Betrayal of Cupids (5 page)

My phone rang again.  “I should at least tell them I’m okay.”

Ryan nodded, agreeing not to worry my family.

“Aunt Kathryn, I’m all right.”

But it wasn’t Aunt Kathryn.

“Come home, Grace.”

“No.”  It couldn’t be.

“Leave Ryan and come now, or else.  Oh, and Grace?”

He was waiting for my reply before he would finish his sentence.  I knew this tactic.

“Yes?”

“If you tell him, I’ll know.  If you tell him, you’re all dead.”

He hung up.  I dropped my cell from my ear and tried to piece together what might be happening on the other side of the phone.  Why was Sean calling from Aunt Kathryn’s phone?  Was she with him, or was he intentionally trying to worry me?  What was happening?

Ryan was at my side.  “Grace, you’re shaking.”

He was right.  I couldn’t control it.

“Grace?  Who was that on the phone?”

But I couldn’t answer.  I couldn’t do much of anything.  What did he mean when he said that if I told Ryan, he would know?  Had he set up cameras?  Bugs?  I couldn’t take the chance.

“Ryan, I need to go.”  I hurriedly threw on the clothes he had taken out for me.

“No.”

“I’ll come back.  I promise.”

“Who was that?”

“No one.”  It was a terrible answer, but my mind didn’t have the capacity to think of a believable lie.

“Don’t pull that shit with me.  Just stay.  Why can’t you just stay?”

“Here,” I grabbed a pen from the side table and took his palm in mine.  I wrote down seven digits.  After all this time, I was finally giving him my phone number.  “I will come back to you.  Know that.  No matter what happens, no matter what I say, I will come back to you.”

It was the best hint I could leave without giving away the truth and securing our deaths.  I prayed he would get it.

The air felt tight.  Even though for a brief second it seemed there was finally a possibility that our relationship might make it, that one phone call threw our life together back into realm of impossibility.  Ryan looked at me, begging for more information, but I was steadfast, and he knew not to fight me.  Ryan lowered his head, seemingly asking permission to kiss my lips.  I angled up to him, but instead we both stood there, staring into each other’s eyes, motionless.  I could feel the tension between us; the desire, the lust, the love.  Even with all that passion, neither of us could make the first move.  It was as if this were our first kiss, the one that would decide it all, but we couldn’t take the step.  Even though I so badly wanted to hold his lips with mine, my next step was away from him.  I needed to go back to Alexandria.  I needed to know what Sean was planning.

Our eyes stayed locked as we stepped away, both remembering the intensity from the night our fathers were taken.  It wasn’t the end then.  It wouldn’t be the end now.  This was just another goodbye. 

How many more goodbyes would we have to endure?   

Ryan

It had been a few hours since Grace left my house when I heard a knock at the door.  Common sense should have convinced me that it had not been enough time for her to return to me as promised, but when it came to Grace, all sense was thrown out the window.  I tore open the door, offering my arms to her embrace, but my heart sank as my eyes adjusted to the figure standing in front of me.

“Hey man, sorry to drop by like this, but you ran away before I got to tell you how sorry I was about your Pops.”

“Danny.” I extended my hand. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here.”

It was Danny Sims, my boxing opponent in the fake match we had set up in our attempt to outwit our rivals, the Walking Shadows
. 
He was wearing a suit.  The sleek, pinstriped material hung securely on his fit form.  His baby face was clean-shaven, and his dirty blonde hair was buzzed short.  Had he been walking down the street, no one would have guessed he was an officer in an outlaw motorcycle club, though not mine.  We were the only ones at the funeral who had decided against donning our colors.  I guess we had more in common that I had thought. 

“Listen, you know I went through this a few years back with my Pops, so if you need anything…”

“I really appreciate that.”  While coming off as a common pleasantry, it was the honest truth.  With the passing of my father, I found myself craving sympathy, craving empathy, or simply craving a connection.  “Please, come in.  You want anything to drink?”

Danny accepted my offer, wiped his shined, wing-tipped shoes on the mat, and stepped through the doorway.  I closed the solid oak door behind him as he took off his overcoat and hung it on the wrought iron hook.

“This is a nice place you got here.”

“Yeah, not so bad.”  I looked around, joining him in his walk around the foyer.  “I grew up here, it’s a little weird to be back.”

“You going to stay?”

“At least for a bit.”  It was the truth.  While only last week I had no intention of ever setting foot back in this house, things were different now.  I wouldn’t be running away with Grace just yet.  I needed to see some things through.

He shook his head.  “Do you ever stop to think about how you got here?  Like really got here?”

I looked at him sideways, unsure if I understood him correctly.

