by Nicole Fox
“I’ll kill you. I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”
“Sure, sure. Okay, Logan. You’re a real tough guy. You asked what I wanted. Now let me tell you. I want to torture this tight little whore until she gives me her money, and if she doesn’t feel like giving up the money, I’m sure I’ll have a good time anyway. Look at her. How can women think they can cover themselves in tattoos and not attract men like me, Logan? Can you tell me that? My father once told me that tattoos are for men what the weak antelope is for the lion. It’s a signpost, telling us that she’s a freak, she’ll do anything we want. Why else would she get them?”
“Because she wanted to get them, you fucking lunatic.”
“Wanted. They never want anything. They just do things. See you later, Logan. Have a good day.”
“Wait.” I listen closely, past Cora’s crying and past Moretti’s smug breathing—only he could make breathing smug—to the sound of construction workers beneath it all. They’re down the street, it sounds like, a drill and a truck backing up, the familiar beep-beep-beep.
“What?” he asks. “Are you going to sing me a song?”
“Just let her go. Do you want money? I can get you money.”
“I want money. I want her money.”
I scan my mind, thinking back over the past week of riding about town. Where are they doing construction? I flounder for a moment and then my mind settles. I remember. There’s a place a few streets over from the club, a block of apartments which is being demolished to make room for another block of apartments.
“We can work this out,” I say.
“Work it out? I’m winning. Why would I want to work it out when I’m the one in the lead? I’ll see you around, Logan. Don’t lose too much sleep thinking about what’s happening to your tattooed little whore.”
He hangs up the phone. The urge to toss my cell at the wall comes over me, to kick my bike, to punch the brickwork of the nearby bakery until my hand swells to twice its size. The urge to shout and shoot and kill. But I fight it all. I have to be calm now. I have to be deadly.
I call up Spider. “It’s time to go to work.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Cora
I remember standing behind the science labs sharing a cigarette with one of my high school friends-who-was-not-really-a-friend. It’s strange, because I don’t remember her name now, only her face, which was beautiful and always drawn tightly in an expression of anger. I remember sucking heavily on the cigarette so that it felt like my head might float away from my body. We were talking about the future, as teenagers often do, but we had no conception of what the future actually meant. For us it was a scary land of fog full of grownups and dating and driving and jobs and all the other aspects of life which terrified outcasts like us.
I remember saying, “I’m never going to be like those women you see waiting outside the gate for their kids. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones who are always dressed like they’re about to walk down a catwalk, always standing with their backs straight to push their fake tits out, just in case their husband happens to join them. Or maybe it’s to make the other women jealous. I don’t want that.”
“What do you want?” my friend asked.
“I want to feel something, really feel something. I don’t want to have to put on a performance. If I’m going to find a man, I want a man who’s going to, I dunno, like make me feel real, you know? I want a man who’s going to make me feel alive, like if he reaches out to touch me I’m really there and he knows me so well and …” I stopped, smiling like a giddy teenager, because that’s what I was. “Is there anything in this?”
“Just a bit of weed …”
“Weed!”
And then time passed and we were walking home, and I was ranting again: “I want a man who makes me feel like I can do anything, but he doesn’t pander to me. He makes me feel like, like, oh, just like. I just want to feel. I don’t want to be one of those couples who go and hang out with their separate friendship groups and bitch about what the other person did because they can’t just talk to each other about it, or one of those couples you see on The Real Housewives who stand together like they’re posing for a photo, like they never learned how to be natural with each other. I want to be one person. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
But my friend had left and I was ranting to myself.
As I rise out of the abyss of unconscious, I grasp at those memories, trying to sink through into the haze of the past and tell her, my naïve past-self, that I’ve done it, I’ve found the man. I’ve found the one who we can build a life with, who we can grow close to, grow into. But now that we’ve found him we might just lose him, just when things are getting good, just when screwing is turning into lovemaking, and a connection is forming between us. Just when things are starting to smell like roses, the scent of rotting flesh has come between us.
And then I shake my head and grit my teeth.
My head aches from where Moretti slapped me across the temple with his pistol. I blink away tears and look around. I’m tied to a chair, my wrists behind my back, the zip-ties cutting into my flesh. Pale shafts of light shine through the floorboards above. Rickety steps lead up to the basement door. Above me, men speak. Down the street a plane takes off, no—a drill hammers into the concrete. When I close my eyes I can feel the drill, an almost-nonexistent hum up the chair leg and into my body. I work my jaw, spitting onto the floor, and then roll my neck in my shoulders.
