by Lyssa Layne
I hold her, right here in the street, across the middle console of her car. I hold her, and she cries, but it’s different from the last time I held her. She was grieving then. This is painful too, but mingled in with the ache and guilt and fear is something else. Relief. She’s relieved I’m still here, and it calms the beast still raging inside me.
Marcus brought us here. Marcus is the reason everything good in her world is on the verge of collapsing. Why she felt losing me was inevitable, and giving me up the only viable option.
“I want to go home,” she whispers into the crook of my neck where her face is nestled.
“I’ll take you.” Reluctantly, I release her and get out to walk around the car to the driver’s side while she climbs over the console into the passenger seat. It takes less than a minute’s drive before we’re inside her garage, then walking into the house where the illusion of our safe sanctuary deceives us into believing the world will be a better place again after a good night’s sleep. We both know it won’t be, but there’s nothing we can do about it tonight, so we believe the lie. Because the truth can make us self-destruct, and no fucking way am I making it that easy for Marcus.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Heartbreaker
“We have to start closing early on fight nights,” I announce before Sketch even makes it inside.
“I figured as much.” She nods grimly, tossing her bag behind the front desk. “We should take Cherry off the schedule while we’re at it. Mouth and Princess can hold their own if need be, but having Cherry wandering around in this mess makes me think of Bambi and the hunters. It’s not good.”
“God, I could do without your visuals every once in a while,” I groan, as a weird image of cartooned Cherry with big innocent eyes being chased by hunters flashes in my mind. “Also, I agree. Same thing was keeping me awake last night. Not the Bambi scene, but the gist of the feeling was the same.”
She pulls the calendar toward her at the desk. “Might lose her. I don’t imagine she can afford to take unlimited amounts of unpaid vacation.”
“I can pay her some. Base salary. At least a week.” I sigh. I’m wiped out. No sleep will do that. “Maybe it’ll be over by then.”
Sketch scowls. “You need to stop thinking of life as a glass half full and consider going with a mug half empty. You know if you were staring at half a cup of coffee you wouldn’t feel optimistic about squat. You’d be cursing everyone and plowing down anyone in the way of you and the coffee pot. That’s the sort of attitude we need right now. Not some flimsy, half-baked idea that this little illegal fight club pickle we’ve got ourselves in will just magically disappear in the next seven days.”
“She’s right.” The sound of my brother’s voice stops my heart for a split second. As does the sight of him.
“How the hell did you get in here?” The alarm was still set when we got here, and we would have heard him come in since.
“That’s really not the issue right now. We have more important things to talk about.” He takes several steps in our direction until he’s within a couple of feet from the both of us.
“More important things than how you’re breaking into my shop? I don’t know, Marcus, that’s pretty fucking important to me. Especially when I think about who else could have access to it through you.” The skin on my chest feels like it’s on fire. Apparently the rash I used to have to work myself into is now instantaneous.
“I agree.” He nods. I didn’t see that coming. “That’s why you need to buy me out.”
Definitely didn’t see that one either.
“Excuse me?”
“Buy me out of the will. You pay me, I pay Rediger. We both disappear and your life goes back to normal.” He’s calm. Matter of fact. Acting as if this was always part of the plan.
“Great idea. I like it. Really. There’s just one small problem. I don’t have that kind of money.” Sure, business is great and overhead is cheap, since the building is paid for, but Madi goes to private school, and when she’s not there racking up tuition bills, or hanging with her super rich cousins and doing all their super expensive things including their summer hobbies of soft ball and paddle boarding, she’s at the dance studio, a cute idea when she was five and looked adorable in a tutu, but a spendy one now that I’m shelling out cash for shoes and tights and costumes every time I turn around. I’m not complaining. I love that she dances. But kids aren’t cheap to begin with, and Madi’s a top shelf kid. Point being, money comes in, but it finds speedy ways back out again.
