by Evelyn Glass
“Nothing that concerns you, Alana. That’s it.” I run my hands through my hair nervously. I have no idea why her stare is digging deep within me to pull my stomach out. I turn back towards her ice cream truck, watching as Tyler and Mateo continue to rifle through the insides. This would just be so much easier if I walked in there and pointed out the damn diamonds to them. However, I know that would only make things worse between her and me.
Unfortunately, I don’t have to take a step in any direction. My men do it for me. “Boss!” Tyler calls out from inside the truck. “We found ‘em. Jesus, you know how to hide a stash!” He appears outside the truck and jumps down with the bag held high in his hand. The rest of the men crowd around him as he pulls it open to look inside.
Alana steals a glance at me before darting out towards the men. She’s so fast, I barely register her and neither do my guys. She launches off her feet and grabs at the small bag. I cry out “FUCK! NO! ALANA!” But I’m too late. She manages to surprise the other guys just enough to pull the bag open and peer inside. The diamond bag falls to the floor as her hands shoot up towards her face.
“What the hell are those? Did you use my truck to stash your stolen goods?” Mateo grabs her by the shoulders and roughly shuffles her towards the truck as she continues to scream at me. Tyler and the rest rummage on the ground, looking angrily for any spilled over diamonds. “Why won’t you answer me, Liam!”
“What do you want me to do with this bitch, Liam?” Mateo turns towards me as my thumb glances over the trigger of my gun. “You want me to take her down to the park? I know a couple of guys who could get it done tonight.”
“Down to the park” was our code word for taking a person out of the picture. We had a building, well, more of a shed, down by Raston’s Park where we did all the dirty work. No one but the people I approved ever came back from “the park.”
Alana can read between the lines. Her anger turns to terror as she shouts my name desperately. “Liam! What’s going on? Liam!” The desperation seeps out of her as she claws towards me through Mateo’s sturdy grip around her hips.
“Let. Her. Go.” My words thump like I’ve suddenly become a caveman. I snap, turning the gun’s safety back on and placing it around my back again. “She’ll be fine, and I can handle her from here.” Mateo shoves Alana towards the ground with an audible huff and goes back to the boys who are still marveling at the diamonds. I give them my final orders for the night. “Put them back where you found them.”
“What?” Alana asks as she slowly walks towards me as if she is marching straight to her death. “You can’t use my truck to hold your stolen goods. I won’t let you.” She looks back at her dad’s ice cream truck mournfully, probably realizing that I wasn’t the person you could exactly turn down. No doubt she was thinking of what her dad would say about the predicament she had gotten herself into just for saying yes to a man like me.
I take a deep breath and put on Steel Saints face. My voice is stern as I command her, “Go inside, Alana.” I point towards the restaurant with an outstretched arm. Her eyes squint and square on me, her arms crossed over her body. She digs one of her feet into the ground before giving up and turning away from me. There isn’t anything she can do here, at least not knowing that I have my gun and those men were certainly not letting her near that truck while they were on duty.
She sulks away, her blond hair swishing with every long stride. At least the picture of her leaving is a sight for me. That round ass in those jeans almost melts away my problems -- almost. I’ve got these jackasses to deal with right now. They’ve cost me any good standing I’ve got with this girl while also trying to assert themselves over me. This was the kind of shit I’ve been dealing with for months now. I have a feeling that, without my gun, that conversation would have ended differently.
I harness that anger and walk back to the truck. The boys are sitting inside, going through Alana’s suitcase and books. Taylor pulls out a pair of her red thong undies and holds it up to the light. “Can you imagine that round ass fitting in these, boys? You don’t get quality like that with the skanks we’re stuck with.”
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” I ask, put off by them running through her things like my last few words to them didn’t matter. “Do you really think you can mess with me like that? I know you think you can do it better, but until you’re president, you don’t fuck with me and certainly don’t challenge me.”
“We weren’t doing anything like that, boss,” Taylor says quietly, his thin lips quivering in pleasure. “We were just following your orders. It’s not our fault we couldn’t find where you hid the diamonds.” A strange sense of unease washes over me as he talks. I trust him as about as far as I can throw him.
“Where are the diamonds? I want to see them.” Me being out of sight, even if just for a moment, could have given them a chance to royally screw me over. They can sense my mistrust as well, each eyeing the other until Mateo reaches over towards the yellow canister and pulls out the false bottom where I told them to put the diamonds back. I don’t know much about jewels, but these look like they did when I first took them. The weight is about right too.
Mateo places his hand over his heart, faking offense. “Are you implying something, boss? You think that we would screw over our own club over some diamonds?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. You don’t think I haven’t heard the rumblings behind my back, the sly comments about me being the president and the secret meetings between you and Tyler? You’d have to think I’m fucking stupid to not smell bullshit when it’s right under my nose. But until you rally your army and force me out, you fuck with my club and my business, you better know the consequences.” I put the diamonds in my back pocket and jump out of the truck. The men stand motionless in their places, looking at each other for answers. Finally, they follow my lead, watching me close and lock the door behind me.
