by Kiki Leach
"Jesus." He soured the moment he got a good look at just how deep the cut had been and turned his eyes back up to mine. The salt and pepper color in his eyebrows became more prominent as his glare into my eyes intensified. "What the fuck?"
I clinched my teeth and swallowed hard. "I was the girl in front of your club eight years ago," I said. "You and another biker found me bleeding from this very scar, as well as a slew of others that took years to finally heal and become invisible -- all thanks to a hell of a lot of surgeries that I couldn't afford back then, and a hell of a lot of make-up that I eventually could. But if you hadn't have gotten to me when you did, surgeries or makeup wouldn't have mattered because I wouldn't be standing right here talking to you about it today."
His eyes traveled back down to my thigh and he flinched as if the memory of me jolted him like an unexpected bolt of lightning. "You're the bitch that was laying half dead right outside the gate? The one with that 'free pussy' sign attached to your dress?"
I lowered my skirt and nodded. "Yes. I wouldn't exactly call myself a 'bitch', but that girl was me."
"Jesus. If you're twenty-five now, that made you--"
"Seventeen back then." I reclaimed my seat at the bar and he let out a long, painful groan.
"You sure you don't want a goddamn drink after revealin’ that shit?" he asked me.
I gave him a quick smile. "No."
He dropped his head and focused his eyes on the bar. "I don't remember much about that day," he said. "‘Cept for maybe how I felt about findin' you out there in the first goddamn place. And it sure as fuck didn't feel too good." He paused. "Why the fuck did you come back here after all this time? Can't be 'cause the memories of what you went through are somethin' you're lookin' to stick inside some kinda goddamn mental scrapbook and cherish for the rest of your fuckin' life."
"They're not. Not in the slightest. In fact, if I could take some kind of pill and forget it all, I would. What happened then has scarred me forever, both mentally and physically. Maybe even emotionally too." I folded my hands one inside the other and stared straight up into those intoxicating steel blues. "What you did for me that day brought me back here," I said. "Because I need your help now just as much as I needed it back then, maybe even more."
"What the fuck kinda help are you thinkin' I can provide for you now?"
"The kind that keeps me protected from the same man who put me out there all those years ago in the first place."
"Shit." He ripped what looked like a joint from his back pocket and flashed a quick fire across the tip. "I can give you money if you need it..." He blew out rings of marijuana smoke and shook his head. "...before I can give you any kinda protection. I'm the VP of a goddamn motorcycle club. We're motherfuckin' outlaws, not bodyguards, doll. That's just the way it is." He yanked an ashtray from the other side of the bar and sat it in front of him.
I waved my hand across my face as the smoke from the joint traveled up my nose, and sat back. "I wish money was the only thing that I could use, but a pile of green is not going to keep this guy from coming after me. Say what you will about who you are and what you do, but you're not just the VP of a motorcycle club. I've seen you around the city for years and know that you're so much more than that and always have been."
He dropped his hands in front of himself and eyed me strangely. "And just how the fuck do you know that?" he mumbled.
And call me crazy, but I could've sworn there was something of a sexual undertone to his response. The way he said it, the way I felt it. I attempted to ignore it in order to get my point across about him being more than who he had been trying so hard to portray himself to be, but it was a less than easy thing to do.
"A few years ago," I started, "I drove past this place on my way to a job interview at the cleaners around the corner, and I saw you with some guy who said something to you about... something, I'm not even sure what it was. But I remember that it pissed you the hell off to the point that you literally picked him up from the ground by his throat and threw him around like he was nothing more than a rag doll. The guy must have been maybe one-hundred or so pounds heavier than you, but you still managed to lift him up over your head and toss him into a barbwire fence across the street. I thought you were crazy as hell--"
"Still am," he blurted.
"Maybe. But more than that, you were completely unafraid of what he might have done to you had he actually managed to get back up. Nothing and no one seemed to intimidate you and I admired that. Even if I think you might be somewhat crazy, I still do."
"Admired? Baby doll, if that's the case, you just might be a hell of a lot crazier than me."
"So I've been told once or twice before," I told him, half-jokingly. "But mostly by people who don't matter."
He dropped his joint into the ashtray and blew out more smoke. "What I did to that lamebrain motherfucker was so long ago that I don't even fuckin' remember why I fucked him up like I did in the first goddamn place. Though I do remember fuckin' him up pretty goddamn good." He grinned. "I'm not sayin' that I couldn't do the same to him again, or even some other motherfucker today, but...."
I readjusted on the stool and dropped my shoulders. "You don't know anything about the man who attacked me, do you?"
"No. Once me and Blue got you to the hospital that was it."
"Right." I brought my hand up to my mouth, thinking back on that day. "I tried to get in contact with you after they finally let me off the drugs, but the nurses told me that you didn't want to have anything to do with me. They gave me your first name, though, and mentioned your Shadow Riders cut. With that information, I looked you up, kept track of what I found and here I am." I paused. "You know, I thought when you found me that morning, that I was dead and you were the gatekeeper to hell ready to bring me under. But maybe you're really an angel and your wings are just hidden beneath all of that leather."
