His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas

by Theodora Taylor

  “I love you. I love you, Mason Fairgood,” June whispers into the fire. Hoping he can somehow hear her. “I love you, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that before.”

  She chants the words over and over again, drowning out the mayhem in the background, the pain, the fear, as hands—so many groping hands—reach out to unchain her. But only so they can use her and throw her away like so much trash.

  Chapter 28

  MASON

  Mason is in hell.

  Funny, how he used to think he was already there when he lived under his old man’s roof. Under the constant tyranny of his father’s fists. Now he knows that was nothing compared to this. Seeing the love of his life taken out of a house, chained to a chair, head flopping listlessly as if she’s barely conscious. Listening to Razo make his big announcement about his plans for her. Watching her weep quietly in the firelight.

  Mason will never, ever forgive himself. Never forgive himself for thinking, even for a second, that the note on the kitchen table was anything other than total and complete bullshit.

  Luckily, he’d found out soon after reading her message that he was full of fucking shit. He’d granted June her freedom, but no way in hell was he prepared to let her go.

  After the note, Mason immediately turned on the tracking app, the one he’d added to her phone and hidden in a folder without her permission. He’d feel bad about this later. But for now…

  When Mason saw the red dot pop up at a location roughly 30 miles away, he immediately knew where he’d find her. In the Cul. And he was beside himself with fury and fear. See, Mason grew up with a woman who, time and time again, chose to stay with the man who beat her. She did this because his father was familiar, and sometimes the devil you know might seem to be the best option available. But she also stayed because no matter how bad his father hurt her, he always had the drugs Mason’s mom needed to make it better. June, however, was most definitely not cut from the same cloth as his mother. He knew she hadn’t gone back to the Cul of her own accord.

  She’d been taken.

  Less than thirty seconds later, he was on the phone with the Russian who’d cleaned up the mess in Los Angeles and made sure it stayed that way.

  Funny how Mason always thought his biggest threat would be from other white supremacists who’d want to make an example of him. That’s why he’d been hiding here in Arkansas. Staying under the radar, where no one who knew him would ever think to look.

  But in the end, it wasn’t nationalists or Neo-Nazis who were his biggest threat, but June’s cocksucking ex. The one he’d wanted to put down like a rabid dog from the get-go.

  And now here he is, hiding beneath a parked truck, watching that fucktard spout off in Spanish about mythical shit that isn’t ever going to happen on the other side of the bonfire.

  The kid’s getting antsy.

  Jordan spotted Mason tucked under the truck almost immediately, after stumbling out of the old house he’d once shared with June. Almost as if he’d been looking for him. But to Mason’s relief, Jordan was careful not to give away Mason’s position. He simply came to stand right in front of Mason’s position, as if he were trying to get as far as possible from the sight on the other side of the giant flames, and hide Mason from view at the same time.

  This shit is hard to watch, he knows. And Jordan is only a kid. Mason gets more worried as the boy starts bouncing from foot to foot, clearly fixing to do something—anything—that will most likely result in him getting hurt or killed.

  He catches the kid around one thin ankle and gives it a squeeze. “Don’t do it, kid,” he growls from his hiding place beneath the truck, though given all noise and chaos, he’s sure Jordan can’t hear him.

  It works though. Jordan stops bouncing. But Mason still feels him vibrating with the need to act.

  Mason looks across the way, past the raging fire, to where June sits. He thinks she might be praying. No, not praying. Even above the music and on the other side of a fire, he can still hear her thoughts, as if she’s whispering the words directly into his ear. “I love you, I love you, Mason Fairgood.”

  “I love you, too, sweetness,” he whispers back, so quiet only her subconscious mind will hear him.

  Mason’s watch dings, and a message appears on the wrist of the hand laced around Jordan’s ankle. “Just landed. ETA 30 min.” It’s from the Russian, the one who has arranged for several of his cousin’s personal guards to fly in from Texas.

  But June doesn’t have thirty minutes.

