by Deja Voss
“You better not get soft on me, Lean Bean,” Rowdy says through the bluetooth speaker in my ear. “I know that old lady of yours got you all mushy.”
“Fuck off, chief,” I say, throwing him a middle finger in the mirror. “I’m not attached to her titty twenty four seven like you are to Gin.”
Looks like our bastard asses are finally growing up.
He and I zoom through the three story garage attached to the hospital. Something about this mission is going to be exceptionally satisfying to me. The last few years, Ella has been under the care of a man named Doctor Fischer. I’m really not sure what’s going through his mind when he drives his Lamborghini Huracan to work, especially considering the potholes and constant construction in the city, but then again, I’m also not sure what’s going through his mind when he blatantly misdiagnoses and mistreats a minor. Considering he’s a plastic surgeon, I have no idea what he’s even doing hanging around that mansion in the first place.
I light up a cig as I lean up against the ugly ass lime green car. Rowdy grabs his crowbar and starts smashing out the security cameras hanging from the beams before he joins me. We both stand there waiting for that elevator door to open.
“You think he pulls a lot of pussy in this thing?” he asks.
“Looks like you’re gonna get to ask him yourself,” I say as the elevator dings.
The doors slide open. “Definitely not,” Rowdy says, as the short guy who’s skin on his face is pulled so tight, I’m not sure if he’s happy to see us or horrified as he should be, steps out.
“Hey brothers,” he says awkwardly. “Like the car? Want to take a selfie? I can take a selfie for you if you want. This thing is a real beauty, ain’t she?”
“No, Doctor Fischer, I really don’t like it at all,” Rowdy says as he takes his crowbar to the windshield, smashing it. The alarm starts beeping.
“Dude, you weren’t supposed to smash that until we showed him the pictures,” I say, pulling the envelope out of the pocket of my cut and placing it in the doctor’s hand. His expression stays the same as it was when he came out of the elevator, but the sounds coming out of his mouth sound a little bit like sobbing.
“Oh, I thought we were supposed to smash his face after we showed him the pictures. My bad, my bad,” he says. He tosses the crowbar up in the air and it smashes off the hood of the car with a thud before thumping to the ground. “Oops.”
“I don’t think smashing this guy’s face is gonna work anyway,” I say. “He’d probably just go get another one.”
“Who are you guys and what do you want?” he shouts. “You got a girl who needs a tit job? I’ll set you up with the best titties you’ve ever seen! You want a bigger dick? I can do that. Can you stop beating on my car?”
I punch my fist through the window and grab a handful of wires, tearing them out so that the alarm stops going off.
“Much better. Did you say something?” I ask.
“You guys are maniacs. Do you know how much shit you’re going to be in? Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Why don’t you open that envelope up and see for yourself,” I say with a shrug. “Or do you just want me to pass that along to the hospital myself?”
“Oh shit,” he mutters, as he thumbs through the documents. There’s proof that he’s been on the Gallo’s payroll, photos of him coming in and out, photos of him cozying up with the siblings at their annual Christmas party, Catarina’s signature on the title of that Huracan that’s now all smashed up, and a whole mess of documents connecting him to Ella.”
“Obviously you don’t know the kind of people I work for,” he stammers. “People who have that kind of money, they don’t want people know they’re having work done. Privacy is of the utmost importance to them.”
“I don’t think he’s lying,” Rowdy says. He picks up the crowbar and whacks him in the stomach hard enough that he doubles over and falls to the ground. “I don’t think he’s telling us the whole story either.”
“Please,” he pleads. “Every woman I performed surgery on there wanted it. I only made them better. I only made them more feasible.”
“More feasible?” I grab the crowbar from Rowdy and smack Dr. Fletcher in the knee. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Reality sets in that the scope of this man’s practice wasn’t only caring for Ella. He was performing plastic surgery on these women so when Catarina and Stefano sold them to clients, they could get more money. It makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
“I think this one might be a lost cause,” I say to Rowdy. “You’re a real piece of shit, you know?”
“Please,” he pleads. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll testify in court. I’ll make it up to you. You want money? I got lots of money.”
I kneel down next to him, grabbing him by the hair. “You took more from those women than money could ever buy, you fucking asshole.” I smash his head off the concrete, and pull his head back up again, staring him in the eye. “And you took years away from Ella. What you put her through? For what? So you could drive around in tacky fucking cars and hang out with sex traffickers? Who the fuck do you think your are?”
The terror in his eyes is delicious. It doesn’t make up for anything he’s done, but I like to think as I continue to smash his head off the concrete, blow after blow, those women he made “more viable” can feel it. I watch the life draining from his body, a pool of blood forming around him, and I just keep pounding his head into the ground.
“That’s enough, dude,” Rowdy says, picking up the papers and stuffing them back in the envelope. He grabs my shoulder, and I let out a satisfied scream as I stand up from the lifeless body, knowing that’s one less scumbag on the streets. I wish Mani was here to enjoy this with me. She deserves the pleasure I’m feeling right now, even more than I do. “Come on, man, we gotta get out of here. This was not part of the plan.”
