by Callie Hart
Oh, this is an easy one. I already have my demands prepared. “No fall out for handing over the bag. For me, or Silver, or Silver’s dad, or anyone else.”
“And?”
“And you figure out how to get Zander cut from the Dreadnaughts.”
“Why the hell would he want to leave the club?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.”
“Lastly, I want your help.”
“Jesus, kid, your asking price is getting kinda steep,” Monty growls.
“I’m pretty sure you’ll be happy to lend a hand with this part,” I tell him, rolling my eyes. “I want Giacomo gone. I want him out of Raleigh. Preferably out of Washington. I don’t care if he winds up behind bars or in the fucking ground. I just want him gone.”
Monty sucks on his teeth. “You’d ex out your own father?”
“I’ll kill anyone who poses a threat to Silver, Monty. And that includes you. Now pick up that cell phone of yours, Boss. I believe you’ve got some calls to make.”
“Made it out alive. Gotta say I’m impressed.”
I told Zander to stay in the car, but I honestly expected him to have vanished by the time I came back outside. He’s never been very good at doing what he was told. However, when I head back to the Camaro, he’s sitting in the driver’s seat, racking up a monster of a joint on his lap.
“Move,” I command.
“I’m an excellent driver. Why don’t you just relax and I’ll—” He stops talking when he glances up and sees the look on my face. “Fuck’s sake.” mumbling to himself, he slides across the bench to the passenger’s side, careful not to dump out his weed in the footwell. “You’re a walking cliché, Moretti. A teenaged bad boy who doesn’t let anyone else drive his muscle car? Come on. You’re better than that. Don’t be so fucking obvious.”
“I let Silver drive my car,” I reply, slamming the car door behind me. “I’d let Cam drive it, too, probably.”
“Then why can’t I?”
“Because it amuses me to fuck with you,” I answer, snatching the joint he’s just finished rolling from his hands and pinching it between my teeth. “Light,” I say, holding out my hand. Zander slaps his Zippo into my open palm. The weed hits hard, a pleasant numbness traveling down the back of my neck as I hold it in my lungs for a second.
It’s been nearly a year since I smoked pot, but the comfortable buzz feels both familiar and enjoyable. One toke’s all I need, though. I pass the joint back to Zander, exhaling twin jets of smoke down my nose.
“Should I assume that your dad’s no longer a concern?” Zander asks, his voice muffled by the thickness of the smoke in the back of his throat.
Starting the Camaro’s engine, I slam my foot down on the gas pedal, peeling out of the parking lot. “He’s still gonna be a problem. So will Monty, one way or another. I figure I’ve bought myself some time, though. Oh, and by the way, you’re no longer a Dreadnaught.”
I can feel Zander staring at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re done with them. And you’re done with Raleigh. Time you went back to Bellingham, man. No sense in both of us being caught up in this bullshit.”
Zander’s going to object. I’m prepared for it, but he’s barely shaped the sound of his first no fucking way, man, when a black truck with tinted windows comes hurtling around the corner toward us. For a split second, we’re both on the same side of the road. The tinted-out windows hide the unquestionable surprise of the driver behind the wheel. I have nowhere to go. The only thing between the Camaro and the forty-foot drop into the ravine beside the road is an already dented guard rail. It won’t hold us if we hit it. We’ll go straight over the side and tumble down the sharp slope, rolling every time the car bounces off the rockface.
Somehow, inside the smallest fragment of time, an eighth of a second, no more, I understand how Ben felt right before Jackie went careening off the road. My language is a little more colorful, but I’m sure his thoughts were exactly the same, too:
Man, I really don’t wanna fucking die.
The black truck swerves, struggling to get back on its side of the road in time. It makes it, but only just. The murdered-out vehicle clips the Camaro’s wing mirror, ripping it off the car, sending it bouncing down the road behind us in a shower of twisted metal and shattered glass.
“God…DAMN!” Zander yells at the top of his lungs. “What the FUCK!”
My hands are shaking, and it feels like my heart’s about to burst, but I manage to keep on driving. “D’you see ’em?” I say through my clenched teeth.
