A PRICE TO PAY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Zoey Parker

  I know Hunter wanted me watching his every move, Missy thought, but tough shit. He can come over and babysit the bastard himself if he's so fucking concerned.

  She went to the hallway and pushed on a partially-opened door, hoping to find a room to spend the night in. What she found was a bedroom—or at least, that had been its intended purpose. Now it appeared to be a storage space for whatever random crap Cain decided he didn't want or need anymore. There were messy piles of old clothes, broken appliances, busted furniture, and cardboard boxes that were falling apart. From the look of it, she doubted Cain had even been in this room in years.

  Missy stood in the doorway for several long moments, weighing the relative merits of sleeping in her car instead. It was tempting. But ultimately, she knew she'd have a better chance of making sure Cain didn't try to sneak out if she stayed in the house.

  “Sneak out,” she thought derisively. This is what it's come to. He's like some dumb teenage boy who's been grounded, and thanks to Hunter, now I'm the nagging mother who has to keep him from creeping off in the night to hang out with his delinquent friends. Wonderful. Fuck my fucking life, I swear to God.

  She stepped in and shut the door behind her, grabbing a handful of old shirts. She used them to dust off a decent area of the floor, then sat down and pulled off her shoes. There was nothing in the room that looked clean enough to use as a pillow, and she couldn't bring herself to take off her shirt and fold it up under her head in case Cain came barging in.

  So she rested her head against the hardwood floor and shut her eyes, trying to clear her mind of her mother's tired, lined face, and the disappointment she knew she'd find there if her mother were still alive.

  It took hours before she settled into a fitful and uneasy sleep.

  Chapter 16

  Gaspar Hernandez

  On the other side of Micanaw, past the Teepee Motel and near the border that separated the town from neighboring Braintree, there was a wooded area where the locals hunted deer when they were in season. As a result, the grass and branches there were often flecked with old dried blood, and its rich black soil always seemed to carry the weight of death repeating itself upon it, autumn after autumn.

  In a clearing in the center stood a dilapidated trailer that looked abandoned. Indeed, in the brief periods when men with boots and shotguns came stomping through the woods in search of game, it remained empty.

  But during the rest of the year, it was where Gaspar Hernandez made his home.

  When he'd lived down in Juarez, Gaspar had seen the gaudy mansions the cartel bosses lived in—gilded fortresses crammed full of expensive works of art, trophies from rare animals, and antiques that had originally decorated the palaces of Europe. He knew that one of the reasons the bosses tended to surround themselves with such excess was to inspire their flunkies. The message was clear: “The whole world is yours for the taking! Work hard, stay, loyal, and you too could live like a king and afford to indulge your every whim!”

  Like most soldiers in the Barros Cartel, Gaspar had been raised in poverty and had tried to escape it by serving in the Mexican Army, only to find himself going hungry as often as he had before. He liked his new life much better—always having money in his pocket, never having to worry about where his next meal would come from.

  Still, unlike the others, he'd never been impressed by the bosses' vulgar displays of wealth. He hadn't joined the cartel to become some kind of bureaucrat, dripping with jewels and surrounded by sycophants.

  No, Gaspar had joined them simply because he was a man who adored violence in all its forms, and he knew that the cartel would give him plenty of opportunities to explore his passion as long as he remained faithful to them.

  And he'd been right. In Mexico, in Arizona, and now in Ohio, the blood and screams remained as beautiful to him as ever, and they never seemed to stop for long.

  Gaspar sat naked on the floor in the middle of the trailer with his legs folded, staring into a round black mirror that was eight inches across. His long, shiny black hair reflected the flickering lights from a dozen candles, most of them in tall glasses painted with the images of saints. His frame was long-limbed, sinewy with muscle, and covered in tattoos. Most cartel members carried plenty of ink on their bodies, proclaiming what badasses they were, how many people they'd killed, how much they loved money and pussy.

  But Gaspar's body was covered with images of the orishas that his Cuban grandmother had taught him about. They were the demigods of santeria, the primitive form of Caribbean witchcraft she'd practiced. Gaspar had never become a devout believer in the mysticism of these peasant superstitions, but he'd still learned to embrace the rituals as personal methods of focus and meditation. The trance state they encouraged allowed him to visualize his enemies more clearly and consider the best ways to hurt them.

  Also, his fascination with santeria kept all the right people nervous about him. Both his allies and his enemies believed that he believed, and that his talents for death and torture were somehow linked to the unholy influences that their own ignorant parents and grandparents had taught them to fear. He'd seen hardened killers cross themselves and mumble prayers when he walked past.

  Gaspar liked that.

  Now he took a small glass vial of cocaine from the floor next to him, shook some out into the crook between his thumb and forefinger, and snorted it. The powder helped his concentration as much as the obsidian disk he gazed into, or the sounds of drums and chanting that blared from an MP3 player hooked up to a small speaker. He allowed the red clouds in his mind to clear away and concentrated as hard as he could.