  The Hijos are already at her chair, removing the chains. One rips open her shirt, grabs a breast, and twists hard, making her cry out.

  Fuck this. Fuck this all the way to hell.

  Mason will be goddamned if he lets another one of those fuckers touch his woman. He releases Jordan’s ankle, and scrambles out from under the truck. Bends close to Jordan’s ear and shouts, “As soon as I go in, you take June and run like hell!”

  He waits a nanosecond to be sure Jordan has heard him. At the kid’s nod, Mason runs like a bat out of hell toward those motherfuckers who dared touch June. He doesn’t give two shits if it’s thirty versus him. If his life ends up being the price he pays to buy enough time to save June and Jordan, so be it. Because if he didn’t realize it before, he definitely knows it now.

  His life ain’t worth shit if those two ain’t in it.

  Chapter 29

  JUNE

  One moment, hands grope June, twisting her breast, making her cry out in pain. The next…

  June hears the sound of boots pounding against pavement. Air displaces as a powerful force comes down on top of one of the men who unchained her. As for the one who’d grabbed her breast...his hand suddenly lands in her lap. Minus the rest of him. Behind her, the man screams and screams, pulling back a stump that still spurts blood from where it used to be joined with his groping hand.

  As if closely following some elaborate choreography made for an action movie, the handless Hijo turns just in time to get knifed in the gut, right before Mason—yes, Mason!—puts a gun to his temple and pulls the trigger without so much as blinking. In the next instant, he puts his knife away and turns his gun on the other Hijo, the one who helped carry her out here. June only has a split second to take note of the fact that the man is frantically trying to pull out his gun before he falls back with a bullet-sized hole in his chest.

  Mason grabs him before he goes all the way down, and uses the corpse as a full-body shield as he picks off Hijos, one by one, from behind it.

  June’s seen a lot go down. But she’s never seen anything like this before in her life. At least, not outside a movie theater. She never suspected a guy as big as Mason could move that fast.

  Her moment of shock and awe is interrupted by a high-pitched voice yelling, “C’mon, June! We gotta get clear! Mason said!”

  The next thing she knows, Jordan is at her side, pulling her out of the chair. “C’mon!” he shouts. “Mason said run!”

  So she does. Ignoring the sharp jabs of pain as she follows the boy to the house that used to be their prison, but may now be their sanctuary. Even so, June has a bad feeling about leaving Mason behind. She knows he’s outnumbered by the Hijos. And she doesn’t see Razo in the melee of people shooting and trying to take cover from Mason’s eerily accurate gun. This means he’s still out there, somewhere in the fray, unaccounted for.

  Where is he?

  Sooner than she wants, June has her answer.

  “Hey, hey, now…where you going in such a hurry?”

  She’s suddenly yanked backwards, a wiry but strong arm wrapping around her neck.

  “June!” Jordan screams.

  “Stay back!” she shouts at him in reply.

  There’s the soft snick of metal followed by a cold sensation on her neck. Jordan freezes in place.

  Not because of her command, she realizes, but because of the knife Razo holds against her throat.

  “You didn’t do a very good a job with your note, June,” he hisses
in her ear. “Now I have to kill this fucker. And guess what…”

  He squeezes her neck so tight, she can’t reply even if she wants to. “You going to help me do it.”

  Chapter 30

  MASON

  For a while, all Mason sees is red. Blood and rage as he takes out Hijo after Hijo.

  There’s screaming. And the darting shadows of people running to take cover. But Mason barely registers any of this. Can’t fully process what he’s doing. Can only aim and shoot, aim and shoot. His mission clear: kill as many of these motherfuckers as possible while he waits for back up.

  But then…

  “Hey, pendejo! Over here, mamon! Why don’t you come over here and mamame la verga!”

  The red tint falls away instantly and the world returns in sharp focus when he sees them.

  Razo stands about a meter or so in front of Mason. He’s holding a knife to June’s neck, all while grinning triumphantly. The asshole raises a hand to let the Hijos cowering behind trucks know to hold their fire.