“Find it. Get a loan. Sell the house. Ask Pru, I don’t give a fuck how you come up with it, but come up with it. The faster the better.”
“Why?” Sketch takes a step into the circle. I’m glad she’s here. I can count on her to think clearly when I’m not. “Why do you suddenly want out? I thought you were running a very lucrative business back there. There’s the obvious legality issue, but I can’t imagine that’s suddenly a problem for you, and even if it were, you’d be willing to overlook it for the kind of cash you’re pulling in. Cash that would add up to a hell of lot more over the next year than selling out now would.”
“Yeah. What gives?” I squint suspiciously and place both hands on my waist, doing my best to portray the keen sort of person who would have had the sense to pick up on all those details on her own. I’m not. Hadn’t thought of any of them. Sketch did though. Interestingly enough, her stance looks nothing like mine, and her eyes aren’t narrowed, they’re slightly buggish.
“I owe Rediger money.” His jaw clenches visibly. I don’t know what he hates more: the situation he’s apparently found himself in or having to tell us about it. “I was running a pretty good operation out in Vegas up until a year ago. Money was pouring in. All the higher ups were taking turns patting me on the back and making promises of bigger assignments and my own big fortune heading my way. Then, they screwed me. Bigtime. Shit fell apart and I was handpicked to fall down with it. Then, along comes Rediger. Says he sees potential in me and he’s willing to help me out of this jam with the big bosses.”
I snort involuntarily and he shoots me a dirty look.
“I’m sorry, but you really thought of Rediger as some good Samaritan, your personal guarding angel, swooping in to save the day? Give me a break.”
“I didn’t have a fucking choice, Liv. It was either him or hell. Prison or the afterlife. Things weren’t looking so hot for me.”
“I’m thinking you mean they were looking scorchingly hot,” Sketch remarks, equally put off by his decision to invite this Rediger into his life and ultimately, ours.
“Fine, you’re right. I deserve to go to hell. I took the coward’s way out and I bargained with the devil trying to stay alive. Now it’s going to cost me more than I bargained for.” He drops his chin toward his chest, his hands hanging listless at his side. He looks defeated. In all my life, I’ve only ever seen my brother this distraught one other time: when Madi’s mother died. He stood in our father’s kitchen, wrecked, and for one brief second my heart ached for him. The next day he was a completely different person again. I always assumed that night had been part of his game, that he’d been playing our father. Faking his grief for some ulterior motive that only suited his own needs. Now, I’m not so sure. He seems genuine. Whatever else I feel for my brother, fear is the most overwhelming part of it all.
“What does he want?” I whisper. It’s me. I know it. I’ve seen the way he leers at me. Heard the things he says.
“Madi.”
“No.” My knees feel weak. My heart feels frail as if it could stop beating at any given moment, and the air I need to keep breathing escapes me.
“What do you mean, he wants Madi?” Sketch demands, a predatory glare in her wild eyes. She doesn’t take kindly to threats, least of all those directed at the girls in our midst.
“He said I’m taking too long to pay back my loan. He’s been gradually cutting back my percentage of the profits for weeks, claiming it’s the only way to offset the
mounting piles of interest I owe. Now, all this trouble with you two and Lucas…he feels that taking Madi off your hands for a while will help you focus on what’s important again while Madi…works off the money I owe.”
I’m going to be sick. “Does he know? Does he know she’s your daughter?”
“Of course he knows!” The outburst is loud and frightening, his voice wrought with emotions I thought he was incapable of experiencing.
Something shifts inside my head. Maybe it breaks, I don’t know. I just know that I need to do something. Anything. Now.
I start to move toward the desk, and I nearly trip getting there. Then I fumble for the phone before staring at the numbers blankly. I don’t know anyone’s number. Nothing is memorized, or maybe it was and whatever broke inside me at the thought of that beast wanting my Madi completely erased everything there ever was inside my head.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sketch is beside me, her hand on mine, gently pushing it down to replace the receiver.