  He didn't need his abuela's scrying stone to tell him that Keith had forced Nostril to talk and then killed him. He didn't need the stone to tell him that Hunter had sent his cute little sister to look after Cain. He didn't need the stone to tell him how much pain Cain was in, or how frightened and uncertain the rest of the Eagles were, now that they knew who they were up against. His men had been spying on the MC for a week before he'd even set the trap at the Teepee, and they were still shadowing the bikers now and intercepting their cell phone calls. They couldn't make the slightest move without Gaspar hearing about it immediately.

  But even so, with his mind rapidly sharpening into a lethal crystalline point like an icicle, Gaspar imagined that he could clearly see them all before him, acting out their squeaking little dramas of terror and agony just for him.

  He imagined Hunter in his clubhouse, furiously debating what to do with the other moronic greasers in his pathetic little gang. Should they run? Should they stand their ground and be butchered? Should they make a deal? Why, oh why, was this happening to them now, after so many months of peace and prosperity? Their confusion and helplessness were delicious to Gaspar as he pictured the Eagles thrashing and sinking into the quicksand of their own despair.

  He imagined Cain curled up on his couch, fresh pain ripping through his body with every new breath, and still too proud to accept the help offered by Hunter's sister. He could practically hear Cain's thoughts as the biker sank into a mire of self-loathing and desperation. And would Cain's wounded pride force him to act, even against Hunter's orders? Would he stubbornly launch his broken body at Gaspar, cementing his own doom and throwing the rest of the Eagles into a blind panic of grief and rage?

  Yes. Gaspar thought so.

  Most of all, he imagined the entire world around him as a vast web, a tapestry in which each thread was connected to every other. He felt like he could reach out and touch the strands with his fingertips, pulling them this way and that, knowing which ones needed to be tugged or snapped in order to ensure his desired outcome.

  He stood up and crossed the room, switching the drums-and-chanting track to a Mexican rap song. He shook another line of coke out of the vial and onto the black mirror.

  Everything was going according to plan. Soon, the Blood Eagles would be just another pile of bodies in Gaspar's wake, and Ohio would belong to the Barros Cartel. From there, they would exp
and up into the Northeast. And of course, the opposition they encountered there wouldn't go quietly, and there would be more blood for Gaspar to revel in, and more beyond that, and even more beyond that. A glorious infinity of carnage.

  “World without end,” Gaspar whispered to himself, snorting the line. “Amen.” The thin, sour trickle of the coke went down the back of Gaspar's throat, tasting like aspirin.

  He threw back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Chapter 17

  Cain

  The next morning, Cain woke with a start and sat up before he could stop himself. The pain knifed its way into his sides again and he let out a sharp cry.

  He'd been having a nightmare about the boots pummeling his body again. He knew it was a dream as he was having it, and he kept reminding himself that the beating eventually ended in real life, and that it would here, too. Any minute now, he thought, Keith will fire his gun and these assholes will scatter.

  Any minute now, he told himself.

  But the gunshots didn't come, and the boots continued to kick his bones into splinters and smash his head against the pavement. And worst of all, there was a sound high above the boots, a maddening sound too high for him to reach up and silence.

  Laughter. Someone was laughing at him.

  Gaspar was fucking laughing.

  And he knew it wasn't just in the dream. They'd already gotten away with this, and they knew he wouldn't be able to do a goddamn thing about it, not in this rotten nightmare, and not in real life, either. With every new boot-stomp, the laughter got louder and Cain felt more helpless. If they wouldn't stop kicking him, he hoped they would at least keep going until they killed him this time, instead of leaving him feeling so weak.

  Then he woke up, the aches in his ribs delivering the final kicks left over from the dream.

  Cain looked around, hoping Missy hadn't heard the pitiful sound he'd made when he woke up. But she wasn't in the living room, and when Cain craned his neck toward the kitchen, he couldn't see her there, either. The bedroom door was open, and she didn't seem to be inside.

  Maybe she got the hint and left, Cain thought, smiling. Good.

  The TV was showing an old black-and-white program from the '60s in which a freckle-faced boy with overalls was trapped down a well while his faithful dog tried to warn his parents of the danger their son was in.

  Cain switched it off.

  Cain's ribs throbbed again, and he reached for the pill bottles on the table. But just as he was about to pop them open and dry-swallow some, he stopped, frowning at them with disgust.

  No, he thought. Fuck this. Fuck these pills, fuck this house, and fuck spending another week out of the action like some kind of worthless goddamn zombie. I'm going to get myself dressed, and then I'm going to go out to the garage, get Gooch's bike, and ride down to the Knife.

  If that pisses off Hunter, well, too bad. There's no way he'd actually take my patch just because I wanted to help the club. No way. Not after everything we've been through. And once he gets over his initial anger and sees that I'm good to go, everything'll be fine. We'll figure out what to do about this Gaspar bullshit and make sure no one ever fucks with us like this again, and everything will go back to how it was.

  Cain stood up, groaning. He was glad he'd at least been able to manage getting into his own jeans last night, but everything else would be tricky. He reeled over to the bathroom and looked in, trying to find his t-shirt.