  Jesus H. Christ. If Mason wasn’t in the middle of a very bad situation, he’d roll his eyes so hard, it’d put a teenage girl to shame.

  Because even before the little asshole opens his mouth, Mason knows for a fact it’s not going to be nearly enough for Razo to get him to surrender. No, Razo the Tiny will most definitely want to grandstand the fuck out of this moment, too.

  “Looks like you ain’t tired of fucking this puta yet!” the little man calls out from behind June.

  Snickers all around. Yeah, he’s a real comedian alright.

  “And it looks like you’re okay cowering behind a woman like a little bitch,” Mason answers back.

  That doesn’t get any laughs. But it does have the desired effect: a direct hit on Razo’s fragile ego. Mason hopes it’ll make him do something stupid. Give Mason an opportunity.

  “I ain’t cowering behind her, culo. I’m using her. I ain’t the one out here on a suicide mission, looking to get killed over some black puta.”

  Mason dead eyes him as Razo’s crew laughs. If he could have one wish right about now, it would be to end this motherfucker. He fights the urge to look at his watch, to figure out how far away the Russians are so he knows how much longer he has to put up with this shit.

  “Okay, time to drop your gun,” Razo says, pulling Mason out of his thoughts.

  Well, shit. Looks like Razo finally remembered this is a killing contest, not a battle of egos.

  “Drop your gun!” he says again more forcefully. “Now. Or I’m slicing this puta up.”

  Mason drops his gun. Lets it clatter to the ground.

  And Razo grins. “Alright, now we’re talking business. You want this puta back, huh? How much you willing to pay me this time? You best think hard before you answer, because I’m also going to need compensation for the lives you took, for the, let’s call it inconvenience, of losing my men.”

  More snickering, proving to Mason that the majority of this gang is dumb as fuck. They’re laughing when they really should be side-eyeing the hell out of a leader who makes jokes after ten of their brothers have been taken out by one guy.

  That’s what he’s thinking, but out loud Mason says, “Anything. I’d pay anything to get her back.”

  “How bout that bike you used to drop Jordan off at school this morning? And now that I think about it, I heard rumors you didn’t turn all the SFK stash over to the feds like you was supposed to. Hear you’re still sitting on a lot of cash, even though you got this one working at Cal-Mart.”

  Razo turns his gaze, full of faux sympathy, to June. “Sorry bout that, baby. Should have warned you about white people. They’re cheap as fuck. Always saving. Never wanting to break some off for their dime piece…or to support their friendly local gang.”

  Mason really wants to tell Razo not to speak to her. Not to look at her. To put down the knife so he can get to the business of ripping the spine Razo obviously never uses out of his back. But he can’t risk anything happening to June. So instead, he answers, “Like I said, I’ll pay anything. Name your price.”

  “Fifty K. How’s that for a price?”

  Mason gives it less than a second of thought. “All right.”

  “You got that?” Razo says, obviously surprised.

  “Yeah,” he answers. Taking a note from June’s book and leaving it at that.

  But Razo’s got the scent of money in his nostrils now. “How about five hundred K then?”

  This time Mason considers it. But only to buy more time, and so Razo won’t come back at him with another number. He’s not lying about being willing to pay anything, and the truth is, he and D didn’t split the SFK war chest. D wanted nothing to do with money, saying it was dirty. He thought it would only hold him back. So he gave every last cent to Mason. Right now, all that SFK money is sitting in a safe in June’s barn, waiting for a Russian laundry.

  But if needed, Mason would happily give Razo the whole damn safe if it meant getting June out of harm’s way.

  “Okay, half a million. If that’s what it takes,” he tells Razo.

  “Wow, you hear that?” Razo says into June’s ear. Like she’s still belongs to him. “You got this white cono’s dick so up, he’s saying he’ll pay a half mill for you. This right here is true love!” he calls out to his boys.

  More snickers. It’s beginning to feel to Mason like he’s surrounded by a pack of hyenas.

