by Rhys Ford
“I don’t have a lot of cash on me.” Mace held his hand out slowly. “I can give you my wallet and my cards. Then you can walk away.”
“Found out a few things about you, Johnny.” His father hocked spit from the back of his throat, then spat it at Mace’s feet. “Did some asking around and found out you turned queer on me. Bad enough you keep company with animals like them, you have to fuck one of them too?”
“I don’t owe you anything—not an explanation, not an apology for how I live.” Mace kept his voice as steady as he could, but the tremors were already beginning to roil up his spine. “All I’ve got is my wallet. Take it with you, and I promise, there’s not going to be any trouble.”
“Soon as we get into the car, he’s going to call the cops. The wallet’s not enough.” The silhouette of the man standing behind Mace’s father shifted unsteadily and moved his weight from foot to foot. “Betcha the old lady has cash up in her place. Her kind doesn’t like banks, remember? Why don’t we just take them upstairs—”
There was no way in hell Mace was going to allow his father and Bruce to get them into Mrs. Hwang’s apartment. As soon as they were inside, Mace would be sealing them into their own death chamber, and no one would ever know who’d killed them. He’d also be damned if the men believed he would let them lead him to the slaughter so he could die behind a closed door.
He’d done enough dying behind closed doors.
“Tiger, don’t.” Mrs. Hwang grabbed his arm and tugged at his sleeve. He didn’t dare look at her. Her broken, scared warble roughened the edges of her Cantonese, so he almost lost the rest of what she said, but his brain latched on to the ends of words he knew and pulled everything into place. “Let them take everything they want. I have no money upstairs.”
“You’re not giving them anything, Grandmother,” he answered back in her own tongue. “Stay with Rob. Let me take care of this.”
“Jesus, you even talk like one of them,” his father sneered, his lip lifting in disgust. Again the gun wavered, dropped down a few inches, and then rose up again. The barrel was a deep black hole Mace was trying not to fall into, but with every sweep of his father’s arm, it got more and more difficult. “Did nothing I taught you stick? Am I trying to put a lipstick on a pig here?”
“Why the fuck are we standing here talking about it?” Bruce lumbered out of the shadows. He was a big man with a sparse shock-white crew cut and a round, jowly face flecked with red splotches. His bulbous eyes gave his features an almost innocent, guileless impression, but his thin mouth twisted at the edges and added a layer of mean to his expression. He hovered a few feet away and glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Just fucking do what you’ve got to do, Danny John. We’ve got to… you know what? Fuck this shit.”
A boom hit them hard, as did the flash of light from the gun Bruce fired. There was screaming, a high-pitched wail, and the nerves in Mace’s shoulder caught on fire. He stumbled back, stunned by the hard shove of a bullet. Pain yanked at his guts, but fear kept him on his feet.
The impact punched him halfway around, and he held up his hand to stop Rob from coming to his aid. He needed them to run upstairs, wanted them to pull up the world behind them so he could fight off his demons in the dark they’d been birthed from. Mrs. Hwang struggled and fought Rob’s grasp, trying to reach him. Her rollers were coming loose out of her dark hair. One fell to the ground, a splash of fuchsia plastic bristles scrabbling as it rolled across the oil-stained floor.
“Get upstairs,” Mace yelled at Rob. “Get her upstairs before—”
Then another burst and roar stole away the world’s murmur and left Mace in a numb silence. There was a distant ringing, but the rest of it—all the street noise, Mrs. Hwang’s frightened shouts, and his father’s toxic slurs—was gone, muted beneath a chatter of gunfire.
His father plunged him back into the quiet, but the humming nothingness in Mace’s ears was forgotten, drowned under the torrential gush of blood that poured out of Mrs. Hwang’s chest.
“No, no, no,” Mace gasped as he lurched across the cement to get to Mrs. Hwang’s side. Rob cradled the slender, brittle body of the old woman against his chest. Something dark dripped on her face, and Rob’s look of horror nearly dropped Mace to his knees.
Rob was telling him something, screaming at him, but Mace couldn’t hear him, not clearly, not through the screaming buzz in his ears and the pound-pound of his blood in his temples. It hurt to bend over her, not just along his side and shoulder, but in his heart. She was the woman he came home to after a long, hard day and the grandmother who made him dumplings and then lied about making too much for church.
