by Max Henry
And all he wants is company?
I find that hard to believe.
“If you’re lonely, why don’t you get yourself a dog?”
“I can’t fuck a dog.” He answers without hesitation, staring out at the lights of the highway as they flash by.
“I won’t be kept for your sick amusement.”
“Really? Tell me again: what were your other choices?”
My face flames, and before I can talk myself out of it, I slap him—hard. “Fuck you.”
His fist connects with the side of my face sending vibrations scattering across my skull as my head rebounds off the window. My eye socket aches from the intensity of the pressure in my jaw. The tears I’d been so carefully holding at bay spill forth, soaking into the material of my tank as they run a path down my throat to my chest.
“Fuck me?” he scoffs. “That’s what I’m trying to get you to do.” He rubs the smarting skin on his left cheek. “But you insist on making things as difficult for yourself as possible.”
“Life’s difficult,” I grind out.
“Only if you let it be.” He sighs and turns his body to face mine, rubbing my knee. The action is so contrasting to what he’s just done, as though he’s trying his best to make me feel better, that I find myself recoiling into the door behind me. My skin sears under his touch. “Those passport details you’re holding—I can make them go away just as fast, you know.”
And there he goes, playing with my empathy again. Only the more he does it, the more it works. “She’d get by in Cuba for a little while longer.” I wave the paper between us. The car hits a bump in the road, and the armrest of the door sends a painful jolt along my spine. “This . . . it’s nothing but a bribe. My mother is a strong woman. She won’t let a cartel rule her life.”
But I will—for her.
“Stop being so fucking stubborn,” he yells. His face contorts with his rage.
I dig my feet into the rise of the floor between our seats and push myself so damn hard away from him that I’m pretty convinced the car door will fly open any second and spill me onto the road.
“I can’t decide if you’re ignorant or just fucking stupid,” he continues. “Your mother is pushing for time from La Muerte. How long exactly do you think one old woman can hold off eight kingpins? That’s eight men she has to sweeten to keep her life. Eight men she has to convince to leave her alone.” He laughs, low and scathing. “It’s nothing but a bullshit fairytale, Elena. There is no happy ending for her if she continues to refuse their requests.”
No matter how hard I try, I can’t catch my breath. The interior of the car seems to shrink about us, the air growing thick. The gravity of the situation has not only hit, it’s determined to choke the last signs of life from my body.
Carlos rolls his eyes and leans casually across me to open my window. His weight crushes my legs as the night air rushes in through the newfound gap.
“Breathe, Elena.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Do not mistake my concern for kindness.” He returns to his side of the vehicle as the vehicle slows and turns down the tree-lined road his home is on.
“I’ll stay.” He said it himself—I have no choice.
“Of course you will.” His thumbs hook the lapels of his jacket and he gives them a tug as we turn onto the paved driveway and come to a stop at the huge steel gate of his estate. “Welcome home, Elena.”
SIXTEEN
King
The gates to the clubhouse roll open with a rattle and shake. Small stones get flicked into the runners all the time from our tires, and as much as it’s our job as prospects to clean them out, nobody ever gets around to doing it. Our headlights sweep over the converted warehouse in an arc as we head toward the large roller door that covers the entire front face of the add-on to the left of the building. The garage was the first major renovation to the place after the club took possession, and predictably enough, it’s the best-kept part of the entire clubhouse.
The three of us roll into the garage and to our positions among the rows of shiny, well-kept machines. I back my ride in beside where Fingers, our mechanic, is bent over his bike. Killing the engine, I stay astride while the engine pings as it cools and pull my bandana off, tucking it inside my helmet. Night riding is an open invitation for a midnight feast of bugs, so I learnt pretty damn quickly to always carry something to cover my face with. Plus, the skull print looks bad as hell when us brothers pair it with our open-face helmets.
Appearances. Life is all about appearances.
“King, you’ve got detail in the morning.” Apex points towards our dirt-covered, bug-splattered machines.
Fingers stands and rounds Twig’s ride to inspect the damage from when they tipped over. “What the fuck happened here?” he asks, fingering a few scrapes on Twig’s tank. I give him a wry smile; he takes pride in making sure we’re all running and put together right. Harming a bike is paramount to harming his children.
“Got tipped over.” I run my hand over the scratches in my forks. “You want me to clean them first?”
“Rather you than me, so yeah. Fuckin’ hate cleanin’,” he grumbles. “It’s women’s work. But I wouldn’t let any of those bitches in there touch anyone’s bike.”
I chuckle and nod, heading for the common room. “Dead right. Probably come out and find the chrome scratched to hell with a pot scrubber.”
“It’s happened before, you know.”
I laugh and cross through the door, making for the stairs. I haven’t checked the clock, but given the time when we finally left Kansas City I’d say it’s got to be a little after midnight. I give Gunner a wave to say I’ll pass on a drink as I swing left for the steel staircase that leads to the mezzanine floor. While half the live-ins are happy to drink away the dark hours and sleep away the sunshine, I’ve never been that way. Call it years of ingrained habit, but my body has always woken with the dawn.