Zander doesn’t need to ask what I’m talking about. He nods, bracing himself against the dashboard as he leans forward, taking in an uneven breath. “The bullet holes? Two of ‘em, right in the middle of the door. Kinda hard to miss.”
Back in two thousand and fourteen, Raleigh was voted number one safest town to live in in all of Washington State. Harry has the newspaper clipping framed on the wall at the diner to prove it. Monty might have been cultivating his little criminal empire here for a while now, but he’s low key about it. Most of Raleigh’s residents have never even seen Montgomery Cohen the third’s face. This isn’t the kind of town where trucks speed around corners on the wrong side of the road, shot up with bullet holes.
No, this, somehow, some way, is related to me.
It’s then that I notice the missed calls from Silver.
32
SILVER
I barely have any nails left by the time Alex finally shows up at the house. Zander’s not with him anymore, probably dropped off at Salton Ash Trailer Park. The Camaro’s tires kick up gravel and old snow as Alex burns up the driveway. He parks next to the Nova, not even bothering to kill the engine before he jumps out of the driver’s seat and races to the porch steps to the house, where I’ve been sitting out in the cold, waiting for him.
“You okay? You hurt?” His hands are frantic, patting me down, searching out hidden injuries. I’ve already told him via text that I’m okay, but obviously he needs to check for himself.
“I’m fine. I’m okay, I promise. Nothing actually happened. I was just scared, that’s all. Dad…god, if Dad hadn’t come and met me…”
Alex’s expression hardens, his nostrils flaring. “Where is he?”
“In the kitchen.”
Alex nods, getting up and heading inside. I follow him in, already prepping my speech about how neither Alex nor my father are allowed to go off half-cocked on some stupid bring-down-Jacob-Weaving-plan again. It was sheer luck that neither of them ended up shot by one of Caleb Weaving’s security guards last time. Alex doesn’t even make the suggestion, though. Dad keeps his hard liquor in the cupboard above the oven. When he sees us coming down the hallway, he takes an extra two low ball glasses out and sets them down next to the one he’s already taken out for himself. Alex prowls up and down the length of the kitchen, brushing his hands through his hair over and over again as Dad decants a double shot of whiskey into each glass. When Dad gives Alex a glass, he grunts out a thanks and knocks the amber liquid back in one go.
Dad takes Alex’s glass away and hands him the half full bottle instead. “It’s official. I’m the worst parent in the world,” he says. “I must be the only father in the state of Washington who lets his underage daughter drink fucking Bruichladdich.” I take the glass he offers me, wincing down a sip of the whiskey, feeling a little better as the alcohol blazes a path down my throat. “I’m putting the house on the market. We’re moving to Chicago,” Dad mutters. “It’s safer in fucking Illinois than it is here.”
Alex laughs, the sound brittle and harsh. “They’re not kicking us out of Raleigh, Cam. None of us. This has always been your home. It’s my home now, too.” He laces his fingers together behind the back of his head, interlocking them at the base of his skull. “This can’t go on forever. The cops are gonna find something else on Jake, and he’s gonna get sent down again. My father’s gonna disappear. Monty’s gonn
a scrub me from his memory. Everything’s gonna go back to normal. The end.”
I think it hits him at the same time it hits me; all of this madness and chaos is the norm. Things have been this way, fraught with danger and heartbreak, for a long time now. It’d be unusual if life settled down and things actually stopped falling apart. He rubs his face with both hands, sighing out a long, unhappy breath. “You were a badass, shooting after that truck, man,” he says through his fingers. “Good thing you gave Zeth that gun, though. He’s unpredictable. I’ve heard too much about him to think he’s not tapped in the head.”
My dad picks up a butter knife from the kitchen counter and distractedly digs the blunt blade into the pad of his thumb. He’d been making a sandwich earlier when I called him in a panic, and now there’s a pool of melted butter on the chopping board. “This is gonna sound pretty rude,” he says, staring, sightless, out of the window that overlooks the Walker Forest. “But I am honest to god looking forward to the day you both leave for college. At least then I’ll only have to worry about you getting wasted and flunking your exams like everyone else.”
