by Hart, Callie
Cillian Dupris’ name is like a slap to the face. I recoil from it, physically taking a step back, the stool behind me tipping…until Alex catches it up and sets it back on its feet.
A low, mournful siren wails in the distance, growing louder and louder; all six of us stand in front of the bank of windows in the music room, watching the small white block-shaped vehicle racing up the winding hill toward Raleigh.
An ambulance.
“Poor Cillian,” Sophie says. “First he gets shot by that lunatic and ends up in a wheelchair. Then he winds up falling out of it in the snow and suffering from exposure. It just doesn’t seem right.”
“Seems perfectly right to me,” Alex counters under his breath.
I dart a sideways look at him, ears burning, feeling…what the hell am I feeling? “Alex?” I hiss through my teeth.
He doesn’t answer me. Doesn’t even look away from the window. The line of his jaw is hard, a muscle ticking in his neck. “Come on. We’d better get to class,” he says stiffly.
The ambulance finally pulls into the parking lot. Karen Gilcrest, Principle Darhower’s assistant, totters out across the slushy snow in her high heels, hands fluttering everywhere as she gesticulates wildly back inside the school, calling out to the EMTs. Alex gives the scene below one last bored, uninterested glance, then takes me by the hand and pulls me away from the window.
The halls are empty as we head toward physics, and our footfall echoes off the walls. I’m too disturbed by the mental image of Cillian being lifted onto a gurney to even really notice the sound. The beautiful boy with the black hair and the intricate ink, leading me down the hall, away from the fray at the entrance of the school, begins to hum a jaunty, bawdy kind of song that makes you want to tap your foot. Sounds like an old pirate reel.
I pull at his hand. “Alex? Alessandro Moretti, tell me you had nothing to do with this.”
He looks down at me over his shoulder, a wry smile tugging up one side of his mouth. Utterly remorseless. “As a proud citizen of this fine country, Dolcezza, in this particular instance it is my right and privilege to exercise the fifth.”
12
ALEX
The Rock is wall-to-wall bodies when I walk through the front door. The walls are running with condensation from all the body heat, sweat, and evaporating snow the crowd have trekked in on their winter boots. It’s always like this after bad weather. Trapped inside for days, the locals go a little stir crazy holed up in their own houses, so the moment the roads clear and the snow ploughs have finished their work, people converge on the bar en masse. I would have entered in through the back of the building, but the parking lot was a fucking nightmare and I couldn’t even get to the entrance.
“Alex! Hey, baby boy! Come to join the party?” Stella, one of Monty’s favorite dancers, shouts at me from the stage. She’s completely naked, but I’m a fucking pro at this game. I perfected the art of maintaining eye contact with the girls a long, long time ago. “Come on, baby. Pull up a pew. I’ll give you a dance, my treat.” She gives me a wriggle of her shoulders, making her tits bounce for me, and the group of punters seated at her feet all groan and grouse—they’ve probably been sitting there for the last fifteen minutes, dropping dollar bills at her stilettoed feet, and now she’s offering a free dance to some punk kid who just showed up out of the cold? Yeah, that’s enough to make any man gripe.
“Next time, Stell. Gotta find the boss man,” I shout back at her. There won’t be a next time, of course. I’ve never fucked with the girls here. Why? First and foremost, I’m not fucking stupid. If I caused drama within the walls of the Rock, Monty would have my fucking hide. Secondly, fake tits gross me out. However, both of those points are academic now because I’m with Silver, and all other women are dead to me.
Stella’s really sweet. She’s one of the younger dancers, a freshman in college; my old friends at Bellingham would have gnawed off their own right arms for a chance at fucking her, but my skin feels like it’s crawling as I shove my way through the heaving press of bodies on the bar floor, heading for the door by the bathrooms that reads “Employees Only.’
Paulie, the bartender, is rushed off his feet, hands flying everywhere, pouring numerous drinks at once, knocking a flowing beer tap off with his elbow. He notices me and shouts a hello as I disappear through the door.
Takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness in the hallway. I step over stacks of empty boxes and narrowly miss kicking over a row of empty Jack Daniels bottles as I negotiate my way down the corridor toward Monty’s office. When I turn the corner, weirdly pumped, adrenalin surging through my veins, I catch the old man standing outside the doorway to his private sanctuary, pinning a guy up against the wall by his fucking throat. The guy—some piece of shit in a leather jacket with a buzzcut—pats down his pockets, searching for something. A gun? A knife?
Monty doesn’t seem perturbed by the potential that he might be about to get shot or shanked. He stabs a finger into the guy’s face, flecks of spittle flying as he snarls. “I didn’t ask you to tell me where he isn’t. I told you to bring him here. Instead, you’re sitting at the bar, drinking off my promo tab, trying to get your dick sucked? Did I not tell you this was urgent?”
The punk gurgles. I can’t tell if he’s trying to say something or simply trying to breathe. Finally managing to stick his hand into his pocket, he goes to pull something out and I decide I’ve seen enough.
I drop the duffel bag I’ve been carrying to the floor and charge down the hallway, a threatening growl on my lips. Monty never gets angry. For him to be this openly pissed off, this Neo-Nazi looking asshole must have really fucked up, and I’m not about to let my boss get stabbed by him.
My fist’s raised, body prepped for a fight, when two things happen: the punk pulls out a tattered, worn piece of paper from his pocket, and Monty sees my barreling approach. He holds up a hand, calling me off before I even reach them.
“Calm, Son. No need for any of that. Jonas was just explaining something to me, weren’t you, Jo? Go on in and make yourself comfortable, Alex. I’ll be with you in a second.”
I’d argue, offer to stay, but then I make eye contact with Jonas and see that the guy’s absolutely shitting himself. He might look like a hardened thug, but he won’t be causing any trouble for Monty, that’s for sure.
I go and grab the bag I just dropped, giving the old man a tight smile as I head into his office. Monty boots the door closed behind me, but I can still hear his furious words.
“An address? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I thought you’d want to pay him a visit yourself, boss!”
“For fuck’s sake. There’s a reason why you’re not on Q’s payroll yet, Jonas. You can’t follow simple directions. I didn’t ask you to think. I made it real fucking simple for you. ‘Bring him here’ means exactly that, motherfucker. Why the fuck would I want to drive all the way to Vancouver and drag the piece of shit across borderlines myself?”
“I’m—I’m sorry, man. I’ll go now. I—I I can be back here with him by morning.”
Monty curses colorfully. “You fuck this up and Q’s gonna relegate you to prospect quicker than you can say shit-kicker. Get the fuck out of my sight, boy, before I demote you myself.”
Ahh. Club business, then, not bar business. I forget Monty’s even affiliated with an M.C. most days. He’s diligent about keeping those two parts of his life separate. Church and State, he calls it, church being his club, state being the Rock. He’s always preferred the two organizations never cross over unless it’s for pleasure, but seems as though there was no helping it today.
When he barges into the office, slamming the door closed behind him, the old man’s so angry he looks like he’s going to burst a blood vessel. “Fucking moron. I swear that son of a bitch was dropped on his head repeatedly when he was a child.” He collapses into his chair with an umpfff, setting his hands down on the black bag that I’ve placed on his desk for him.
“I
needed this three nights ago. Badly,” he tells me.
“Sorry, man. You asked me to keep hold of it. Then the snow—”
“I know, I know. You’re not to blame. I just…” He pinches at the bridge of his nose, sighing heavily. “Just been one of those weeks. Don’t suppose you took a peek inside?” His voice is weary, but he’s added a dash of playfulness to his tone.
Unlike Jonas, I am not a dumb motherfucker. “Nope. The contents of that bag are none of my business.”
Monty nods, smiling from ear to ear. “Good. Glad to hear it.” And then he unzips the bag, opening it up right in front of me. My eyes hit the ceiling. My midnight runs for Monty have been a science experiment of sorts. Paradoxical. A demonstration of the legitimacy of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger explained the experiment best with his cat analogy, but in this circumstance, there is no box and there is no cat. There have been bags, and there have been theoretical drugs. Without looking inside any of the bags I’ve been running for Monty, the drugs have both existed and not existed at the same time.
