by Rhys Ford
Rome grabbed the towel, then swabbed his face. Peeking over the edge, he watched Angel peel the last of the fruit. He was choosing his words carefully. Angel recognized the expression from the countless times Rome tried to pull a con on him. His brother had tells—serious tells—and Angel knew every single one of them. The tugging on his hair was a new one, something to watch for in the future.
“Are you and West going to get married?” Rome finally blurted out. His fingers picked at the towel’s nap, plucking up the strands.
“I don’t know,” Angel confessed. “We haven’t talked about it. Might be kind of soon. We’ve been back together for only a month. Maybe a little bit more.”
“But you guys knew each other from before, right?”
“Yeah.” Angel peeled off another piece of fruit and passed it over to Roman. “Why all the questions?”
“’Cause one of the kids at school said you guys are going to get married, and then I’m going to have to go back to Dad.” Rome’s lip quivered, and he bit at it, running his teeth over the chapped surface. “I told him to fuck off, but—”
“You’re never going back to Dad.” Angel put the knife down, letting it clatter on the metal surface.
He eased around the corner of the table and put his hands on Rome’s slender shoulders. His brother’s striped shirt was snugger than Angel’d have liked, especially since he’d just bought it a few months before. Despite Rome’s increasing height and voracious appetite, Angel was struck by how much his brother was still a little boy, with little-boy problems and certainly their fears. Rome grabbed at him, clutching at Angel’s T-shirt with his damp, sticky fingers.
Knotting the fabric in his hands, Rome looked everywhere but his brother’s face, finally settling on Angel’s feet as his focus as he mumbled, “I don’t want you to give me away. I want to stay with you.”
“Hey, didn’t I fight some huge guy in a parking lot for you?” Angel crouched down so he could see his brother’s face. “Kiddo, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that you’re never going back to him, but I’ll say it as many times as you need, okay? I’ve got your back, dude. No matter what, I’ve got you.”
Rome’s eyes were wet and afraid, filled with a terror Angel hadn’t seen since the day their father dumped his brother on him. Catching Rome up in his arms, he held his young brother, rocking Rome gently when the boy began to cry. His awkward, lanky body jerked with every sob as Rome broke down.
Shivering, Rome clung, nearly dragging Angel down. Swinging his brother off the stool, Angel stroked at Rome’s back. Hunkering down, he cradled Rome, reassuring him as best he could while his brother cried his heart out.
“It’ll be okay, kid,” Angel promised the shuddering, crying boy in his arms. “Give it another few years or so and you’re going to be wanting to punch me in the face when I say you’ve got to be home by 10:00 p.m.”
“Really?” Rome sat up, his weight settling on a lingering bruise on Angel’s thigh.
“Yeah, really.” He shifted his brother until they were both sitting on the floor. “You’re going to be pissed off because I remind you the car needs gas after you take it and that you’re going to have to save your money if you want something big because you’re eating me out of house and home.”
“Well, duh.” Rubbing at his eyes, he mumbled, “I meant, really, I get to stay out that late? How come I don’t get to stay out until ten now?”
“Yeah, you’re fine… asshole,” Angel teased, pushing his brother off his lap. “Go wash your hands and come help me finish up the snake jam.”
“Oh, yeah.” Rome scrambled to his feet. “We can totally call them snake jam muffins. We’ve got to make a couple for Zig.”
“You are a fucking weird little kid, Rome.”
The door to the front of the bakery swung behind Roman, its soft wind a familiar sensation across Angel’s face. A short day for the dining room, he enjoyed the early evenings alone in the kitchen, a time when he played with the flavors he’d created, sometimes amazed at how something sounding good in his head turned out to be too disgusting for words while the things he tossed together in a desperate attempt to use up what he had ended up being a perennial favorite.
Roman’s snake jam muffins were definitely going to be the latter, Angel thought, sucking on a spot of dried salak juice on his thumb. It just was going to need a better name.
