed my friend’s phone.
“I better get you some coffee,” Conrad said softly, appearing quietly at my shoulder, “’cause you’re gonna be up for a while.”
And of course he was right. He was always right.
Chapter 3
I CALLED Landry and told him what had happened, and it took everything in me plus Conrad getting on the phone to keep him from coming to the hospital. Landry was scared that whoever had killed the other runners was coming after me, but I reminded him of who exactly my guardian angel was and that Gabriel had told me that as long as I stayed out of sight, all would be well. Kady and his guys weren’t actively looking for me. They would just find me if I was hanging out in my usual haunts. No one was hunting me; it was more a question of opportunity, and even then, even if they found me, there was still Conrad to consider.
Landry didn’t understand, but he had met Conrad, so when the man said I was safe, he believed him.
My friend had excused himself at the hospital for a while, and when he returned, he reiterated Gabriel’s words to me and told me to lie low, steer clear of all the casinos and my regular clients. He promised that I would be fine as long as I didn’t try to conduct business as usual. It was a clash beyond my scope; I did not need to be involved. They had killed the runners to interrupt Adrian’s cash flow and that was it. As horrible as it was, if I stayed out of sight, no one was coming after me.
“Won’t the cops be all over this?” I asked Conrad. “I mean, he was murdered. Won’t there be an investigation?”