Once I look inside, the contents of the bags will manifest themselves into being and there will be no denying their existence one way or another. What I’m trying to say, in a round-about way, is that ignorance is fucking bliss. If I see bricks of coke in that bag right now, I become complicit in something that, up until this very moment, I would be able to deny…
“Ahh, quit being such a little bitch,” Monty mutters under his breath. “Here. Hold this.” He offers something out to me. I look down…and it’s too late. I’ve just been handed a fucking gun. A mean-looking silver thing, big enough to blow someone’s fucking head off. I’ve never held a gun this big before.
“Desert Eagle,” Monty informs me, leaning forward across his desk, steepling his fingers. He’s frowning at the weapon like it’s a rearing cobra and it’s about to strike at him any second. “Heavy, huh? Hard to come by, Desert Eagles. Not really the kind of gun you wanna be carrying around stuffed in the back of your waistband. Too ostentatious. Conspicuous, you could say.”
I lay the gun down on his desk, muzzle pointing away, toward the door. “Guns aren’t really my thing.”
“Me either,” Monty agrees. “A necessary evil sometimes, though. You disposed of the one I gave you the other night like I asked? Wait, never mind. That doesn’t matter right now. This bag belongs to an enforcer in Seattle. Some hotshot who likes to carry the tools of his trade around with him wherever he goes. I hear he’s pretty good at torturing people. Jesus Christ, would you look at this?” Monty’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline, which is impressive given the fact that he’s receding. In his hand: a weird metal contraption with handles that looks like a caliper or some sort of vice. The ends of it are sharp. Wickedly sharp. The kind of damage you could inflict upon a person with something like that…
At least it’s not fucking drugs. There are other items and implements visible through the opening of the bag. Handcuffs. Scalpels. Brass knuckles. Small boxes containing god knows what. A huge hunting knife in a sheath. Aside from the gun, none of it is illegal though.
I can’t help myself. “And this shit’s so important to you because…?”
Monty smirks, zipping up the bag and dumping it on the floor at his feet. “Collateral. There are people chasing this guy all over Seattle right now. Something in this bag is worth big money, and they want it bad. The bag’s mine now, which means whatever they want inside it is mine, too. I’ll be presiding over a bidding war on Black Net by the end of the day.”
You need to be into some dark shit to even score an account on Black Net. Not just drugs, or guns. Gangs and criminal entities trade in flesh on that site every day of the week. I’ve heard you only need fifteen grand in your back pocket if you’re looking to hire someone to commit murder on your behalf. Monty’s always been hungry for power and money, just like Westbrook said, but fucking around on a site like the Black Net? That’s kind of surprising, even for him.
It's not my place to judge. Definitely not my place to get involved. I’m giving this one a wide fucking birth. “Hope you get what you want for it,” I offer. “In the meantime, you said you had news about Weaving?” Up until now, Monty’s been closed-lipped about his ideas for the Weaving family. He asked me to give him until Christmas, and Thanksgiving is next week. I’m running out of patience.
Monty waggles his eyebrows, rocking back in his chair. It’s rare to see him looking this pleased with himself. “Caleb Weaving’s been running all kinds of shit through his warehouses for years. Anything he can turn a profit on. The Dreadnaughts used to make runs for him sometimes, but Caleb’s a fucking snob. He never wanted to deal with Q in person, so he had me act as go-between. Some shit went down last year, and the cops caught wind that Caleb had his hand in a particular pot that he should have been leaving well alone. They pulled him in for questioning. The bastard was squeaky clean, of course. He threw Q and the boys under the bus, though. Said they were smuggling in counterfeit goods through the port in Seattle. Cops raided the Dreadnaughts’ shop and found all kinds of stolen Chinese tech. Goods worth well over three million to the right buyers. All Caleb’s stuff. That motherfucker walked away without a speck of dirt on him, and three of Q’s boys ended up with seven years apiece because of it.”