"I'm nobody's angel, babe. If anything, I'd give the goddamn devil a run for his motherfuckin' money."
"Well, maybe that's better than being an angel after all, because giving the devil a run for something is exactly what I need right about now." I leaned forward. "The man who basically has me running scared is scheduled to get out of prison soon due to some loophole that he found in the system. Not many people know about it, but... he's already contacted me twice, telling me that he's coming after me and our child."
He scrunched up his face. "The kid you've got now is the seed of that crazy fuck?"
"You say that as if getting pregnant by him was some kind of choice on my part," I spat. "FYI, this cut on my inner thigh wasn't the only reason I was bleeding out all over the concrete."
River frowned and locked his jaw. "Jesus."
"Like I told you, she just turned eight years old last week. Which means she's old enough to start asking why all of her friends have daddies and she doesn't, but not old enough to know the reason why."
"Was he put away 'cause of what the fuck he did to you?"
"You'd think, but it turns out that night was just a blip on a very big radar that the FBI had been tracking him on long before I even came into the picture. His family has ties to both the mob and local Cartels. He was apparently so good at running dope from state to state before he was sixteen, that he was deemed a local kingpin by some of the major drug lords throughout the city of Tampa."
"And that's where you're originally from?"
"Not originally, but we moved there after I turned fourteen."
He nodded. "What the fuck is this asshole's name?" he asked me.
I practically exhaled my answer. "Ricky Fontaine."
"Fontaine?" River's eyes bulged from his head and in an instant, he grabbed the ashtray from the bar and tossed it across the room. The glass shattered against the wall and as pieces of it trickled across leather seats and chairs, the rest fell to the ground.
I jumped up from my chair and stood back. Not so much in fear that he'd turn to me next, but fear that if he threw something else, it might not be as
generous to just shatter to the ground this time. "I guess it's fair to say that Ricky's name isn't one that can be so easily forgotten."
"Fuck no," he growled, breathing in and out so hard that I could see his chest bobbing up and down beneath his shirt. "That motherfucker nearly put me outta business every goddamn time he'd come around here sellin' guns and blow to the underage kids in the neighborhood. Cocksucker used all of his family's liquor stores as covers for that shit and tried sellin' coke to my kid when she was back in school. I beat that asshole ‘til he bled at my fuckin' feet after she told me what happened, and his dick got hard from it." He rattled his head and tightened his fists; his knuckles turned red as did the color in his face. "If you're really runnin' from this son of a bitch, you don't just have a goddamn problem. You've got a motherfuckin' death wish."
"Death is what I'm trying to prevent, which is why I'm here."
"There's no way in fuck that I can save you from that sick piece of shit, doll," he said. "I barely managed to get my own goddamn kid away from that fucker, so I've got no clue as to what the fuck makes you think that I can help you stay clear of him. If anything, you need the goddamn cops to get him off your back, and I don't say that shit often."
"You don't think I've been to the cops already?" I snapped back. "That it wasn't the first place I 'skipped' off to? Most are just as afraid of him as I am, in both Tampa and Crescent Beach. Others have made lifelong deals with his family as far as the illegal blow and guns are concerned, so there was no way in hell that I could go to them. I even thought about contacting the same Feds who eventually busted him for selling crack to minors, hoping that they could at least get me into the WPP. But I realized all too quickly that that family has so many government officials paid off that even if I managed to get the hell out of here without so much as a social security number attached to my name, he'd find us."
"Look, Mia, right?" he shot back. "I sympathize with what the fuck you're goin' through, darlin’, but I can't fuckin' help you."
I stood back and sneered. "I think that's bullshit."
He glowered. "What?"
"I think in spite of everything you're telling me that you could help me if you wanted to. Obviously my scar didn't do the trick, but maybe this will get you to change your mind." I grabbed my purse and snapped it open, then reached inside for a small piece of pink cloth with a tiny buckle attached to the end of it. "What if I told you that this could help you and the MC? Maybe just as much as you could help me?"
River narrowed his eyes. "What the fuck is that shit?"
"Clothing from a pair of overalls that once belonged to a six year old girl." I reached over the bar for his hand and placed it inside his palm. "I remember a news story about you and other members of the club being accused of burning down that dope house in Daytona eight years ago," I said. "A lot of articles came out after that, claiming that your reputation suffered over the years because of what happened." I looked up into his eyes and despite them going soft, he shoved his brows together. "It's pretty obvious to me that you never found out the truth about who really burned down that place and framed you for it."
River's eyes traveled back down to that piece of cloth. "No."
I curled his fingers inside his palm and held his hand tight between my own. "What you have in your possession right now is evidence from that night. It came from the overalls of a girl I tried to help pull out when the place shot up in flames."
"What the fuck were you even doin' there?"