“You all are demoted. No fucking privileges at all. No meetings either. You can ride with the junior peons doing streetwalker check-ins on the east end until you prove your worth to me. You break one more direct order or rule, or if I hear of you trying to go behind my back, I’ll take your patch and your tongues. And you damn well know I mean it.”
They stare at me speechless. Ever since I killed a man in the ring last year, my threats mean much more than they used to. They all see me as someone to fear -- a monster. It’s a double-edged sword. I can use it in times like these to bend people to my will. But if a girl like Alana found out, I doubt she would ever want to be associated with me again. Maybe that was for the best.
My head hangs low as I walk back to the restaurant, unsure of what is about to happen inside. Something about that girl is pulling me in a million different directions. I need to figure out why I am so protective of her, why my stomach turns when I see that pile of discarded kitchen supplies sitting on the ground outside the truck. It could be that I just got this weird soft spot for sick daddies with daughters, or maybe it’s a hard-on for damsels in distress. Whatever it is, she’s about ten seconds away from walking out that door on me if I don’t think of something, anything, to keep her around… and quiet.
There’s a soft crunch on the ground as I walk. It catches my boot in mid-air and forces me to look down. A cell phone covered in a red and blue shell lies on the ground just outside where Taylor was holding down Alana. I squat down to attempt to turn it on. Despite having a cracked screen, it flashes on immediately. There’s a picture of Alana with bright red lipstick, her hair slicked back into a ballerina’s bun on top of her head. She’s pursing her lips while leaning in with a dark haired friend with purple lipstick.
While sexy enough to keep my attention, I’m more concerned about the message alert at the top of the screen. It’s from one of her contacts by the name of Jana: What the hell are you talking about, A? Who is Liam Murphy and why are you at The Emerald Pub? That place is for thugs. Get the hell out of there, or I WILL CALL THE COPS.
I should have known. I should have taken her phone and completely cut her off from the world. While it looks like she didn’t give much information to this girl, she still knows my name and our location. This isn’t looking good. Even if I wanted to go with Taylor and Mateo’s plan by taking her out, it wouldn’t work with a third party looking in suspiciously. Now I had to get Alana back on my side and into the game on her own terms -- no matter what.
She’s sitting in the same booth as before, looking absolutely terrified. Her hands shake as she tries to take another bite of her salad while the other one holds up her small head as if it’s about to blow off. Her eyes are closed again -- a dangerous coping method when you’re around guys like us. I scoot back in the booth across from her as quietly as I can, but she can still sense me.
“You ready to tell me what the hell is going on, Liam?” she whispers low, probably guessing that what happened outside wasn’t for public consumption. It was a typical problem for a guy like me. Owning a public and pretty popular restaurant meant that anyone could come in at any time -- even an undercover cop or a rival gang member. What was said around here was done with tight lips and under low lighting.
I’m without an answer for her. She has to know or at least have some guess. So instead of trying to lie through my damn teeth about it, I ask her, “What do you think? You tell me, Alana.”
“What I think? What I think is that you’re a freaking low-life, pond scum thief who parades around with other pond scum lowlifes with little to no IQs and tons of steroids. I think you used me as more than just your getaway driver. You couldn’t think of a way out of whatever shit you got yourself into, and you decided that the best course of action was taking some blonde bimbo for a ride. But you don’t know me.”
“Yeah?” I ask, my interests piqued again. “What don’t I know about you?”
“I think that you see me as this innocent little angel you can toss money and brooding glances at. But I’m smarter than you, and I am tougher than you think. I’ve been handed some tough shit my entire life. If you think this is going to make me sit back and just take whatever abuse your men are gonna throw at me, you’re wrong. I’ll make your life a living hell.”
“Oh, I have no doubt about that, Alana,” I say, half laughing. She really was feisty when she wanted to be. Of course, it was an act. The truth was that she was terrified. I can feel the vibrations of her legs bouncing up and down rapidly against the table base. Her eyes continue to dart between the tables full of faceless people and those coming in and out of the doors.
“Then let me go. You don’t want to deal with me, and I certainly don’t want to deal with you. Just let me go, and I’ll go away. I won’t tell anyone about this.” She places her hands on the table; face up as if she is offering me something.
I reach into my pocket and take out her phone. Placing it in her hands, her eyes grow wide. “You’ve already told someone. I don’t know this Jana person, so I don’t trust her either. She knows my name and my restaurant. So while you may not tell anyone about the diamonds, what’s to say that she won’t.”
Alana looks back up at me with a wild, desperate expression. Her face stretches as she realizes just how screwed she actually is. “You don’t know her like I do, but she won’t tell. I swear she won’t tell. Just please, let me have my truck back so I can go.”