The man who held her was just as precious. Rob made him feel… alive. For the first time in his life, Mace felt as though he owned himself, felt pride in the little things he’d accomplished, and knew deep in his heart that Rob was right—his brothers would never turn away from him. Rob made him feel the love he’d been given. Even in the short time they’d been together, he’d opened up dreams that Mace had mortared behind thick brick walls.
He wasn’t going to let his father take that away from him—not again, never again.
The world snapped back into place, and the first thing Mace heard was the whooshing sound of Mrs. Hwang struggling to breathe, her panic-stricken face growing paler and paler with each heave. The sensation of being dipped into lava ran over his torso, and each flicker of heat was punctuated with a flash of pain so intense it made his eyes cross. In the middle of the chaos, he clenched his fists, or at least his left, because the right didn’t seem to be responding, and he flailed and tried to strike the gun out of his father’s hand.
He caught a glimpse of Rob dragging Mrs. Hwang to the side, leaving a streak of blood on the concrete, a river thick enough for him to fall into, deep enough to drown in, and Mace found himself fighting to breathe.
His father was shouting at him—a low hum of garbled buzzing—and just beyond him, the other man, Bruce, fought to get past his dad’s arm. Their words were floating in and out, but Mace didn’t care. The agonizing pain in his shoulder grew until he felt he could reach behind his back and pull out the spear someone had shoved into him. Things were beginning to not make sense anymore. The lights in the parking lot were getting brighter, but the edges around his eyes were thickening with a black he couldn’t pierce.
“I’m not going to let you take them from me,” Mace growled. “You’ve taken enough. I’m not going to let you have Rob and… my grandmother.”
“Dan! The fucking cops are coming!” Bruce shouted as he headed toward the idling car parked across the driveway. “Just fucking shoot him already. Grab the bitch’s jewelry, and let’s get out of here.”
Mace’s right hand was slippery with blood, but he reached for the gun in his father’s hand. They were close enough for him to smell the booze on his father’s breath, and Bruce’s shouting became frenetic, ear-shattering shrieks urging Mace’s father to get into the car.
“Let go!” His father’s eyes were wild, and as they struggled for control of the weapon, Mace’s blood splattered over the man’s face and dappled his uneven beard. The recoil was immediate, followed by a look of disgust so wretched it curdled his father’s expression and turned him monstrous. “Fuck!”
The slap of his father’s hands on his own face was as loud as the gunshots moments before. He let go of his shriek and then turned to face Mace, his anger vividly reddening his skin. The gun was forgotten, released as soon as the spray shot across his father’s mouth, and the weapon was heavy in Mace’s grip and dragged his right arm down. He wanted to fling it away, but his shoulder wouldn’t respond, and the numbness had moved down from his collarbone into his chest and seized his lungs.
“You fucking faggot! You son of a bitch!” His father screamed and scrubbed at his face with the hem of his T-shirt. “You got your fucking blood on me.”
As heavy as the gun was and as hard as his arm trembled, Mace lifted the weapon and pointed it at his fat
her. It would be so easy to squeeze the trigger and end his nightmares. He could live with the image of his father’s skull being shattered apart by a bullet. His father probably wouldn’t even realize he’d been killed. The man was in full panic, raking his face raw with the rough fabric. His ignorance and hatred would die with him. The mutilated scarification Mace bore on his shoulder itched as though it needed to be lanced and for the poison left inside of him to be released once and for all.
It would just be so damned easy to pull on the small piece of metal that rested against his index finger and erase the person who ruined his life.
“Mace, I’ve called the cops.” Rob’s voice punched through the haze settling over Mace. “Don’t do it.”
The two seconds it took Mace to fully absorb what Rob was saying to him was enough time for his father to realize he’d been drawn down upon. A small shuffle of his feet took him a few inches back and lengthened the distance between him and Mace. The blood was still there, speckles across his forehead and cheek, but it was the gun that held his attention.