This is all news to me. The Weaving family are disgustingly rich, but as far anyone in Raleigh is concerned, Caleb Weaving built his burgeoning empire off the back of stalks of wheat. Nearly every single farm you drive past in Grays Harbor County is owned by the Weaving family, and the ones that aren’t are all paying a premium to grow Weaving’s genetically modified seeds. They have no choice in the matter. The farmers who refused to sell to Weaving in the nineties soon found themselves slapped with lawsuits because they were found to be illegally cultivating a crop containing seeds patented by Caleb and his board of cronies. The seeds were either blown onto their land and grew there naturally, mingling in with the pre-existing wheat crops, or Weaving hired someone to sneak onto their fields at night and plant them there by hand. Either way, the result wound up being the same: the farmers had to either sell to Weaving, pay him a ridiculous annual premium for his seeds, or face ruin, bankruptcy and eventual foreclosure at the expert hands of Caleb’s legal team. It's hardly surprising that a man who would stoop to those levels would also be dealing in smuggled goods along with god only knows what else.
“Q’s been keeping tabs on that fucker ever since then. He’s been compiling a dossier of Weaving’s illegal activity, and he’s ready to sell the bastard out. Anonymously, of course. If any of our other connections found out the Dreadnaughts were willing to hand over information like that, there’d be serious fucking consequences. No one would do business with them ever again. More likely, one of the other gangs would gun anyone wearing a Dreadnaught patch down in the street. You know how these things go. Snitches get fucked, even if they were the ones who got fucked first.”
I crack my thumb knuckles, taking a moment to wrap my head around everything he’s telling me. “Getting Caleb Weaving sent down would be pretty fucking sweet, Monty. It’d tarnish their family name for life.”
“But?”
“But my problem isn’t with Caleb. It’s with his son. Jacob’s the one who hurt Silver. He’s the one who needs to pay.”
Monty grins, flashing me a wall of teeth. “Patience is a virtue, kid. I’m not done yet.” He takes his time pulling open the drawer to his desk. I’m practically squirming in my seat as he takes out a plain manila envelope, sets it down and slides it across the desk toward me. “Take a look.” He pulls a smoke out of a pack by his laptop, places the filter between his lips and lights the end. “I think you’re gonna like what you see.”
The envelope’s thin. Whatever’s inside isn’t that substantial. When I open it up and take out the contents, I find a small stack of enlarged photos in my hand. They’re dark and a little grainy, but it’s still easy to make out what’s going on in the images. T
here’s a figure in the center of the frame, and he’s holding a woman by the roots of her hair—a young girl, wearing a Raleigh High cheerleader’s uniform. Her face is contorted into a mask of pain, her hands grappling at the figure’s wrist, trying to free herself of the guy’s vicious grip. I flip through the pictures one at a time, my stomach knotting tighter and tighter as the scene between the two people becomes progressively more violent. The end photo is difficult to look at. There are four people in this image. The girl’s on her back, two guys at her head, holding her down on the ground by a swimming pool. She’s been stripped down to her underwear, the Raleigh Roughnecks shirt now floating on the surface of the pool. Her bra has been pulled down her body, exposing her tits, and the guy who was dragging her by her hair in the first image is positioned between her legs, his pants shoved down around his thighs.
It's a horrifying scene. The girl’s clearly trying to fight her way free, her hands clenched, her mouth open in a silent scream, tears streaking mascara down her cheeks. The guys forcing her to the ground are all wearing the same, frenzied, lurid expressions. I take one look at it and the gas station burrito I ate on the way over here churns in my stomach, trying to rise up the back of my throat.
My imagination has painted a fairly graphic scene of what went down with Silver, and that’s been bad enough. This is so, so much worse. This is what it would have been like for her. This is how scared she would have been.
I slide the photos back inside the envelope, unable to look at them anymore.
My head’s fucking pounding. I clear my throat, trying to ignore the fact that, more than anything, I want to fucking throw up right now. My mouth is sweating like crazy.