“I mean, come on man, this one-percenter life is kind of fucked up.”

I joined him in his amusement.  “Yes, Danny, yes it is,” I nodded.

If only he knew that those exact circumstances had been all I thought about for the last few years.  I thought I was the only one.  Like me, Danny was born into the life.  His father proudly sported his colors, just as mine had.  It was practically impossible for an impressionable young boy not to fall victim to the idolization of the one-percenter way of being, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t eventually be riddled with doubt.  His like-minded assessment broke all the tension in the room, and my chuckles turned to uncontrollable laughter.  The camaraderie was invigorating.

“Beer?”

“Yuengling?”

“Good man.”

I made my way into the kitchen and took two Pennsylvania lagers out of the fridge.  I sat next to Danny and slammed the necks of the bottles down on the edge of the coffee table, popping off the caps.

“Nice style,” He said.

“Nice order.”  I replied.

“When in Rome…”

We both leaned back, settling into the cushions as we allowed the cool beer to run down our throats.  It was nice to be able to drink with another person in complete silence.  It wasn’t a raucous party, and it wasn’t a church meeting.  It was the beginning of a friendship.  With everything that had been going on in my life, I didn’t realize how much I would need that.  Maybe if Pops had still been with me I would never have had the chance to get to know Danny Sims.

He propped himself up on his elbow and turned to me.  “So who was the hot blonde at the funeral you are so obviously pussy-whipped by?”

I chuckled to myself, debating whether to just tell Danny the underlying cause of this whole mess.  “Would you believe me if I said ‘nobody’?”

“Absolutely not.”

“That’s what I figured.”  I took another gulp of my Yuengling.  What benefit could he reap from knowing my secret? My brothers already knew and accepted that my relationship had eventually brought about the death of our leader.  What they didn’t know was that I was still holding onto that relationship for dear life.  Did I care if they knew? 

Fuck it.  Danny was being a friend, and I wanted to see how far that extended.  I was willing to take a chance.  What else did I really have to lose?  “You know Grace Brennan?”

“Know?  Bowie’s daughter?  Who doesn’t?”  He looked at me, asking me to finish the thought.  Instead, I raised my eyebrow, allowing him to reach his own conclusions.  It didn’t take him long.  “Shit, man.  Really?”

I nodded.

“Fuck me.  How did you pull that one off?”
“Completely by accident.”

“Dude.  I don’t know whether to high five you or punch you in the face.  For how long?”

“A few months.”  I wanted to talk about it.  I wanted to tell the world about it.  I wanted to brag about my relationship with my redheaded beauty, about knowing what it was like to be loved by such a woman, but I was certain that anything that came out of my mouth about her would surely be proof that I was indeed ‘pussy-whipped’.  That girl could ask me to do anything.  I wouldn’t miss a beat.

“And…” He stopped short.  “Oh man, is that what happened?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Look, you don’t have to talk about it if you’re not comfortable.”

Normally I would’ve thanked him and changed the subject, but right then I actually wanted to talk.  I wanted to get it all off my chest.  I had been reliving the whole thing in my head for so long that I wasn’t quite sure I was telling myself the truth anymore.

“From the beginning?”

“I’ve got nothing better to do.”

I chuckled, preparing myself to open this book up to Danny, my friend.  Friend: what a funny word. 

I closed my eyes and flipped through the pictures in my memory.  “So they made me Vice President…” and I continued from there.  Over the course of more than half a case of beer, I told him how I followed Grace into a bar, how she figured out who I was after seeing my tattoo, how she was the one who was shot at the match, and how I rushed her to the hospital.  Then I told him about Sean.  I told him how I had to pull Grace off of him, that I couldn’t kill him, and how he was the one who fired the bullet that killed my Pops. 

“And now that’s all I can think about.  Had I just shot that motherfucker in the head when he was holding his knife to Grace’s throat, Pops would still be alive.  I wouldn’t be running this God-forsaken club, and Grace and I would be in California, away from it all.  No one would be able to find us.”

“California?”

“Yeah, it was a silly little daydream of ours, but southern California was the plan.  It still is, just not yet.”

Danny put his strong hand on my shoulder, offering the comfort of a fellow conflicted club member.

“Now you can go back to Boston and tell your club how pathetic I am.”

“No, man.  That’s not how we run.”

“Thanks,” I sighed. 

He lifted his eyebrow at me. “But can I ask you a question?”

“Is there something I didn’t answer?”

“Why didn’t you guys just run away?”

Of course I had asked myself that same question.  Why hadn’t we just run away?  Everything was in shambles.  No one would have noticed.  We wouldn’t even have been missed. 

The only answer I could offer was “loyalty.”

“Even with everything Sean did?”