33
SILVER
“So. You two are a regular Bonnie and Clyde power couple, huh?”
Zeth eyes the whipped cream-topped strawberry milkshake sitting on the table in front of him with a level of malevolence that should have shattered the glass by now. He’s wearing a plain black sweater with a tiny hole in the neck. Worn jeans. A pair of black boots. Nothing about the way he’s dressed sets him apart from the weekend lunch crowd at Harry’s, but the energy radiating off him is powerful enough to make the people in the booths surrounding us subconsciously all lean away from him without realizing it. Like Alex, there’s a sharp-edged, wicked kind of electricity to me him that makes people nervous.
Beside me, Alex dumps yet another sugar into his coffee, viciously clanging the spoon around inside his mug as he stirs. I already know he isn’t going to drink the piping hot black liquid. He takes his coffee black. The empty sugar packets, discarded on the table next to the laminated Harry’s menu, are a sign of his agitation.
“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” Alex growls unhappily.
Zeth sighs down his nose, slouching back into the bench seat on his side of the booth. “Agreed. I had a date with an eighteen-month-old.”
I vaguely remember Dr. Romera mentioning that she had a kid. Can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that this guy might be someone’s father, though. He seems too hard. Too distant. I’d say I can’t imagine him changing a baby’s diaper, but I totally can. He’d have the job done quickly, with frightening efficiency, in under five seconds flat.
“I can handle this Weaving situation myself,” Alex says. “I don’t have a problem putting the motherfucker down.”
Zeth’s mouth twitches. I think it’s a sign that he’s amused. “You already shot the kid once. You have a list of motives to bury the bastard longer than your arm. The cops would have you in cuffs before you could blink. And your girl doesn’t want you locked up for the rest of your life. Am I right?”
He’s hit the nail on the head. There’s no way Alex can be the one to take down Jake with the cops already watching him like a hawk. He’ll be the first person they suspect, no matter what, and they’ll throw the book at him this time. He’s on very thin ice as far as the law is concerned. It won’t take much for Alex to wind up with a lengthy prison sentence on his hands. His life will effectively be over. Still, he’s absolutely hating this. Like, hating it.
In an attempt to break the staring contest that’s taking place between Alex and Zeth, I gingerly ask, “How much do you normally get paid for this kind of thing anyway, Mr…uh…Mayfair?”
Zeth’s eyes glide over to me, cool and assessing. “I have no idea what this kind of thing is, Miss Parisi. I run a boxing gym in Seattle. If you’re asking how much the monthly membership fee is, then our prices are available on our website.”
“You have a website?”
He huffs out a solitary laugh. “No. No, we do not.”
“Why are you even still here?” Alex asks. “You got your bag back. You have a life in Seattle by the sounds of things. Isn’t it time you were thinking about leaving town?”
Zeth’s eyes come alive with interest as he sits up and leans closer to us across the table. “You thinking about running me out of Raleigh, kid? You should make up your mind. One second you want me to kill someone for you. The next, you want me gone. I don’t deal well with mixed signals.”
I look around nervously, hoping to god no one heard him just say that. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about killing people,” I hiss. “No one said anything about killing anyone.”
Zeth casually leans back, slouching in his seat again. “So, you just want me to break a couple of bones? Knock out some of his teeth? Put the fear of god into him?” His tone is mocking.
“We want to know about the deal Jacob’s father made with the DEA,” I say. “We want to figure out a way to make sure Jake’s punished for all the terrible shit he’s done. Legally.”
Zeth pulls the straw out of his milkshake, wiping the pink cream from it on his napkin, then slides it into his mouth. He chews on the end of it thoughtfully. “Could tickle him too, if you like.”
Oh god. This is not going well. “Look, you were the one who said I was better off leaving the Jacob situation to you when you took that gun from my dad earlier.”
I wait, studying his face, watching for some sign of emotion, but none appears. “I did say that, didn’t I.”
“If you’re just gonna be unhelpful and rude then Alex is right. You probably should just go—”
“Easy, sweetheart. Easy now.” Zeth pulls the straw out of his mouth and uses it to point at me. “Would you call in a demolitions expert to knock down a partition wall?”