The front door’s bell clang jerked Angel out of his contemplation of fruit, jams, and batters. Wiping his hands off with one of the damp kitchen towels, he shouldered the partition door open, ready to tell whoever came in that they were closed. It wouldn’t have been the first time Justin forgot to lock the front door before he left, and Angel cursed himself for not checking the dining room before they’d shut down for the day.
Rome stood by the door, his face ashen and bloodless. Oddly, West stood next to him, stiff and unyielding. Disheveled, West’s button-up shirt was torn, a sleeve hanging slightly off its seam, and spots of blood speckled his chest. His nose dripped, a thin line of crimson smeared above his upper lip, and his blue eyes burned, angry and hot, when the two armed men standing at the front of the bakery shoved West farther in.
He grabbed at Rome as he stumbled in, keeping the young boy shielded with his body, and the man Angel’d jumped at the bowling alley grinned as he kicked at West’s retreating back. His boot glanced off West’s thigh, throwing him off-balance, and he tumbled over one of the low tables, taking Rome down with him.
The small space smelled of blood, gunpowder, and fear, and Angel took a breath to steady himself, steeling his nerves for what was to come. He didn’t care about the man who’d taken Roman. No, he was more interested in the other man, the one with dark gray eyes and deep dimples flashing in his cheeks as he grinned across the bakery at Angel. The man looked haggard, odd considering it hadn’t been that long since Angel’d seen him last, but Violet was fond of saying those with the devil in them aged quickly because Hell wanted its own back.
Tossing the towel onto the counter, Angel turned to the man and said, “Now what the fuck do you want, Dad?”
Eighteen
ANGEL WALKED to the middle of the bakery’s dining room. They’d tried keeping the floor plan as open as they could, arranging the couches, wing chairs, and low tables into clusters. After the fire, they’d lost a few of the pieces to water damage and smoke smears, but the red velvet low-back davenport survived, earning it a central spot in the middle of the floor. He reached the end of the couch, then bent over to right the table West’d knocked over when he and Rome fell.
His nerves were frayed, snapping thread by thread with each step, but Angel kept his face schooled, a placid mask without a hint of emotion. Keeping his eyes as dead as his expression, he reached West’s side, then hooked his hands under his brother’s arms, pulling him out from under West.
Sangfroid.
It was a word Ren, West’s grandmother, taught him when he’d worked for her. She’d been responsible for much of his vocabulary, reading romance novels out loud to Angel as he took care of her back garden or as he prepared a week’s meals for her freezer. Lang’d been a ghost then, skirting the edges of their lives, sallow and wan until one day he’d found his footing and began to practically live at the bookstore. Angel wasn’t even certain Lang knew anyone existed, much less paid any attention to the shaggy-haired handyman lurking around his grandmother’s house.
The words ended when age finally took the old woman, but many stuck with him. Epaulets, cabriolet, wainscoting, but especially sangfroid. It’d dawned on him back then, detachment and coldness was the best way to deal with his father.
Especially when the asshole was holding a gun.
Angel didn’t know the man standing next to his father. He didn’t matter. No, the only person who mattered was standing right by the door, holding a gun on his two sons.
Cliff Daniels wasn’t wearing the last two years very well on his skin. The last time Angel saw his father, he’d bee
n little more than a shadowed outline gruffly shoving Rome out of a faded terracotta beater with bald tires and a folded-over hanger shoved into its antenna mount to catch any signals strong enough for the probably stolen radio to catch.
Before that he’d been standing over Angel, his hands wet with Angel’s blood.
It was that man Angel had burned into his memory.
For the longest time, Angel wondered if his mother, a fuzzy ghost of a memory, contributed anything to his gene pool, because he and his father shared the same eyes, hair, and face, their strong features pulled from a mixed bag of indiscriminate ancestors.
A thick-shouldered and robust man, his father loomed in Angel’s mind, an oppressive presence Angel once admired but who’d toppled from the pedestal he’d been put on after one too many beatings. As long as Angel could recall, Cliff Daniels was part thug, part snake-oil salesman, with a keen eye for gullible people and a silver tongue he used to cheat people out of every cent he could get. He used his looks and charm to milk a mark dry while his finely tuned paranoia and innate selfishness kept him one step ahead of the authorities and his angry victims.