The long ride home gave me too much time to think. About Elena mostly, but also of that girl’s blonde hair, that boy . . . and the parents’ grief. That was what struck a chord the most.
I’m an only child to third-generation dairy farmers, but it wasn’t always that way. Once upon a time, I had a baby brother. Once upon a time, the boogey-man was only a story and not something I whole-heartedly believe in. Once upon a time, it never even crossed my mind what it would be like to feel as though a part of my life would always be missing.
I thought I had a handle on what happened to my brother, that I’d coped after all these years. But those kids . . . fuck, I got a real sense of understanding for what my parents must have endured when he died.
The coroner’s official report stated death by asphyxiation, but the circumstances surrounding how it happened were anything but accidental. Calving is a delicate time of year, and from a young age both of us kids would accompany our parents on the night-runs to bring in the newborns. We would sit in the old pick-up, barely tall enough to see over the dashboard, and watch as the yellowish beams from our parents’ torches flashed across the horizon. The occasional thump and roll of the cab would signify another new calf being tossed on the back amongst the hay, and through it all we’d sit there, not touching a thing and doing as we were told.
Until we got big enough to see outside the windows, big enough to come up with stories about the dark, and big and brave enough to want to explore.
It took my baby brother less than a minute to wrestle the old door open on the truck, and even less than that to disappear into the inky black of the field. My mother came running when she heard me calling his name, and my father’s torch lanced the dark for hours, searching, praying, and hoping.
I gave up believing in a higher being when he refused to answer my parents’ calls that night.
Laughter carries up the stairs from bar as I turn into my bedroom and shake my cut off, laying it out over the footboard of the bed. My boots hit the timber legs with a solid thud as I kick them off, one by one.
I take a moment to stand and trace the tattoo on my left forearm with my finger, doing what I can to bury the heartache that creeps into my chest like a dark fog. A scripted G is buried amongst vines and roses, faded and encased by newer and brighter ink. The memorial piece was my first, done at a back-room shop on the tenth anniversary of the day I learnt the ugly truth about the world.
Garret’s body was found three days after his disappearance in a ditch five miles from our home. At first glance it looked as though he’d tripped and fallen into the stagnant water at the bottom of the dip, but closer inspection soon ruled out accidental death. Bruising on his tiny four-year-old neck indicated where the belt had been forced tight enough to choke him—the indentations from the buckle clear as day—and the marks on his body, well, Mom never spoke in detail about it, but as I grew older and learnt more about the world, I soon knew why it was that my calm and placid mother would burst into hysterical tears every time the sheriff visited with news on the case.
Garret’s murderer, a man who’d been charged numerous times for petty crimes, walked free. He was an opportunist who happened to be fixing an irrigation line in the paddock next door that night. But of course, no one could prove a thing. The creep never openly admitted to doing it, but rumors were he liked to brag about things he’d done to a young boy after he’d drunk one too many; the similarities were too many for it to have been anyone else in such a small community.
The only thing that would have tied him to the case was the belt. No trace of DNA was found on my brother’s body, and being the small town that it was, the fact the old man never had anybody to verify his whereabouts wasn’t unusual. One strip of leather . . . gone. They searched his house, his work, his vehicles, but it was never found. What grates me even now is that it could have been tossed in a field, lying there for anybody to find, but the paddocks around home are vast, and the sheriff’s office only had so many men they could spare financially for the search.
Seasons change. Turf gets ploughed.
Opportunities are lost.
Money. Everything in life also comes down to money.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I pull my phone out. I wouldn’t say I’ve led a sheltered life, but those kids, they stirred something dark and dangerous that’s been hiding inside of me for far too many years, and I’m worried the hate won’t rest until I can get vengeance for what was done to them. I dial up the number of the only person who’ll be able to tell me how to move past this—Mom. The early hour won’t matter; my parents have always started the long days at the farm before the first rays of the sun.
She answers after a few rings. “Long time, no hear?”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m only teasing, Lloyd.” I cringe at the use of my birth name—something I was happy to shirk when I joined the Aces. “What has you calling at this hour?” The soft hum of the milking plant in the background fills the void between her words.
“I won’t hold you up long—”
“You’re fine. Dad’s coming around the bend now with the last of the herd. You’ve got a few minutes before we start. You’re lucky I didn’t have my gloves on yet.” She chuckles softly before sighing.
Mom’s always been beautiful, and I can imagine her now in the shed, apron and gumboots on, and her hair pulled into a tidy bun to keep it from falling in her face. I used to tease her as a kid and call her the Dairy Queen, but I think she secretly loved it. She deserved it—anything to make her feel pretty when her days were filled with being covered in mud and worse.
“I don’t want to upset you by bringing this up . . .”
“But?” she asks hesitantly.
“How did you not let your hate for that asshole who killed Garret get the best of you?”