“Uh…probably not.”
“I’m not the kind of guy you hire to accomplish what you’re looking to accomplish, sweetheart. I’m definitely not the kind of guy you hire to accomplish things legally, either. But that’s all irrelevant, ’cause I didn’t come here to be interviewed. I’m not looking for work. Like I said…I run a boxing gym in Seattle.”
I’m glad we’re in public. If we weren’t, I’m pretty sure Alex would try and kill this guy. He’s turned a threatening shade of purple. “We’re wasting our time, Argento. Come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“No need to get bent out of shape,” Zeth quips. “I have a personal interest where the DEA’s concerned. This Lowell guy…what do you know about him?”
Alex sets his jaw. “That he’s an asshole who’s probably gonna wind up dead. The DEA are the ones prosecuting Caleb Weaving, but this guy’s trying to clear Jake’s name. He wants to discredit Silver. I think he has links to my father, too.”
Zeth shrugs a shoulder, turning his head to look out at the unfriendly, wet night on the other side of the window. Down Main Street, the trees, still trussed up with sparkling Christmas lights, sway and shake as the wind howls toward the north. “Wherever Giacomo Moretti goes, trouble soon follows,” he says mildly. “If Jack’s around and there’s a bad smell in the air, it’s a safe bet that he’s causing the stink.” Zeth inhales, abruptly turning back to face us. His eyes flicker first to me, and then to Alex, and then he’s on his feet, pulling a wallet out of his jeans pocket. “All right, then.”
He lays a twenty-dollar bill down on the table and begins to walk away.
“All right, then?” I call after him. “What does that mean, all right, then?”
The guy pauses, closing his wallet and stuffing it into his back pocket. “Means I’ll see what I can do,” he says gruffly. “In the meantime, stay the hell away from Weaving. And Lowell if you can help it. Better for you if you just lock yourself in that big old house and don’t come out ’til spring.”
He goes, and with him goes the tension that’s been leaching the life and color out of the diner. Next to me, Alex grips hold of the teaspoon in hi
s hand so hard he bends the metal. “What’s that saying?” he grumbles through his teeth. “Better the devil you know? Well, I don’t trust any of these shady motherfuckers.”
34
SILVER
“Don’t forget, students. Our ‘James Bond: Spies and Villains’ evening is fast approaching. This Friday, dust off your slickest suits and your sparkliest dresses and join in the revelry at Raleigh High’s senior prom! Tickets will be on sale until Wednesday afternoon. Remember, those of you whose academic records prevent them from attending prom, there’s still time to bring up your GPA with some extra credit assignments. Visit your counselor today and—”
I smirk as I head down the hallway toward History. Principal Darhower’s assistant, Karen, is usually as quiet as a mouse. She has a hard time making eye contact with you when she speaks to you, and any time she has to deal with a student’s parents, she blushes furiously. She sounds like a Good Morning America presenter when she voices the announcements over the new PA system, though. You can practically hear her Hollywood smile being transmitted through the shitty, crackling speakers.
A group of guys hover outside Jacob Weaving’s locker, even though their hallowed leader is still banished from school grounds, thanks to my father’s recent hysterics; all of them members of the football team, they glare hatefully at Alex, as he approaches from the opposite direction. He stands almost a foot taller than the other students in the vicinity, who are all bustling, jamming presentation folders and books into their backpacks as they hurry to make it to their first class.
My heart skips a little at the gentle upward tilt of Alex’s mouth when he sees me. Brushing his thick, wavy hair back out of his eyes, he alters his course so his path will cross mine, and reality seems to shift and bend. I’m never going to get used to this. Never. Alessandro Moretti, somehow, bizarrely, miraculously, amazingly, is mine. He loves me. Him, with his smoldering, I’m-gonna-set-your-whole-damn-bed-on-fire-and-to-hell-with-the-world attitude, and his mind-blowingly handsome face, and his intricate, beautiful artwork that covers his body…all of him is mine. I don’t think that’s ever going to make sense to me.