“Even knowing about my relationship, the club followed me.  Sean is gone.”

“Where did he go?”

“No one knows.”

“And that doesn’t worry you?”

“You know,” I contemplated his last question, “with taking over as president and then Pop’s funeral, I really haven’t had time to worry about him, but I can’t imagine he would show his face anywhere around here.  The club is furious.  He would be strung up and burned alive.”

“So now you’re running the club alone?”

“In the club, you’re never alone.  You know that.”

“Yeah, but man, your whole family is gone.”

I lightly punched his shoulder.  “You sure are making me feel better.”

He patted me on my back and shook his head.  “At least I’m good for that.”  He winked.  We sat there quiet for a few swigs until Danny swallowed loudly.  “So what’s next?”

“I don’t know.” It was a quick, forced reply.

He hit my back even harder.  “Don’t think for a minute that I believe you don’t have something all worked out in your head.”

“And what if I don’t?” I jokingly shot back.

“You forget that I’ve fought you.  You don’t do anything without careful deliberation.

“Did you miss the entire story I told you about Grace?”  I was laughing, but it was the truth.  My actions with her were completely based on gut feelings.  I never questioned anything.

“Chicks are a different story. You can’t think straight around them.”

“That’s certainly the truth.”

There was another breath of silence as we both finished our beers.

“So nothing more?”

I took a deep breath, preparing to let it all out.  If anyone would understand, it would be Danny.  Still, while I might have thought about it all the time, forming the words was not an easy task.  “Do you ever think about going straight?”

“What do you mean?”  I couldn’t tell if he truly didn’t understand my question, or if he was so taken aback by it that he needed clarification. 

“I thought I was getting out of here.  I thought Grace and I were going to run away and not look back.  I prepared myself to be a law-abiding citizen, but then… well then Pops happened.  And I’m the president now.  I can’t just turn my back on them.  I can’t… but I also can’t do this anymore.”

“I don’t think I’m following you.”

“What if I could have the best of both worlds?  What if I turned us around?  I haven’t worked it all out yet, but what if I could get the club away from all the bullshit?  We’d stop worrying about getting caught, or killed, or about every fucking prospect being an undercover agent.”

The sad truth was that undercover agents were a big threat to our way of life.  We ran background checks on each one of our prospects, called references, even looked up high school transcripts, but the feds now knew all our tactics and were always one step ahead of us.  Now any new member needed to come with a referral from another member, or we would patch guys over from other clubs.  Personally, I didn’t love patching guys over; I felt that it created bad blood between the clubs, and we’d just be asking for a war eventually.  The Shadows had been patching over all their new members recently.  They let the smaller clubs do the dirty work of training the prospects and whipping them into shape, and then they’d take them once they were prepared to be a part of such a bigger gang.  Of course, then they had all the inside information on the Shadows’ rival clubs.  Luckily, none of the Cupids had gone down that path… Well, not yet, at least.

The beer had begun to have its effect.  The colors of the room dulled and I sank further into the couch.  With extreme intention, Danny sat up, looking me directly in the eye.

“Dude, did you hear that that just happened in Nevada.  The ATF agent had been undercover with them for two years.  Two years!  You think you know someone.”

I sat up.  “This is what I’m talking about!  Then the club went and killed that agent’s kid to prove a point.  I’m not killing a kid, Danny.”

He started laughing.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head.

“What the fuck, Danny?”

“Fine.  It’s just… Ryan, from what I hear, you’re not killing anyone.”

I stood in response.  What had he heard?  The beer might have been making me slightly neurotic, but it wasn’t widespread knowledge that I hadn’t ever taken a life.  I had made damn sure of that, and as the new president of the Blood of Cupids, I couldn’t let that information get around.  No one would take me seriously.

“What the fuck did you hear?”

Danny waved his hands at me.  “Calm down, man.  Fuck.  Nothing.  You just said you couldn’t shoot Sean.  What the fuck did you think I meant?”

I sat again, embarrassed at my outrage.  I took three deep breaths and stared out the window.  Why was it so impossible for me to just trust him?

“Sorry.  It’s just been a long day.”

“I’m sure, but you’re talking crazy.  Are you actually serious about this?”

“Is it that crazy?  Stability and security aren’t bad things.”

“Ryan, listen, I see what you mean about going straight, but you’re the Cupids.  You’re a feared clan.  Don’t throw that power away because you’re feeling a little soft.”

“This has nothing to do with Pops, and I’m not asking the guys to change their ways.  I just want to start looking for a more a legitimate means of income.  Then we can cut back on the gun running.  It’ll…” I stuttered, “well, it’ll make me sleep better at night.”

“You think that’s all it will take?”