“Get out of here. And you need to thank Rob for saving your life, because I sure as hell don’t want to.” Mace coughed, and the fire began once again and crept through his muscles. “You ever come near me or mine again, nothing Rob says will save you. And I mean nothing. Because if a piece of shit like you can do time, I’ll be glad to mark off every single day they give me because I took you off of this earth. Understand, I will have no regrets, because I know my family waits for me. Hell, I’ll bet you they’ll even fucking bake a cake while I’m in there.”
The sirens drowned out anything his father might’ve said to him, but Mace didn’t think he had a reply. The only thing he saw was his father’s back as he pelted toward the car, and the only thing he heard was the squeal of the tires and the thump as it jumped the sidewalk to the street.
Mace stumbled around. His legs refused to move correctly, and his arm was useless at his side. He bent over and tried to lay the gun gently down on the floor, but his fingers jerked and spasmed. It dropped. Clattered. Metal on concrete. A short mariachi burst of castanets and then Mace’s knees hit the ground.
He didn’t feel the impact. Not on his knees or his hands when he pitched forward, arms flailing out but useless to brace his fall, but he never hit the floor. Instead the darkness he’d been fighting since the moment his father walked out of the shadows finally consumed him.
MACE KNEW who was holding his hand before he even opened his eyes. He’d grown up with the touch of those hands, felt their calluses grow and their knuckles thicken with each punch thrown to defend one of the brothers during the occasional bar fight. He was the reason for more than a few lost thumbnails, and his shitty aim with a hammer became practically a legend in the house, but Bear continued to trust him, continued to hold nails steady in tight spots until they could save for a much-needed nail gun. They were hands that fed him, comforted him, and washed the stink of other men from Mace’s skin during the times when he’d been unable to find his own worth except through sex.
Now he held on to Mace as though Mace would slip away if he let go. His grip was tight, nearly painfully so, but Mace was glad for the pressure.
It meant he was still alive.
“Gonna lose my fingers.” It hurt to talk, and when Mace swallowed, his throat was dry and raw. Despite his garbled croak, Bear must have understood him, because he eased up. Wanting to say thanks, Mace grumbled something but couldn’t get out more than a cough.
“Hold on. I’ve got ice chips for you,” Bear promised. There was the sound of rattling in plastic, and Mace tried to blink. “Suck on these slowly. Okay?”
The light hurt as much as his shoulder did—a throbbing dull ache that edged toward a full-blown pain. Another blink and the bursts of white in his vision faded and left behind polka dots when he closed his eyes. His lashes stuck together, and Bear murmured for him to hold on. Then Mace felt the dab of a damp cloth across his face. Blinking became easier, and then a cold sting touched his lips.
“Open. Hold it on your tongue and let me know when you need some more.” Bear emerged out of the white-and-beige haze. The room snapped into place behind his worried face—a mishmash of blue curtains, an open window looking straight out into another building, and the small phalanx of machines chirping a soft medley as they kept time with Mace’s vitals. “How’re you feeling? You’ve been out of it the last couple of times you woke up.”
The hospital room was cramped but private. Its walls were painted in tones of warmed-up bread and tepid tea, and an open wooden door on the far wall from the bed gave Mace a peek of a mint-green bathroom that he vaguely recalled Ivo coming out of at some point. Flashes of lucidity were interspersed with burning agony and disorientation, many of them filled with his family’s worried voices and a compassionate sea of nurses dressed in a rainbow of scrubs.
He didn’t remember Rob in any of it, and Mace ached at his absence. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his family, it was just that he’d found something elusive, something organic and natural with Rob, and he wanted to have that touchstone.
Even when he didn’t know how to tell Bear he was falling in love with someone he never should have given a second glance.
“Hey, open up. Take another one.” Bear offered up another ice chip, a thicker piece than the one he’d slipped onto Mace’s tongue a few moments before. “You seem more awake this time. Been a couple of days. Your eyes are clear this time. Good.”
His brother was worn out around the edges, burned to a crisp, and knitted together by sheer will. After so many years of watching Bear working himself down to the bone, Mace recognized the signs of burnout on his face, in the slump of his shoulders, and in how he kneaded at his own fingers, sometimes turning the gold ring he wore on his pinky. The dull matte band was all that remained from his parents.