I’m in big trouble here. There’s no doubt about that. Fear twists inside of me. I try to fight it, try to be brave. Whenever I’m scared I try and think about what Viking women had to go through, constant death and misery and pain; maybe that’ll put things into perspective for me. But fear doesn’t work that way. For some people, saying hello to the postman is the scariest thing they’ve ever done. For others, it’s jumping out of an airplane. If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that everything is subjective. I try not to think about what they’re going to do to me, the men stomping around upstairs, laughing and drinking. I try not to think about chains, or naked men, or blood or tears. I try not to think about Logan standing over my corpse not even knowing there was a baby in me. Or maybe that’s how he’ll find out: when the doctor tells him that I was pregnant. Tears slide down my cheeks and I can’t even wipe them away. They slide into my mouth and spread over my tongue, salty and warm.
I sniff them away when the basement door opens and Moretti enters, walking snake-like down the stairs. Logan said I moved like a snake onstage, but I’ve got nothing on the way Moretti is moving right now, arms at his sides ready to strike, fingers twisting like spiders poking out of a snake’s mouth. He doesn’t seem like a man. He seems like something otherworldly. I wonder if he’s a god, here to punish me for … for what? For not being the woman my father wanted me to be, for not playing the Good Girl. The irony of this whole mess is that I want to do that now, want to be with Logan and have this baby.
I gasp at the thought, and fresh tears spring from my eyes. I want the baby, and I want Logan. It only took being kidnapped to make me see that!
“Don’t cry, please,” Moretti says. I expect someone else to join him, his backup, but the basement door stays closed. That’s more unsettling somehow, just me and this man who has complete power over me. There’s no pity in his eyes as he kneels down so that we’re eye level. He places his hand on my knee. I move it away, but he grips it hard, so hard it feels like fangs are digging into my skin. “Now, now. Let’s be nice, okay? Let’s not cause any unnecessary drama.”
“I need you to listen to me,” I say, desperate for him to stop sliding his hand up my leg. He stops mid-thigh, staring up at me expectantly. “Listen,” I go on. “I haven’t got any money. I swear to you, I’m broke. If I had money do you think I’d be staying in a one-bedroom apartment, where I can barely pay my rent? Do you think I’d be working in a dentist’s office? Just think about it! I’m broke.”
“Your father was Crash Collins,�
� he says, sitting down on the grimy gray floor, spreading his legs out in front of him like a kid. “You can’t sit there and tell me I’ve got that wrong. I’ve been in this business since before you were born, whore. I know how to find out about folks’ names, addresses … everything. So what exactly are you saying to me?”
“My father was Crash Collins,” I agree, grateful that his hand is no longer anywhere near me, but aware that he could grab me again anytime he wants. I need to keep talking, cast a word spell so that he won’t touch me again. I need to wield my words so skillfully that even he’ll be able to see past his sadism and hear me. I don’t think I have it in me, but I have to push on. “That’s true. But I don’t have access to his fortune. You need to understand that—”
“If you tell me what I need to do ever again,” he says, in a deadly casual voice, “I’m going to split you in half.”
I swallow, my spit tasting like acid, bubbling painfully in my belly. Then I nod. “Okay. I understand. What I’m trying to explain is that my dad wanted me to have a husband and a baby. He wanted it really badly. So before he died …” I tell him about the will’s conditions.
He listens, nodding, stroking his chin. The light from the single naked bulb in the room casts his fingers on the wall, five shadows which dance like hairless tarantula’s legs. I won’t glance at them, because then I’ll start thinking about all the horrible things he’ll do with those fingers. All at once he leaps to his knees, bringing his face close to my legs. “Do you really expect me to believe you?” he asks. “You tried to play me for a fool in the car. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that. And now you’re trying to play me for a fool again. Your father would rather see you go poor, would he? He’s that desperate for his little slut to open her legs and sprout a grandson? I don’t think so. I know what overbearing parents are like, trust me, I do. But that’s a real cunt move. Was your father a real cunt?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, voice trembling. He’s rubbing his cheek up and down my thigh, the creepiest, weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. “All I know is that I’m telling you the truth. I swear to you. I haven’t got any money!”
He smooths his face up my leg almost to my crotch, his body tensed up like a malformed dog, his head twisted and his small, mean eyes flitting from my face to my chest. “I can make you sing,” he says. “I’m good at that.”
I don’t know what to do, how to fight this man. I want to get at him some way, hurt him, scare him like he’s scaring me. But it’s hard being the tough girl when my hands are tied behind my back. The zip-ties dig into my wrists so hard that blood beads around them, like garrotes, twisting, tighter and tighter each moment. Then I start thinking about if my panic is going to make my wrists swell, and when my wrists swell the zip-ties will completely cut through my wrists, and I’ll bleed out.
“Wow.” Moretti stands up, smiling from ear to ear. “You’re having a panic attack. Interesting.”
I close my eyes and try to interrupt my train of thought. I need to derail it. But what if I really am going to bleed out here, in some dingy basement under the care of some psychopathic mafia men? What if this really is the end for me?
“What a freak,” he comments, stroking his chin. “I’m going upstairs now, Melissa. Try and get your shit together for when I return. Okay, whore?”
He prances up the stairs, leaving me in the semi-darkness. I strain at the bindings but I’m too weak and my heart is beating too fast.