“I need to call Lucas.” I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing until she asked and I said it out loud, “but I don’t know his number.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s in your cell.” She’s speaking slowly as she walks me backwards a few steps, putting distance between me and the phone.
“Oh. Right.” Broken. My brain is definitely broken. My thoughts aren’t thinking.
“You can’t tell him about this, Liv,” Marcus snarls at me. The guy I’ve known most of my life is back. The cold one. The one who has no heart.
“You don’t get to decide that,” I shriek. “You don’t get to decide anything anymore! Your decisions suck, Marcus. Your decisions created this… this horrible… disgusting… despicable… unbearable…” I can’t find the word I want. Nothing that comes to mind feels even remotely suitable. They’re all too small. They don’t mean what I need them to mean.
Marcus comes at me with force, his hands gripping both my arms and holding me in place as he begins to hammer me with more information. Information I don’t know how to compute anymore.
“Listen to me. Nothing is happening right this second. Madi is safe for now, but it’s not going to stay that way if you keep getting in his face. And it’s definitely not going to stay that way if I don’t come up with the rest of the money I owe him. So, rather than lose your shit and go crying to your boyfriend, take a deep breath, get ahold of yourself and start thinking about how you’re going to help me get it.”
“How much and how long?” That’s all I really need to know now.
“A hundred grand.” He releases me and takes a step back. “And nine days.”
“Why nine?” Leave it to Sketch to be hung up on the details.
“It was ten when he issued the ultimatum last night.”
Nine days. A hundred thousand dollars in nine days. Even if I could get a loan, I’d never get the cash in time to hand it over.
Marcus turns and starts toward the back door. He stops briefly with his fingers wrapped around the handle. “They’re watching your every move, Liv. You do anything stupid, and he kills us both. And then Madi has no one left to protect her.”
I can hear Sketch take in a sharp breath. She’d die protecting Madi. I know that, and now we both know it could actually come to that.
Lucas
I walk seven blocks before I realize I’ve got a case of the Forest Gumps and am likely to just keep going indefinitely if I don’t find some other way to diffuse the rage ripping at my insides. Liv called, crying and terrified. She wouldn’t say why, but we all know why. Walking at a near run, pounding the pavement in anger with every step, I turn down the next street coming up. I don’t know anyone on this end of town anymore. Everyone I went to school with grew up and moved away, and unlike me, they weren’t stupid enough to come back.
I can’t go home. No way in hell can my parents see me like this, and Liv insisted repeatedly that I stay away from the shop today. Under no circumstances am I to come anywhere near there. A really shitty fucking thing to have to agree to when the woman you love is falling apart and every instinct you have is screaming at you to go to her, but I promised I wouldn’t. So I won’t. But I can’t keep walking either. Definitely not down this road anyway. There’s an old beer pub a mile down. What I’ll do if I get there, I don’t know. Given my current frame of mind I’ll likely be in a bar brawl before I have a chance to order a beer. Maybe walking out of the house without a plan wasn’t such a stellar idea after all.
I stop. I hear sirens running somewhere nearby and it takes all I’ve got not to turn left at the next intersection and race to the shop to check on her. I know she’s safe. The shop is east of here. The sirens are running west. She’s safe. I’m losing my fucking mind, but she’s safe.
I need to get off the street, and there’s only one way I can think to do that without getting into the trouble.
“Memphis,” I bark into my phone, with no regard to what time it is or what he might be doing right now. It’s too late in the day for him to still be sleeping, but it’s entirely possible Juli and him are in the middle of something they’d prefer I didn’t interrupt.
“Honeymoon ended already, huh?”
“I don’t have time for your bullshit. I’m stuck over on Elm and I need a ride.”
“I’ll be there in ten.” He hangs up. I knew he’d come, no questions asked. That’s the kind of person he is. Always has been. I think that’s why it killed him so much when Riot disappeared. He couldn’t ever wrap his brain around not being able to save her.