The others had to be somewhere nearby, probably held back by rules and administrators, but Gus would be pacing the halls outside, unwilling to be cowed by nurses, while Rey hovered nearby. He believed Ivo and Luke would sit quietly in a waiting room or even work the shop, anything to keep their minds and hands busy. They were the ones who would push the family forward and trust Bear to lead the way while Gus wandered off and came home when they needed him. Thankfully Rey was now there to tug him onto the right path.
Just like Rob was there to light the way for him, if only Mace would be willing to take that step.
“You doing okay, little brother?” Bear prodded gently and scraped the chair’s legs across the floor with a hitch. It brought him closer to the bed, close enough for Mace to smell the spicy orange soap Bear liked. “Here. Another one. Get enough water in you and they’ll yank that IV they’ve got you hooked up to.”
“Throat hurts.” Mace struggled to swallow, and then the cold water eased down and soothed away the rough gravel feel. “Shoulder too.”
“They had a tube down your throat when you came out of surgery. Standard stuff.” Another ice chip and Mace stared up into the weariness ground into Bear’s face. He looked as though he’d aged ten years, and flecks of silver sparkled among the dark hair at his temples. “You fought it, and the doc thought you weren’t in danger of getting fluid in your lungs, so it came out. You were lucky with the bullet. Went all the way through and then….” Bear swallowed hard, and his deep ocean-blue eyes turned misty. “Went out the other side but didn’t have enough to puncture your clothes. Kind of bullet that’s supposed to shatter into pieces. Doc said it’s a miracle it stayed intact, but fuck it, kid, I’ll take it.”
“Fuck knows, I took it.” The joke was feeble, but it pulled a slight smile from Bear, and Mace tried to grin back, but his lips stung when his skin cracked. “Shit, that hurts. Talking hurts. Fuck, breathing hurts.”
“Breathing’s good. At least you’re doing it,” his brother reminded him. “Hold on. I’ve got lip balm here.”
He couldn’t move much, or at least his muscles were reluctant to respond, but eventuall
y Mace got himself comfortable and got his arms stretched out. His shoulder once again felt like someone had stuck a hot poker through it, but his fingers weren’t numb, and his throat eventually was hydrated enough for him to speak without feeling like he was coughing up a caltrop with every word.
Mace didn’t know where to start or who to ask for, but the flicker of something sad in Bear’s eyes forced him to finally ask, “Mrs. Hwang… Grandmother… is she?”
“She’s still in the ICU. Hasn’t woken up yet, but she’s strong. Everyone’s… hoping.” Bear’s shoulders bunched up, and his plaid flannel shirt strained to hold its seams together. “And before you stress out about it, your captain’s been here a few times, and your brothers in blue are shaking down the city looking for that asshole father of yours.”
“Okay… okay. Good.” He exhaled, glad for the aches that worked through his muscles. Fatigue flirted with him, a coy nudge that urged him to fall into the bed’s soft warmth, but he shook it off and focused on his brother’s handsome face. “He… shot her. Fucker just…. Jesus, Rob. Bear—”
“Yeah, Rob. He’s… worried as fuck. Threw up a couple of times while they were working on you, but thing is, from what I’ve seen, you guys were always butting heads. But here he is, pacing the hall like the rest of us.” Bear slid to the edge of the metal chair and rested his meaty, inked arms on the bed. “So when you’re up to it, you and I are going to have a small talk about Rob. No, don’t look at me like that. Don’t. Because if there’s anything I want for you, it’s for you to have someone in your life… in your heart.”
Fourteen
“YOU’RE GOING to have to go in deeper with that black,” Ivo judged over Rob’s shoulder. “You’re leaving enough space for the skin to breathe, but you’re lacking depth. Pack it in and stipple out into a tight blend on those curves.”
If there was one thing Rob hated, it was someone throwing out directions while he worked. He loathed it nearly as much as he hated Ivo being right all the damned time. Because damned if the bastard wasn’t right. There wasn’t enough depth to the piece, and if he didn’t correct the tones, none of the vivid oranges and golds he’d worked in would pop off the man’s olive-hued skin.