“Oh.” An awkward moment passes with just the soft whooshing of the plant filling the silence. “I think it did, to be honest.”
“But you always held your head so high. You never let it affect you when we saw him drive though town or anything.”
“But it did, honey. Inside, I died right along with Garret.”
My chest tightens hearing Mom express her pain. Why the hell didn’t I think to do this face-to-face? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Don’t apologize.” I can just imagine her giving me that smile of hers. “What I’m more concerned about is why you’re asking me this?”
“You know I can’t tell you what we do, Mom. Just . . . something happened today that itched at old scars.”
“What’s done is done.”
“But he just walked. He got away with it.”
“I know, and the only way I can deal with that is to not think about it. You need to let it go, Lloyd. An eye for an eye will only heal the pain for the briefest of moments. It won’t bring Garret back, and it won’t change whatever happened today. It’ll only leave you jaded and angry.” A low and resonate ‘moo’ cuts her short. “Look, the first ladies are walking on the platform. How about you humor your mom and stop by for lunch some time this week?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Try, because I worry about you, especially when you call up talking like you are.”
“I’ll be okay.” I sigh. “Love you, Mom.”
“Again, you’re worrying me.”
“What? I can’t tell my mom I love her?”
“I could count the times you’ve said that on one hand,” she responds flatly.
My heart tugs a little at the home truth. I’m not one to say it freely, and I guess it’s probably something she needs to hear more often.
Carlos’s threats surface in the back of my mind. “How are things at the farm otherwise?” I’m not entirely sure what I expect her to say. That there have been strange men hanging around the house? That she’s had unmarked threats delivered to the mailbox?
“Good. Just the same old same.”
“Dad’s good?”
“Apart from working himself into an early grave, yes. I swear that man won’t leave himself any time to enjoy retirement.”
“Some things never change huh?”
“That they don’t.” She sighs.
“I’ll text you before I head up.”
“Look forward to getting it. I better go. Love you, Lloyd.”
She disconnects, and the absence of her voice and the background noise of the morning milking leaves me with a distinct hollowness. I lie back on the bed and stare up at the pockmarked plaster ceiling. After everything that happened, my parents stayed levelheaded and dedicated to making the farm work. One act of violence against children that aren’t even related to me and I’m considering the logistics of returning to that creep’s shack and pulling him apart, limb by limb. My parents are good people who easily could have become angry and jaded toward a man who took half of their legacy from them and walked to tell the tale. But they didn’t. They rose above him by showing he didn’t affect their lives more than he should, that although they never forgave him, they moved on. So why can’t I do the same over a crime that has no physical connection to me?
SEVENTEEN
King
“First time for everything, huh?” Twig, screws his face up as he shakes out a cigarette. “Can’t believe Apex didn’t have details on what we were carrying.”
“Neither.” I take the stick he offers and place it between my lips. Church was called the minute we arrived back at the clubhouse. The brothers rode in under the cover of darkness while I caught a few hours sleep. Those of us not privy to the meeting killed time in the common room while they talked. Apex and Twig let the other officers know what sort of shit-fight the club’s entering into. “Do you think anyone would notice if we returned and shot that sick son-of-a-bitch who killed them?”
Twig lights his cigarette and then holds the flame out for me. “Possibly, but will that really solve the problem?”
“You sound like my mother.”
He lifts an eyebrow and smiles. “Okay?” He kicks his legs out before
him and slumps down into one of the many plastic chairs that dot the back porch.
“Why would somebody do that?”
“Same reason you or I would do it,” he says, puffing a cloud of smoke into the air before us. “Money. You don’t want to know how many other men would have done the same thing for the right amount of cash. If not the guy we picked up from, then who?”
“In other words, there’s always going to be somebody in a bad enough situation to replace their conscience with what men like Carlos are paying.” Like us.
“Exactly.” Twig bobs his cigarette in my direction. “My advice? Don’t dwell on it. You’ll never stop all the bad in this world from happening. And although revenge can be sweet, it ain’t what people make it out to be. There’s no closure from it.”
“It seems wrong, letting him get away with it.”
“Yes, it does. But we’ve got other things to worry about first, like what other sick and fucked up shit is this asshole Carlos is goin’ to have us doing. He stares off into the distance with a stern contemplation. Pink pierces the dark gray of the night, the first rays of light making their way into the sky.
I run a hand through my sleep-mussed hair, and yawn. Two and a bit hours wasn’t near enough. “You think Apex will turn him down if he gets us to do something similar?”
“Nup.”
“You think we’ll get sent on a hit or two?”
“Yup.”
“How the fuck are we supposed to keep our morals then, if our president is takin’ on shit work for dirty money?”
“By not losing sight of who you are.” Twig straightens in his seat, tapping the ash from his smoke onto the deck. “Men kill for all sorts of reasons, but as long as you know that your heart is in the right place when you do it, it at least goes a way towards bein’ able to sleep at night.”
The look on his face, the vacancy, he’s not speculating—he knows. “How many men have you killed?”