We take off into the blazing August afternoon sun, and I already feel like a weight has been taken off my chest. One down, eleven more to go, and by the end of this day, this city will know who’s in charge.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mani:
“I know it’s not a lot, but we gathered up as much stuff as we could for you, doll. You gotta be dying to get out of those skanky old rags,” Gin says, flopping the garbage bag down on the ground in front of me. “I’m sure your boy will be showering you in whatever you want soon enough. Soon as we get this lock down situation sorted out, at least.”
I don’t think the clothes she gave me are skanky old rags, but I am thankful to have some more options. Back at the mansion, I never got to dress myself. If I got to wear clothes at all, it was stuff Catarina and Stefano picked out for me, and most of the time it was humiliating and ridiculous, or old and ratty, just reminders of who I was to them, the poor girl with nothing to her name, relying on the “kindness” of strangers to provide my basic needs.
I guess nothing’s really changed in that regards, except these strangers actually are kind.
“I swear I’ll pay you all back,” I say, sorting through the piles of jean skirts and t-shirts, holding them up to me.
“You keep Lean fed and fucked and acting like he is now, and trust me, that’s payback enough,” the woman behind the bar says. “I’m Jewel, by the way.”
She’s got the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen in my life, and her hair is black with bright purple streaks all through it. She’s so stunning, and you can tell by the way she navigates the room, everybody likes her.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say. “Is your boyfriend in the club?”
She lets out a long sigh, and Gin does this slashing movement across her chin.
“I like working on bikes,” she says, pulling a beer out of the cooler. “And these guys are basically all the family I have anymore. And don’t think I don’t see you over there slashing at your throat, Gin. She’s one of us now, she’s allowed to know. I used to be Barney’s girl.”
“Wh
o’s Barney?” I ask.
“He’s dead,” she says, point blank. She takes a long sip from her beer, and slams it down on the bar top, reaching for another one. “I hate that idiot more every day. Especially during lockdowns. Lockdown sex is by far the best.”
“You wanna go shoot some shit?” Gin asks.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” She quickly chugs her other beer and pulls her pistol out of her holster.
“You gonna be alright, Ella?” I ask. She’s sitting in a booth with Curtis, both of them working on a giant jigsaw puzzle, sharing a big bowl of popcorn. I know he’s only half her age, but seeing her interacting with other kids makes me feel a little bit better about the circumstances. Even though she zipped right through the standardized portion of her tests today, it was obvious to me and the proctor her social skills are way behind a normal thirteen year old’s.
“I got my eye on her,” Margaret says with a cackle.
“Marge so help me God if you literally put your eyeball on that child I will lock you in the basement,” Gin says.
“Get outta here you skank,” Margaret says as she goes back to her knitting.
Gin throws her double middle fingers. “Love you!” she shouts.
“Is that… normal?” I ask as we walk out onto the front porch of the clubhouse.
“Marge might’ve been through a lot, but she doesn’t like it if you treat her like some poor old horse that needs to be put down. When I started hooking up with Rowdy, she wasn’t too thrilled being as I’m a dancer and all, but it’s not like she didn’t do the same thing when she was my age.”
I try to picture Margaret on a stripper pole and it makes me laugh.
“How’d she lose her eyes?” I ask.
“Same way Barney lost his life,” Jewel says. “Wrong place, wrong time. Now come on, these targets aren’t gonna shoot themselves.”
There’s a couple guys following us around everywhere we go outside carrying guns much bigger than ours. I don’t like it at all, only because it brings me back to all the times Catarina and Stefano reminded me no matter where I went in the house, there was always a gun pointed at me. I know these guys are here to protect us, but I can’t stop looking over my shoulder.
“Don’t worry about them, love,” Gin says. “They’re just prospects. If anything they’re going to be on their best behavior because they know we’ll rat their bitch asses out if they do anything wrong.”
She blows the guys a kiss and they start grumbling under their breath.
We walk through the parking lot into a clearing in the woods out back, and Jewel and Gin start tacking paper targets to some trees and setting up empty bottles and beer cans on a shelf. Jewel pulls something out of her purse, a little canister that’s filled with some pellets and starts shaking it up.
“We’ll use this for the grand finale,” she says.
Jewel walks me through the basics, how to check the safety, how to load my pistol, how to use the sites, but all her confidence and enthusiasm is pretty much lost on me. I know what this thing can do and I know why I’m learning how to shoot it, and nothing about that feels right to me.
“You ready?” Gin asks. “Angle your feet like this, drop your shoulders, lock your elbows, lean forward jussssst a hair…”
I pull the trigger and shriek at the loud crack as the gun sends me reeling backwards.
“Ear protection,” Jewel says, pulling out a pair of earmuffs from her purse. “Other than that, you got the gist of it.”
“What do you think?” Gin asks.
I feel my face flushing bright red. I smile from ear to ear, knowing exactly what Lean meant earlier by the rush. “I think I’m gonna need a lot of practice if yinz think I got a fighting chance at hitting anything on purpose.”
“Atta girl,” Jewel says.