"I was with Ricky," I blurted. "And he's the one who set that fire. We had gone out that night because he wanted to cheer me up. I had applied to the ACDC Dance Academy in Los Angeles with the hopes of attending after high school, and I had only learned just a few hours before that not only was I not accepted, my parents didn't have the funds to get me into even the smallest city college Tampa had to offer, given where my father chose to put his money for me instead.” I swallowed hard. “On the way back to my house, Ricky got a phone call from someone about something going down at that dope house in Daytona. I asked him to take me home first because I was partially out of it after having a few drinks, but he insisted on taking me with him. I fell asleep in the car and next thing I knew, I was waking up to the smell of burning wood... and flesh."
"Jesus Christ," he mumbled.
"When I looked over in the driver's seat, I saw that Ricky wasn't there and neither were the keys. My phone was missing too, right along with my purse, wallet, ID and credit cards, everything. So I jumped out of the car in a complete panic and thought to run. But then I heard something that stopped me before I could even get ten feet away. There was a blond haired girl with blue eyes the same color as yours, and she was screaming so loudly, so harshly, that it was bloodcurdling. I'll never forget the sound of her voice inside my head for as long as I live." I sniffed. "She was leaning out of a second story window and when I saw her, my instinct was to run up and save her. And that's what I tried to do."
"Jesus. You were crazy as shit."
"Like I said, so I’ve been told before." I took a second to hold back the impending flood of tears that I knew would be coming at any given moment before continuing on. "When I reached that second floor, I heard more screams and cries. I looked up and down the hall and I saw tiny fingers sticking out from beneath the door of every room. There were so many of them begging to be let out, so many of them screaming about flames and ashes.... I couldn't understand why anyone would do something like that to innocent children. I mean, how sick do you have to be in the head to burn innocent people, let alone children alive?"
I sniffed again and rolled my bottom lip into my mouth to keep it from trembling.
"I went to the first room," I continued. "And then I went to the second, and then the third and so on. Every single door was locked from the inside. I couldn't get in and they couldn't get out. I freaked. The place was literally burning down around us, but I knew that I couldn't leave. I couldn't. I thought about that girl and the other children throwing their hands beneath the crack of every single door..." I shook my head.
"How the hell'd you get this piece of cloth?" River asked me.
"The girl from that window eventually jumped from it. And then she ran back inside the house and found me. I asked her why the hell she didn't run, and she told me that she was scared. And in the fall, she broke her arm. A few seconds after that, I heard Ricky's voice, along with a few others that I had never heard before that night. Some were speaking what I think was Czechoslovakian while others were speaking Russian and Portuguese. I tried to get her out of the house with me before they came around, but Ricky snatched me by the back of the head before I could even get back out that front door. One of the other men literally ripped that girl from my hands which is how I ended up with a piece of her clothing. He carried her back upstairs and Ricky threw me out of the house."
River looked down at his hand still encased between mine and snatched it back. He opened his fingers and stared down at the cloth and buckle, and he made a face while gritting his teeth. "How the fuck do I know that everything you're tellin' me isn't absolute bullshit?"
"Because that night is the reason I was dumped in front of your club. After Ricky literally dragged me back to the car, he knocked me out cold with the butt of a gun. I didn't wake up until about a day and a half later and found out that he told my parent's I had tripped over some stairs at a stadium and hit my head."
"And they believed that shit?"
"They had no clue as to who or what he was really about and liked him too much not to," I responded. "It wasn’t until after he was locked up that they finally accepted the truth.”
“They know he’s the father of your kid?”
I shook my head. “I thought it might’ve been best at the time to spare them that much, considering.... Anyway, he tried convincing me that I had only heard about the fire via the news and just couldn't stop dreaming about what might have happened inside. But I knew he was full of it and wanted to prove it. Un
fortunately, I couldn't find that piece of cloth without drowning him in liquor to knock him out first, so that's exactly what I did. For weeks, I made sure he had a bottle in his hand until he was finally out of it long enough for me to search his clothes. And that's when I found it inside one of his pants pockets."
"And he let you keep this shit?"
"Not exactly. I hid it in a place I knew he wouldn’t go looking and then when he woke up, I stupidly threatened to go to the police with it. Needless to say, that conversation didn't go over too well." I took a seat and dropped my hands to my lap. "He and his family knew all about the Shadow Riders' previous run-ins with the police more so than any other club within the entire state, given your widespread reputation. So when the opportunity came to place the blame on you for first the house fire and then my attack, they took it. That's where the 'free pussy' sign came into play.”
"Shit. This motherfucker thought even after all we get here every fuckin' night from bitches all over the goddamn city that we were still desperate enough to fuck you too?"
"That's what he was hoping for, yes," I said. "He thought that despite leaving me for dead, I still had a vagina and it was what your club liked best about women no matter what shape or state of mind they were in. If one of you had actually taken advantage of me that night, it meant that when I was finally found, your DNA would show up and mean more to the police than his."
"Even if you spoke up about what the fuck he did to you?"
"He was banking on the fact that I wouldn't."
"Shit. Can I ask what in the actual fuck made you wanna get involved with that crazy son of a bitch in the first goddamn place?"
"It's a long story and maybe if you decide to help me, I'll tell you about it over a bottle of tequila some time."
River looked down at the cloth again, then tossed it next to my purse and poured himself a glass of rum. "How the fuck is any of this shit supposed to help me or my goddamn club?"