It’s a struggle I’m starting to understand on a whole new level. And I hate it. I’m not losing Liv. I’m not going to stand by and let Marcus come in and destroy her. Or worse.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Heartbreaker
“Madi’s aunt. She’s loaded, right? She’s gotta give you the money,” Princess reasons. It sounds logical, but it’s not. I’ve already been down this train of thought. So has Sketch. We both wound up in the same place.
“She won’t. She hates Marcus because she thinks he’s the reason her sister is dead, so there’s no way she’s doing anything to bail him out. Ever. Not even to save Madi, because she’s all black and white. All right and wrong. No in-between. Marcus is a criminal. He belongs in jail. Period. This business with Rediger will be no different. He threatens Madi, she calls the cops. That’s the only way she knows to proceed. So, not only is asking her for the money not an option, but she can never, ever find out about any of this.”
Princess frowns. Even Mouth seems a little on edge. Cherry’s not here. Sketch and I sent her home the second she walked in, just like we discussed. She put up a hell of a fight, so much so, she damn near had me convinced she could stay. I’m glad I didn’t give in. Seeing how rattled these two are, Cherry would not have fared well when confronted with the whole ugly truth of things. It’s better she’s not involved. It’d be better if no one else was, but the women sitting around while we powwow over this mess I’m in would never leave my side even if I told them to. They’re my warriors. My fierce goddesses. The women who don’t just show up on good days. These women show up to fight. They stay until death. They don’t know quit. They don’t do scared. They’re all in, all the time.
“I have some money saved,” Mouth offers. “It’s not much, but maybe if we all start pooling together what we have, we’ll get closer to a number that doesn’t seem so fucking impossible.”
“She’s right,” Sketch agrees. “I’ll put the Jeep up for sale. Thing should go fast and it’ll bring in at least thirty grand, maybe more if I get enough people interested fast enough.”
“No way!” I stand up so fast I accidentally kick over the box of disposable razors next to my desk. “First of all, the only person here cleaning out their savings is me. Second, no one is selling anything – least of all those things you love and have spent the last five years dumping all your time and money into. That Jeep is pretty much your favorite thing in the whole world.
You’re not selling it, and definitely not for thirty grand when it’s worth way more.”
“So, let me see if I can get more. Nine days isn’t a lot of time, but you never know.” She acts like half of my argument never came out of my mouth.
“I just said no.”
“You said I couldn’t sell it for thirty grand. Everything else you said was bullshit. It’s a car. I like it, and, yeah, doing all the custom work on it was a fun hobby, but when it comes to my favorite things in life, Madi rates a hell of a lot higher than a fucking pile of metal with wheels.”
She’s downplaying this whole thing. Of course Madi means more, but that doesn’t make it okay for her to sell her most prized possessions.
“She’s right,” Princess chimes in. “I’ve got some old jewelry I can pawn.”
“And I’ve got some first editions on my bookshelf that are worth a pretty penny,” Mouth adds, the excitement growing rapidly as they convince themselves there’s light at the end of this tunnel.
“Stop it! All of you!” I throw my hands up at all three of them. “This is crazy. Sketch is not selling her Jeep. Princess is not pawning her old wedding ring – that shit’s got so much bad karma attached to it, trying to get it out of the case would be like opening Pandora’s box and we sure as hell don’t need that – and you,” I point at Mouth, “are not selling the books your grandmother left you.” Then I collapse back into my chair, completely in awe of my friends – my family – and the lengths they will go to for me.
“You have thirty seconds to pitch us a better idea,” Mouth counters. “If you don’t convince me that you have this shit under control, we’re going with our own plan.”
“Madi has a trust.” She can’t access it until she turns twenty-five. But I can.
“Heartbreaker.” Sketch shakes her head slowly, conveying her thoughts in their entirety through one simple motion.