We line up and shoot round after round, and I’m amazed at what a good shot the two of them are. Glass is shattering, bulls eyes are being hit, and tin can after tin can goes flying off the shelf. I’m not hitting much of anything except some poor trees and the side of the shelf, but I feel like the queen of the damn world.
“Ready to blow some shit up?” Jewel smirks and raises her eyebrows as she puts the little canister in the the middle of the shelf.
“On the count of three, bitches!” she shouts, and we all empty our clips simultaneously. The little canister explodes with a boom so loud, no ear protection can save us. Giant pink puffs of smoke fly up into the sky and I catch myself cheering with Gin and Jewel.
“Pretty fucking amazing, huh?” Jewel taps a cigarette out of her pack and lights it up, standing back to admire her explosion.
“I see why you guys like these things. Blowing stuff up is fun.”
“You should come on our girls’ hunting trip this year,” Jewel says. “It’s great. We rent a cabin up north and drink wine and get out in nature.”
“And stock up the freezer for the winter,” Gin says. “Nothing like free meat for the year.”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that one,” I say. Spending some time in the woods with these two is probably a riot, but I can’t see myself gutting a deer and dragging it home to eat. Baby steps.
“She’s scared she’ll miss her boyfriend,” Gin teases. “Now that she’s had a taste of that meat she’s too good for venison.”
“You guys are disgusting,” I say with a laugh.
There’s a rumble in the parking lot, and my heart races, knowing it means the guys are back from their ‘business.’
“Thank you for distracting me today,” I say to the both of them. “I needed that.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Jewel says, tossing her cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out. My first instinct is to run screaming to Lean, wrapping my arms around him and letting him take me however he wants, thanking him for his hard days work. “Let me feel out the situation.”
She walks out front and prospects follow her. Gin grabs my hand, and takes me inside, and I can’t help but feel like something terrible is about to happen.
“I want to know,” I say to her, pulling away from her grip.
“No you don’t,” she says, shaking her head. “Let’s get the kids and watch a movie or something.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“Honey, you think they were out there today picking up litter off the side of the road? You think they were volunteering at the animal shelter or some shit? We’re locked down. You don’t know what happened today. Until we get the all clear, it’s best we just lay low.”
I don’t want to lay low. I don’t want to live in denial. I don’t understand how one minute these two can push some girl power narrative on me, and in the next go somewhere and hide. I guess I don’t know shit about how things work around here.
Ella and Curtis have barely put a dent in the puzzle on the table, and have taken to spinning each other on barstools.
“Who wants to watch a movie?” Gin asks, scooping up Curtis in her arms. I peek out the window, looking everywhere for Lean as bike after bike pulls into the garage. When I finally catch a glimpse of him, my heart sinks down to my stomach. His face is covered in blood. I don’t know if it’s his or somebody else’s, but I grab Ella by the hand as fast as I can and whisk her down the hallway to Rowdy’s room.
“I think I like this room better than mine,” Ella says, running her fingers over the bear skin rug on the floor.
“Don’t touch that,” Gin says. “You might get pregnant.”
“I thought babies came from the stork,” Curtis says, picking up the rug and whipping it around wildly. “Now you’re all pregnant!”
“That’s all we need right now.” Gin laughs nervously and plops down on the couch, grabbing the remote from the coffee table and flipping through the channels. “What do you like to watch, Ella?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wasn’t allowed to watch TV at Cat’s house. I remember before mom died we used to watch the Little Mermaid
together all the time.”
“You remember that?” I ask. Maybe I’ve just had to spend so much of my life compartmentalizing things, but I have hardly any memories prior to the day my mom and Guilian died. Bits and pieces filter through every once in awhile, but I was always so busy thinking about survival, I never really let myself feel that nostalgia for the past.
“I’m sure I can find it somewhere,” Gin says, flipping to the screen where you can buy movies. “Rowdy might be a little surprised when he sees his bill.”
I sit down on the couch next to my sister, trying not to think of Lean and what he did today, why he would be covered in blood. I try to just focus on the movie, one I had seen a million times before, one I could recite every line to, but I can barely sit still.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I say. Gin rolls her eyes at me.
“Suit yourself, sis, but I’m telling you, it’s a lot more fun in here than it is out there.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
I stand up to open the bedroom door but before I can get there, it opens. Standing there in the hallway is Lean, and the butterflies in my stomach start flapping uncontrollably. He looks so fucking scary. Hot, but scary. He’s not smiling, his eyes are dark, and he doesn’t say anything, but I can feel by the way he grabs my hand, he needs me.
Not to ask questions, not to talk to, not to judge him - for the first time, the tables have turned, and Lean needs me. For the first time, I will be the strong one for the both of us.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lean:
Adrenaline is the worst drug of them all. Once that buzz wears off and you hit the ground and realize the fucking mess you made, there’s only so many ways a man can dull that throbbing ache called reality. That’s what the drugs are for. That’s what the sluts are for. That’s why Brass shoves needles in his skin, and Lazarus drinks until he pisses himself. It’s not because we’re a bunch of dirt bags. It’s because we’re trying to cope with the fact that we are not actually gods, just bikers with blood on our hands.