“Can I help you, Officer?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but there was a thread of fear in it that I couldn’t hide.
“Got a complaint about a trespasser.” He was lying. I hadn’t been here long enough for anyone to complain, and even if Stark wasn’t my biggest fan, there was no way he would turn me in. I wasn’t sure how I knew when everything else I thought I knew about him turned out to be so wrong, but I knew it all the way to my bones.
“Well, I was just visiting a friend. I’m on my way back to the Point right now. I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding.”
He grunted and looked from his phone toward me and back. I knew he was checking my image against one on that little screen, and I also knew if I went anywhere with him, no one would ever see me alive again.
Throwing my backpack to the ground, I turned and started to run.
I had no idea where I was going. I had no idea what I was doing.
All I knew was that I couldn’t let that cop get his hands on me.
I made it across one more yard before I felt a lightning bolt blast through my body. It was like being tackled by a charging rhinoceros. I screamed and screamed and screamed, but the sounds of the traffic coming from the road, from freedom, drowned out my sounds of agony as the cop hit me with another charge from his Taser. I laid on the ground twitching, spasming out of control, watching in dread as his black boots got closer.
The last thought I had before everything faded away was . . . help . . . but like always, no one was there to offer it.
I was alone.
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Stark
Fourteen fucking days later . . .
I couldn’t stop staring at that battered, torn, duct-taped backpack. It had been sitting on my coffee table for two weeks. Fourteen days. Each one of them seemingly longer than the one before. Each one dragging, endless, as I waited for information. I spent hour after hour calling myself every kind of asshole and was pretty sure I had given myself an ulcer and gray hair from the guilt that was tearing my insides apart. That backpack and the person it belonged to were forcing me to feel . . . more than I’d allowed myself to feel in years.
She needed help and I turned her away.
I told her no, shut the door on her pretty, hopeful face like it was nothing, because I wanted to convince myself I felt nothing. I was a void, a wasteland, a dry and arid desert. But I told her no, and now that empty, open space was flooded with the worst kind of emotion. Guilt. Raw, unrelenting guilt.
No one would have known that I had pulled the door open a few minutes later and tried to chase her down and tell her I was sorry for being a dick, but I was too late. Noe was gone. Vanished. Disappeared. The only sign that she’d really been on my doorstep, dark eyes wide with fear, was the backpack I found in the yard a few houses down from mine. It was the same one she’d clutched like a lifeline when I dragged her to meet Nassir. She wouldn’t leave it behind. Not when it was all she had.
Someone took her and it was all my fault.
Once again, I let someone down who thought they could rely on me. The girl before Noe had kept the fact she needed my help, needed me, hidden. I thought I knew her better than I knew myself, but I was wrong, and that mistake cost me everything that mattered. And yet, Noe had been right in my face with her desperation and fear, and I’d still walked away.
I failed to protect someone who was smaller, softer, and far more defenseless than I was . . . again. I didn’t need the reminder that if something didn’t have a motherboard and a Wi-Fi connection, I had no clue what to do with it.
I swore and kicked the leg of the expensive table that sat in front of my equally expensive couch. Half empty beer bottles toppled over, one spilling onto the keyboard of my open laptop. Typically, the sight of one of my babies getting destroyed would make my head explode, but not today. Not until I found out where Noe was. Not until I had her back and knew she was safe. That was the only thing that mattered at the moment. Not the couple of grand I just annihilated with the remnants of a stale beer that I couldn’t even bother to clean up, and not the fact that I now owed the Devil more than a simple favor or two. Selling your soul for a shot at redemption didn’t come cheap.
I was in so deep, I couldn’t even see the sunshine anymore. It didn’t matter, because he promised me he would do whatever he could to get her back. I tried not to cringe when I remembered the hard warning look in Nassir Gates’s amber eyes as he told me it might be her body we got back and nothing else.