I lean back in the booth and look over towards my bartender as he walks to one of the few false bottles of beer from the fridge and hands it to a man waiting at the bar. It’s a decoy we use when we distribute in-house. The man hands him a roll of cash, which the bartender counts and puts in a safe underneath the register. This happens almost every night for about twenty or so “regulars,” but this gives me an even better idea -- a way to make Alana stay and me very, very rich.
“I’ve got a proposition for you, Alana,” I say as I lift my hand towards the bartender. I suddenly felt like celebrating.
Chapter 7
Liam’s face lights up brightly as he orders the bartender, “Bring us a few slices of chocolate cake, the freshest ones in the fridge, along with another bottle of champagne.”
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask, my head reeling. “You’re ordering dessert, and you haven’t even bothered to tell me what the fuck is going on? I don’t want to stay any longer. I want to go home!”
I lower my voice as the bartender reappears with two white plates stacked with dark chocolate cake sliced to perfection. It’s dark brown layers are on top of dark brown frosting with a white dollop of sugary whipped cream. My mouth is near watering. Chocolate is always my downfall, but I push aside my slice and focus on the problem at hand.
“Your dad drives an ice cream truck, and you were pretty eager to take my money earlier,” he points out seemingly randomly as he stuffs his face with a large bite. His eyes close in pleasure, savoring each and every little morsel of that cake. After a sip of fresh champagne he continues, “I’m guessing that being in the ice cream business isn’t that profitable, nor does it come with quality health care insurance.”
“No,” I answer deadpan. “It doesn’t, but you knew this already. I told you about it.”
Liam looks around over his shoulder and towards a few older, graying men sitting at the bar. The group talks low with each other as they sip frothy mugs of golden beer. Like Liam, they wear all black -- some with battered leather jackets full of black and white patches sewn carelessly onto the sleeves and back.
“You see the guy on the right of that group of guys? The one with the red, scarred hands?” I didn’t notice this before, but the man he is referring to has a hand as bright red as a cherry tomato. It looks almost as if he has soaked in the sun too long, but the scaly quality, how it almost glimmers in the light above him tells a much worse story. The flesh looks as if has been dragged through the ringer and put back together again. I can’t help but shudder at the thought.
Liam adds, “That’s Sean. He’s one of the first guys to join Steel Saints, my club. I didn’t have any question about letting him either. He is one of the best riders I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He could ride through torrential rain pour without hesitating. It was like him and his bike were one. So I put him in charge of one of our more difficult jobs -- running shipments from our partners in California back to Vegas. He was such a natural at riding the highways that we even had him training young guns and peons, the guys that were probation members.”
“Then, one day, Sean found himself being chased down by a group of guys from the Black Flag Mafia. I knew about their plans a few days earlier, but I had trusted that Sean could get himself out of trouble if he got spotted. That day was January last year. Roads outside California weren’t exactly the best. There was some weird frost on the ground and Sean was trying to outgun two Black Flag riders in a big ol’ Ford truck. His tires twisted out from under him, sending him flying across the highway’s pavement. He didn’t stop rolling until he slammed into the side of an underpass. He was lucky that this happened during the morning rush. The few cars that stopped kept the Black Flag guys from taking more than his daypack and satchel of drugs.”
I lean in further as Liam continues his story. “You know, I love being in Steel Saints. I formed it because this was a way for me to make a quick buck without having to work a 9 to 5 desk job like some chump. And as you can probably guess, it pays to break the law. Sean was bringing in a ton of money at the time, enough for his wife and their newborn son to live in a high-rise on Sunset Street. But it wasn’t enough money to pay his medical bills without health insurance. I think the first bill his wife Bonnie brought me in was nearly fifteen grand, and it was only for the emergency room. Sean needed reconstruction surgery, skin grafts, physical therapy, etc.”
“My boys and I did our best to cover. We all agreed to take ten percent cut of our income to put towards his bills, so he didn’t have to worry about it. Yet, it still piled up much higher than we could handle, especially with the loss of our supplies from Cali headquarters.
We ended up all going without a paycheck for a month to take care of our guy.”
“Okay…” I finally say, still looking over at the man with the dark eyes and the red arm. “I still don’t know what that has to do with my dad or me.”
“My second guess is that there isn’t a fraternal order of ice cream truck drivers that are willing to forgo their paychecks like my men were willing to do. My third guess is that his medical bills are the reason why you have an envelope with his name on it sitting in your safe.”
“What the hell were you doing in my safe? That is none of your business!” I shoot him a look of absolute disgust, yet he continues to shovel chocolate cake and champagne into his mouth like this is just some regular old business meeting.
Liam puts down his fork and lowers his voice, not losing that dry humor behind his tone, “Lady, I’m a criminal. Do you really think that I am not going to look into your safe when you keep it unlocked? We’ll talk security 101 later, but right now, I want to talk about my proposition. You need me.”
I mutter under my breath, “I need you like a hole in my head, you mean.” The truth is that I’ve been on my own with this for far too long. I can handle whatever he thinks I need him for like I always do. It’s how I got into grad school and started my blog. It’s how I am still standing today.