Most of the time.
From the massive swelling rising up along the right side of his face, Angel guessed his father’d met his match in someone, and after a quick glance at West’s torn-up, bleeding knuckles, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who’d given his father a too short beating.
“You okay, kid?” Angel righted Roman, brushing off a bit of dust from his shirt. He couldn’t risk showing his father how much he cared for West. Not now. It would give the man leverage, and Angel couldn’t risk West being hurt.
Or worse, killed.
Standing as close as he could to West, Angel pressed his leg against his lover’s as casually as he could, meeting West’s cobalt gaze. There was worry on West’s face, lines etched around his pressed-together lips. Then he nodded, turning away to get to his feet, breaking the link they’d briefly shared. West buckled, his hip slamming into the couch’s swirled wooden armrest. Grunting, he grabbed at Angel’s pants, tugging them down slightly before he got his balance, and Angel leaned over, dragged forward by West’s stumble. Pulling Rome to him again, Angel took a few sliding steps to the right, and after a bit of gentle nudging he got them around the end of the couch.
“You and Rome run,” Angel muttered into West’s ear. “First chance.”
He stepped forward before West could respond, then made sure his brother was behind him. They had the couch partially between them and the other men, but Angel knew it wasn’t much protection. The padding on the davenport’s back was thin, and its wood frame more than likely was a cobbled-together pressboard without enough thickness to it to stop a bullet.
Angel’s guts churned, a tempest of fear brewing hot and fierce deep within him. He refused to give his father even the slightest hint of his distress, but it was hard. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and his gums ached around his teeth, his spit viscous and thick. He wanted to swallow, wicking the sluggish feeling from his mouth and perhaps dislodging the swelling lump in his throat, but those were signs his father was looking for. Signs he’d been taught to watch for when circling a mark.
“I see what you’re doing there, boy.” His father’s idiotic grin widened, and he motioned with his gun for Angel to move aside. “I’m not as stupid as I look. Get out of the way. I’ll need a clear shot at the man if you and I don’t come to an agreement.”
“So you’re going to shoot… who? West? Rome?” Angel thrust his chin up, narrowing his eyes. “And for what? To get what?”
“To get what I’ve worked for these past few months.” The older Daniels edged into the room while the man beside him turned, leaning back to scan the street. “This was supposed to be a fast one-time thing. Now Byron and I’ve got to clean up this whole damned mess—”
“Wait, Byron? Your cousin Byron? That’s who this asshole is?” Making a show of studying the man by the door, Angel kept himself between his father and West. Rome’s hands were twisted into his shirt, and he silently begged West to get the young boy off of him and ready to bolt if they saw an opening. “I thought he was doing life.”
“Life’s a shorter sentence when prisons get full up, boy,” Byron croaked. His throat worked to move his words out, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently when he spoke. “’Sides, that bitch had it coming. Not like she died. Someone up high must have figured that out. Cliff here was kind enough to come pick me up and, well, cut me in on this job.”
“And it’s not as if his parole officer’s going to be able to find us in Cabo.” Another wave of the gun, and then Cliff’s smile ebbed. “Let me keep this short and simple, boy. My man Washington promised me a cool mil once you and the kid got the hell out of town. I’m here to collect.”
“Derry’s dead,” West said in a flat voice. “And they’re going nowhere.”
“Dead happens, asshole,” Cliff shot back. “And I don’t give a shit if they live or die. I was promised some cash to get them out of here, and Washington doing a dirt nap isn’t going to change me getting it.”
Angel’s blood ran cold, and West pushed past him, rushing at Angel’s right shoulder to reach Cliff. The couch’s legs screamed a protest across the floor when West went by, his furious dash careening it toward the righted table. Left open and vulnerable, Angel grabbed at the taller man, snagging West by the waistband.
If Cliff and Byron weren’t already on edge, West’s sudden lunge at them honed them to a dangerous sharpness. Their guns came up, the weapons’ endless black holes seizing Angel’s attention, and he wrenched West back. His arms burned with the effort of keeping West contained, and behind him, Roman’s breathing became erratic, a huffing rhythm fueled by stress and panic.