I couldn’t think about that. I was good at shutting away whatever I was feeling, locking it down, and pretending like I was immune to basic feelings and reactions. I’d lost the other half of myself, the one thing that kept me human and functioning, so it was easy to pull anything that threatened my tenuous hold on sanity away from the tender places that remained inside of me. I was made of things that were hard, cold, industrial, and it allowed me to feel nothing. Steel, iron, wires, and gears. There wasn’t anything empathetic or gentle left. All of that had died when my twin sister did.
All those rigid things that made me who I was were churning and grinding under my skin at the thought of what Noe might be going through. The pipes had run dry for a long time and now there was a river of fury and regret blazing through them. I slammed the door in her face because she was the one person who made me feel something I couldn’t ignore. Even when I thought she was a boy, I was curious and confused. Lured in by her sharp wit and outright rebellion. She seemed fearless and it called to me. Her defiance echoed loud in the cavernous depths that were left behind when my soul was ripped away from me. I couldn’t get away from the feelings that she energized within me, and I couldn’t shake them off fast enough.
She needed me and I couldn’t handle it. I relinquished the desire to be needed by anyone, and I willingly accepted that I didn’t want to need anyone. I couldn’t stand with the weight of others’ expectations on my shoulders because I was weak, because I was scared and scarred from things that had nothing to do with her. I disappointed her and put her in danger. Whatever happened to her was on me, and I was fully prepared to accept any and all responsibility. If she was dead, well, then the hard fact of the matter was that I didn’t deserve to draw another breath. Her life had been in my hands and I let it slip through my fingers without even attempting to hold onto it. I’d lost another fight my mind couldn’t afford to lose.
From the start, Nassir had use for me in his criminal empire. He considered me a valuable commodity, and more than that, his business partner long considered me a friend. Neither would let me go without a fight, but if Noe didn’t make it out of this, I wouldn’t either. The emotions I’d ignored for so long would take over, and I would be helpless to stop them. I wasn’t strong enough to survive looking at the still, silent face of another innocent woman taken because life wasn’t fair. I was a failure and eventually both men who ruled the Point would realize I was more of a liability than an asset. Over the years, I had perfected the art of faking being useful and invaluable. The expiration date on my usefulness was fast approaching, I just knew it.
I kicked the table again, this time sending the liquid-laden laptop and Noe’s backpack crashing to the floor. When it hit the hardwood, the broken zipper split open and her few meager belongings spilled onto my cork floors. All she had were a couple of old t-shirts, a pair of sneakers that also had duct tape on them, a water bottle, a paper-thin blanket, and a laptop that I knew cost as much as the one I just ruined. After all, it was one she’d jacked from me when she robbed my place. I wasn’t surprised to see it when I went through the bag trying to find any kind of clue as to where she might be.
She had good taste in computers. She snatched one of my more tricked out toys. I was also suitably impressed that she got past all my security firewalls in order to use the damn thing. I told her that her brain was sexy, and I
wasn’t lying. It was the first thing I noticed about her. Intelligence was the only thing that ever really caught my attention and held it. I was impressed that she had alluded me for so long when Nassir sent me after her for information. I was intrigued by the way she showed no fear when she faced me down. That day, my anger had been hot and heavy, uncontrollable from lack of use. It raged between us in my empty, unplugged apartment. I wasn’t sure where it was going to land or how to handle it, but she hadn’t even flinched. I was curious about her defiance in the face of a well-known threat when she went toe to toe with Nassir. I was very aware of her on every single level and I hadn’t even known she was a her, at the time. That anger and fascination with her from the start was a lot to process for a man who had been mostly numb and entirely emotionless for far too long.