“Stop it,” I whisper. The voice does not sound like mine. It sounds like a timid, defeated woman: a woman who is going to die today.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Logan
I barge into the clubhouse, ears ringing with the sound of Cora’s screams, heart beating quicker than it ever has before. I’ve been in this game a decade now and I’ve never felt fear like this. Even when killing men, torturing them, riding from the cops or a rival gang, adrenaline like this has never torn through my body. I feel like I’m breaking into pieces, like each part of me could break away and fall bloody to the floor until only my heart remains, still beating fast even though it’s not attached to anything. I try and focus, try and stop myself from being so goddamn melodramatic. But I keep thinking of Cora being tortured, Cora being raped, Cora being killed.
I kick through into the bar area, where the men are getting tooled up. There’s about fifty of them in all, pumping shotguns, loading revolvers, the sound of metal on metal filling the room. Velcro tears and pops as they put on bulletproof vests. Some of them sharpen knives, the edges glinting from the electric lights. I go to the front of the room where Spider stands, near a table of my gear: a vest, a submachine gun, and a shin-length machete. It’s good to see Spider’s bald head, the spider tattoo covering it, his small mouth and his flitting yellowish eyes, never resting.
“Boss,” he says.
“How’s it looking?” I ask.
“Good, except some of the men …” He glances up at me. “Never mind.”
“No. What is it?”
“Some of the men’ve been grumbling, well—more wondering why we’re attacking the mafia. They don’t know if it’s for a job or what.”
“Don’t tell me which men.”
Spider nods. I go about getting myself ready. If I know which men were grumbling, trying to stall the plan, I won’t be able to control myself. A job usually means some cash, or maybe some respect, or both, but this job means so much more to me. This job is like a weight on my chest, pressing my ribs into my spine, crushing my heart. Every second my mind fills with worse horrors: Cora spread-eagled on a bed, bleeding; Cora screaming as her tongue is cut out; Cora blood-eyed and gazing at me in judgment, demanding to know why I didn’t save her sooner. I load my submachine gun and look down the sights, and then spot Mom at the back of the room, sitting in the corner with a cocktail and talking with the men. She’s still in mourning; she looks like the Angel of Death come to bless—or curse—today’s business.
Spider leans across to me. “About ten men are making noises about backing out. They don’t see why they ought to—”
“This never woulda happened with the old man,” I mutter. “Can you imagine that? It’s ’cause I’m younger’n half of them, isn’t it? Maybe they see this as their chance to make a bid for my position. Or maybe they’re just chicken-shit.”
I climb onto the table and fire two rounds from my submachine gun into the roof. Plasterboard and wood flakes away, dust particles clinging to the air around me. They sting my eyes but the men are looking at me now. I reckon it’d ruin the effect if I rubbed at my face.
“I need you all to listen to me,” I call across the room. “And listen fucking closely. I reckon you’re all wondering what today is about. Maybe you think we ought to leave off the mafia. Maybe you think we ought to mind our own business if we ain’t doing them any harm.” I spot a few men nodding from the corner. I was right. They’re older, around forty and fifty, gray-haired and white-bearded. “I’m gonna tell you the truth now. There’re two reasons we’re going after these pricks. The first is that they have my fiancée.” I can’t just say girlfriend, or woman, ’cause not many men will risk their hides for a girlfriend or a woman. “They kidnapped your president’s fiancée to try and make us look weak, to try and make us look like fuckin’ cowards. They’re sitting together now, having a fine old laugh about it. What do you think’d happen if we let them keep her? Do you think they’d ever respect the Demon Riders again?” That gets through to some of them, but I read another message on other faces: so what if they have the boss’s girl? That ain’t their problem. “There’s something else, too.”
I raise the gun, watching as the men tense up, wondering if I’m going to fire it again. “Some of you know this man’s name. Moretti. And some of you know what he did to our club back in ’09. He burned this place to the fucking ground. He did that, and he’s still breathing. I would never speak ill of my old man, but I reckon it was a mistake that he didn’t put Moretti in the dirt where
he belongs. He should’ve killed that bastard the day he found out it was him who tried to kill us where we drink, where we plan, where we sleep when we’ve had a real tough night of it.” A few of the men laugh at that. I feel rotten for speaking badly about my dad, but it’s the only way to get through to them: replace the old with the new. “What’re we gonna do, fellas? Are we gonna stand here with our tails between our legs, or are we gonna go out there and end this now?”
The old men in the corner harden, their faces going from traitors to followers in an instant. The oldest man turns to the others, nodding, and his friends nod along with him. I jump down from the table and make for the door.
“Logan!” Mom’s voice cuts through the din.
I nod to Spider to lead the men out, and then return to Mom. “What is it, Ma?” I ask.
“Was that true?” She clasps her black-painted hands together, staring at me with wide eyes, the sort of eyes which are desperate to believe. “What you said about that girl being your fiancée, is that true?”