“You didn’t have to kill Derry.” West twisted around, and Angel’s fingers strained from the torque. “Angel, let go.”
“West, you’re hurting me.” The entreaty was quiet, barely loud enough to tickle an ear, but West subsided. The pressure on Angel’s fingers let up, and he released West, nudging him with a quick elbow. “Is he right? Did you kill Derry?”
“Like I had a choice,” Cliff spat back, prowling closer. “Asshole was selling us out. After all I did for him. He contacted me, convinced me to leave behind a good shakedown gig to come here and kick you in the ass. What does he do instead? Jack the whole thing up and left me holding an empty bag. Whining about cheating you and how sorry he was. Asshole had a sweet setup, and he was going to blow it all because you fell in love with my worthless son.”
The cracks in his façade were showing, a network of fine lines etched into his face, and his skin sank in under his right eye, the bone underneath too broken to support his cheek. Cliff Daniels had given up. On life. Himself. Everything. And he’d gambled on one final big score—a gamble he not only lost but ended up taking Derry’s life as well.
When his father opened his mouth, Angel choked on the sour punch of Cliff’s breath. He creaked, oozing with a fetid aroma. It permeated the small dining area, made more potent by Byron’s unwashed stench. The two men smelled as if they’d been on a bender on a forgotten mountain, nauseating and filthy. Their clothes were caked with grime, and Cliff’s nails were black, his fingers clenching around his gun’s stock. Byron was no better, his face speckled with dried blood, and one eye was crimson, blown out from Angel’s punch.
The malevolence in Byron’s grin reassured Angel he wouldn’t be one of the Danielses making it out of the bakery alive.
“All your boy Derry needed to do was agree to make one final push… just one more shot at you and you’d have been gone.” Cliff leered at Rome, peeking out from behind Angel. “Well, one more shot at him and Angel would have packed up and gone. Instead, the shithead came crawling to us about some sob story, how this dick here wanted to close the motel deal. Bad shit all around, that.
“Says I’m not going to get my money because he’s all tapped out.” Cliff chuckled. “Yeah, he g
ot tapped out, alright. So now I’m going to do the same thing here to the boy if I don’t get what I need.”
“Angel—” Rome squeaked.
His heart seized when their father trained the gun on them, then broke when he heard Rome’s sobbing gasp. His hand shook when he reached for Rome’s shoulder, and his brother felt hot to his chilled fingers. Roman shook free, standing defiant and sullen, staring their father down.
“Go to the kitchen, Rome.” Angel cracked, the terror his father placed in his chest chewing its way out. “Dad, let him go. Please, don’t do—”
“Kid goes nowhere, boy. You finally come up to scratch, and I can use you for something bigger than dime bag jobs, and you want me to let him go? No, the kid stays,” Cliff ground out between yellowed teeth. “What’s going to happen is Harris here is going to be taken to the bank while the two of you stay here with Byron. Once I get the money I was promised, I’ll drop a call and Byron will take care of things on this end.”
He’d grown accustomed to his father’s betrayals, but Roman’s face was a field of devastated innocence. His brother took a step toward the kitchen door, edging out from behind the couch, an unsure and afraid statue just a little too far to Angel’s right than he liked. Rome’s eyes were wide, teary, and he frantically glanced back at Angel.
“Right,” Angel sneered back. “How stupid do you think I am, Dad?”
“As stupid as I’ve raised you,” his father replied, shrugging when he lifted the gun, pointing it at Rome’s head. “Guess now’s as good of a time as any. Maybe after this, your fuck buddy will take me a bit more seriously.”
In the stagnant, fraught silence of the bakery’s dining room, the gun’s discharge shook the wall, a peal of smoky thunder with an astringent pewter-metallic chaser. West became a blur, putting himself between the brothers and Byron, but Angel knew Byron wasn’t the one he had to worry about. There was never, ever any question about where his life and loyalty lay.