Now that I knew she was, in fact, all female, and a particularly cute one at that, I let myself like more than her mind. I liked her dark, untrusting eyes. I liked the sassy arch of her midnight-colored eyebrows and the little beauty mark that rested high on the sharp curve of her cheekbone. I liked her full lips and the way they looked like they were painted a rosy pink even though I knew she didn’t wear any kind of lipstick. There was no makeup in that tattered backpack. She didn’t need it sleeping on the streets. I was secretly obsessed with her streaked hair. The red looked like fire, and the black was so dark and shiny it didn’t look real. She wore it short in the back and longer in the front so she could pull off her androgynous look if she wore a hat, but it suited her. It was no-fuss and striking at the same time. I hadn’t liked anything about anyone long before my mind had been broken and my heart had been shattered, but even with everything inside of me misfiring, I could tell I was attracted to Noe Lee. It was another reason I had to turn her away. I didn’t want to work through new feelings when I could barely contain the old ones.
I was man enough to admit that I wanted all parts of her back, and there was no pushing down the bitter regret at the fact that I was the reason she was gone in the first place.
I pushed off the couch and lowered my big frame toward the floor so I could carefully put Noe’s stuff back where it belonged. She didn’t have much, and that pissed me off. There was that wild, uncontrollable anger again. It loved being off the leash and was happy to snap and pop all around me. She had the brains and the looks to get whatever she wanted, but she wasn’t a user like that. She wasn’t part of the problem. She was the solution to everything that was wrong in the corrupted parts of the city.
There was a sharp knock on my front door, and before I could fully turn my head or climb to my feet, it swung open, and a dark-haired man in a sharply tailored suit strolled in like he owned the place. On his heels was a large African American man, also in an expensive suit, and another man I had never met but had heard plenty about. He was in a suit, as well, but unlike the other two men, his was flashy, pin-striped, and accented with a patterned silk tie, gold pocket watch, and bling on his fingers that looked like it cost more than the down payment on my townhouse.
The first two men may have been mistaken for well-off businessmen if you weren’t paying attention, but there was no way the third guy could ever pass for anything but what he was . . . even with the beard that covered his jaw. He was a hustler. A player. A dealmaker and a game changer. This guy was a criminal and proud of it. He wore that fact with pride and aplomb. He earned the money to buy that suit and those rings by doing bad shit—and he didn’t care who knew it. He was the opposite side of the spectrum of what the streets could do to a person in the Point. Crime and corruption moved this man to the top tiers of power and respect, and he thrived in the chaos. He was the enemy, and he liked it that way. He was great at being bad.
I pulled off my glasses and made a big production of wiping them on the bottom of my t-shirt. I blinked several times and sneered at the unwelcome visitor. “I thought you were dead. Heard you got shanked in prison when you refused to cooperate with the feds.”
Benny Truman used to be the man who made other men cower in fear. He was the right hand to the old crime boss who ruled the Point with a heavy hand and a thirst for blood. There wasn’t anything Benny wouldn’t do as long as money was the primary motivator. That blind loyalty made him just as ruthless, cruel, and callous as the man who used to be in charge. When the old crime boss was taken out of play, his entire crew went down with him. Everyone knew Benny wouldn’t sell out anyone, even if it meant a lifetime spent locked up, but word on the street was that someone on the inside wanted to make absolutely sure he didn’t open his big, fat mouth. No one grieved his loss when he was declared dead, and the two men standing with him in my living room didn’t seem at all surprised by his miraculous return from the grave.
“I’m hard to kill.” Benny grinned at me and tilted his head slightly so I could see the long, thin scar that ran across the entire width of his neck. It looked like someone had tried to take his cocky head clear off.
Two minutes in his company and I could see why. There was something about him that made me very uneasy. That was also a new emotion. I was big enough and intimidating enough that it was usually the other way around. I was the one who made people uncomfortable, and I typically didn’t give a shit about it.
I rubbed a hand over my short, dark hair and sighed. “I wouldn’t tell Bax that. He’ll see it as a challenge.”