  “All right, here you go…” Razo shoves June forward. “He so in love with you, mija. I’d go to him if I was you.”

  To Mason’s surprise, June hesitates. It’s as if she doesn’t want to come to him.

  Then Razo says, voice dipping lower, “You heard me, puta. He want you back. You go to him.”

  She hesitates again. But then takes a step forward, her eyes wide with fear.

  But it’s not fear. Mason discovers that a few seconds later when she reaches him.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around his wide torso.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers back. “I’ve got you now, sweetness. Everything will be alri—”

  He stops when he feels her hand fist inside his jacket. A moment of confusion followed by a flash of metal when she steps back.

  His knife. She’s grabbed his knife, and now she’s turning back around with it. No!

  But before he can think to reach for her, stop her, she’s running back toward Razo, some kind of ancient, crazed battle call issuing from her throat.

  And now it’s Razo eyes that have gone wide with fear. June is coming at him too fast, to go for his gun, and almost reflexively he brings his knife down to deliver a stabbing blow. His knife hits its mark, plunging into June’s middle with a sickening swick that will haunt Mason’s nightmares until his dying day.

  But in this case, getting in the first stab doesn’t change Razo’s fate even one percent. Because nothing, not even a stab to the gut stops June.

  Her arm plunges forward, pushing her body even deeper into Razo’s knife. And the next thing Mason sees is Razo staggering backwards, Mason’s serrated blade now embedded in his throat.

  He falls to his knees, unable to scream and dying faster than his mind can process it.

  And June…

  “NOOOOOOO!!!!” Mason yells, lunging forward.

  But it’s too late.

  June…his sweetness…his one true love...his beautiful avenging angel…she collapses with Razo’s knife still planted in her belly.

  And then everything explodes.

  Chapter 31

  JUNE

  Pain. Triumph. The sound of men yelling, “Razo’s down! Razo’s dead! She killed him!” in English and Spanish. Pain.

  Falling. Falling. Hard ground.

  Explosion.

  Fire and smoke.

  The sound of gun shots. Not sharp like before, but deep and staccato. And fast.

  Several men drop next to her, their chests lit up with bullet holes, eyes empty and staring.

  The gr
ound is cold, slick. She’s in a pool of blood. Her blood, choking her, making it hard to breathe.

  Sharp pops that are soon drowned out by another round of staccato shots.

  More bodies join her on the ground. Then there are voices. New voices. Speaking in another language. Something guttural, fluid. Russian, she thinks.

  Mason shouts, “Get the kid, make sure he’s safe! My old lady’s been hit. She needs help!”

  His face is suddenly beside hers. Like they’re in bed together, having a talk before they fall asleep. Except he looks really angry and afraid. “Fuck, sweetness! Why did you do that?” he demands.

  “I love you,” she chokes out past the blood.

  He grabs her hand, kisses it. “I know you do. I love you, too.”

  His head bows over the hand he holds, shoulders shaking.

  “Don’t cry,” she murmurs. “I thought Fairgoods didn’t cry.”

  Mason shakes his head, denying the tears in his red eyes. “I ain’t crying, June. Ain’t nothing to cry about. Because we’re going to be together—fuck!” he yells, then shakes his head at her. “Why, sweetness? Why’d you go and do that when you were almost free?”

  “Couldn’t let him sell me again. Couldn’t let him live on the same earth as Jordan.” June coughs up more blood. “I thought it was only way.”

  Mason rains down more kisses on her face, her hands. “Fuck that, sweetness. There ain’t no such thing as an “only way” that involves you getting hurt for any reason. You got that?”

  “Okay, yes,” she says. Everything goes blurry. She’s crying, too.

  The conversation hurts on many levels. June feels herself becoming weaken. Not much longer now. She’s sure of it. “Please, can I see Jordan?”

  “No, you cannot see Jordan,” he answers fiercely. “Because you’re going to see him later. When you wake up in the hospital. That dead motherfucker didn’t give you nothing but a scratch.”