  It had vanished from the corner it had occupied last night. The puddle of spilled conditioner was gone too.

  So she stuck around long enough to wipe up the conditioner before she left, Cain mused. Huh. Well, that was nice of her, I guess. But what did she do with my t-shirt?

  He thought about it for another moment, then shrugged. Fuck the shirt, he decided. I don't need a shirt. It's not that cold outside, and I'd probably have too hard a time pulling on a shirt by myself anyway, with this cast on my arm. No, I just need my boots and my cut, and I'm all set.

  Cain returned to the living room and found his boots on the floor. Rather than bend down to try to put them on, he played footsie with them, using his toes to carefully set them upright so he could shove his feet into them. It took numerous tries, and when he finally succeeded, he could feel the rough leather digging into his unprotected ankles.

  Fuck socks, he thought. Socks are for pussies. Real men don't mind a few blisters. Come on, you can do this.

  Next came the cut, and he knew that would be even harder. He picked it up with his good hand and slid it up over his cast, draping it on the shoulder. He spent the next ten minutes trying to contort his other arm behind him so it would slip into the cut-off sleeve of the vest. Finally, the hand found the sleeve and he shrugged the vest on with a triumphant growl.

  Don't tell me I need help with this shit, Cain thought smugly. I'm a fast healer and a bad motherfucker. Something Gaspar's about to find out in a hurry.

  Cain brushed his teeth, grabbed his wallet and keys, and went through the door leading to the garage. There were three bikes in various stages of disrepair, which Cain planned to sell someday when he got them working and polished up.

  But the fourth bike, an Indian panhead customized for one-handed riding by The Great Gooch himself, was fully-repaired and ready to rock.

  Cain took a helmet from a workbench and blew the dust off it before strapping it onto his head. He hit the button on the garage door remote and the door trundled upward, revealing the empty driveway and the beckoning road beyond it. Then he reached into his pocket, found the right key, and straddled the bike, inserting the key into the ignition.

  He thought about all the times Gooch must have sat on this bike, feeling the breeze on his face as he rode hell-bent for leather down the highways even after everyone told him he'd never be able to again. Gooch hadn't let anyone convince him he was too broken to be an Eagle. He'd shown them all he still had what it took to be an outlaw, just like Cain would.

  Cain smiled to himself and turned the key.

  Nothing. The engine didn't make a sound.

  Cain frowned, turning it again.

  Still nothing.

  Cain scowled, trying to figure out what could be wrong. He'd never taken the bike out for a spin, granted, but he was positive he'd examined every part of it and repaired every flaw. He'd even filled up the gas tank a couple of weeks before, planning to test it out soon. The machine should have been purring eagerly under him, but instead it was just dead weight between his legs.

  As he pondered this, Missy's car pulled into the driveway ahead of him. She got out, and Cain noticed that she was wearing a clean shirt and a different pair of jeans. She peered at him over her sunglasses, raising an eyebrow.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked.

  “Since you ask, yeah,” Cain replied curtly, trying the key in the ignition again. Still nothing. “I'm going down to the Knife to see what Hunter and the guys have planned, just as soon as I find out why this fucking thing isn't working.”

  “Oh, well, let me spare you the mystery,” Missy said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of spark plugs, showing them to him.

  Cain stared at them, his teeth clenched in anger. “You...you...”

  “Yeah, me, me,” Missy nodded. “There were piles of dirty clothes all over the bedroom, and your washer doesn't seem to be working. I'm guessing it probably committed suicide from neglect. I wanted to make sure you didn't do anything stupid while I was at the laundromat, so I yanked these out of Gooch's bike. I made a few other minor adjustments to it too, which I'll be happy to tell you about in a week when you've rested up.”

  “How...what...” Cain stammered, red-faced with rage. “Where do you get your goddamn balls, fucking with a dude's bike, huh? Don't you know how personal that shit is?”

  Missy rolled her eyes. “First of all, as you may have noticed, I don't have balls, and I've gotten along pretty well without them for over twenty years. I certainly didn't need them to pull
out a few spark plugs. Second, it's not like I keyed the fucking thing or poured sugar into your gas tank. Tempting though those options were, I'm well aware of how much you Eagles worship your bikes, so I didn't do anything to it that couldn't be undone in about five minutes. And third, you've got four of the fucking things, so stop whining like a baby who's had his toy taken away and get a grip on yourself. I probably just saved you from doing something that would have ended your life. You're welcome.

  “Now stop straddling that thing and take your helmet off,” Missy finished. “You look ridiculous.” She opened the trunk of the car, hauling out two large garbage bags bulging with clothes.

  Cain got off the bike and took off the helmet, throwing it against the wall as hard as he could. It bounced back at him and he raised his arms without thinking, taking the impact on his cast with a yowl of pain.

  “Serves you right for throwing a tantrum,” Missy said. “Now step aside. I need to bring these in.” She swept past him with the bags, heading toward the living room.