Nassir Gates, my de facto boss, the man who now called the shots in the Point, lifted his hand and gave his dark head a little shake. His voice had the faint trace of an accent. The more time I spent around him and the more I listened to him, I was confident that his original home was somewhere in Israel. I was good with dialects. Hell, I was good with a lot of useless shit that would put a price on my head at a very early age. Nassir never mentioned where he was from, and I never asked, but he slipped into Arabic when he was frustrated or annoyed, which somehow made his quiet, intense anger even more intimidating when it was directed at you.
“Bax doesn’t need to know about this little visit. Neither does Race. That won’t end well . . . for any of us.”
Chuck, Nassir’s head of security and quite possibly his only friend, chuckled from where he had sprawled on my sofa. “Personally, I’d like to see just how creative our boy would get if we let him loose on you, Ben.”
Bax was our boy. All of ours, even though he was only tied directly to Race. Nassir tolerated him since he was Race’s best friend, Chuck considered him one of his flock, and I hesitantly considered the guy a friend. We’d gotten tight when the deep muck of the Point sucked me in, and Bax was the only one who bothered to warn me that struggling only made guys our size sink faster. He was full of good advice when it came to dealing with the shit the Point could throw, and sometimes he seemed just as emotionless and detached as I was. He cared about his girl, his car, his city, and not much else. He was slowly softening toward his older brother and the cop’s growing family, but even that was hit or miss.
Benny flipped Chuck off and watched me warily as I climbed to my feet. Chuck was big; I was bigger. None of the guys filling up my tastefully decorated space were exactly petite, but I had at least a couple of inches and fifty pounds on all of them. Nassir had asked me more than once to bust heads in his underground fight ring. I always told him no, but with Noe missing and nowhere to put the new rage and loathing I was feeling, I was starting to reconsider bloodshed as an outlet. My recently awakened anger was a powerful thing and I had no idea what to do with it.
“You don’t look like a ghost, even if that’s what you are. People are going to notice you and word will get back to Bax and Race.” Logic. I couldn’t escape it even when I wanted to. It was coiled around my brain like a squeezing fist. Race and Nassir might be the shot callers in the Point, but Shane Baxter—Bax, to those in the know—was the Point. All the others might make things happen, but those things didn’t happen unless Bax let them. The Point was all he knew, and the worst part of the city ran through his blood. If he didn’t want Benny back, then Benny w
ouldn’t be back, and whatever plan Nassir had would go up in a puff of smoke, even if it meant that Noe died.
“Race and Bax are with their women in Colorado for a long weekend. Something happened between the giant and the teenager . . . something . . . not good, I would guess.” The teenager was Race’s fiancée’s little sister, Karsen. The giant was Noah Booker, another bruiser on Nassir’s payroll. There had been something tenuous and unnamed going on for years between the ex-con and the quiet, shy teenager. Race hated it; everyone else was waiting cautiously to see what would happen when the girl hit legal age.
But something went sideways right after her graduation, and Karsen Carter decided to go out-of-state for college after months of declaring that she would never leave the Point. She’d been gone for a couple months and now it was her first winter break. I wasn’t surprised her family was checking up on her. Nassir’s eyes narrowed slightly. “If you ask me, she’s running away and that only makes a predator want to chase, but that’s neither here nor there. We have a small window to work with and we’re wasting time worrying about Benny’s longevity.” Nassir didn’t mind logic, especially when it worked in his favor. His tone was even and steady when he explained why Benny was allowed in the last place he should be.
I narrowed my eyes at Nassir and snapped, “The only person’s longevity I care about is Noe’s. It’s been two weeks, Gates. Fourteen fucking days. I don’t have to tell you what kind of hell she could have endured in that time if she’s still alive.” I already knew that Goddard liked to hurt women and had no qualms about forcing himself on someone who couldn’t fight back. If he did that to Noe, if he let his rich goons defile and degrade her, I was going to take him apart with my bare hands. But I needed to know where she was first, before I could give the fury that was pulsing through me an outlet.
Dignity ~ Jay Crownover Page 3