Clementine
When Leo came back into the room, he shoved his phone back in his pocket.
I didn’t want to know what he had to tell me, but he knelt down in front of me anyway.
“Which would you like first?” He placed his hands on my knees and peered into my eyes.
“I’d like you to go fuck yourself,” I told him.
“If I didn’t know any better, sis, I’d think you were mad at me,” he said.
“You think? You know, this whole time I had no idea why you were so upset about what I was doing with Falcon. I had no clue. I’m still not completely sure other than the fact that you two seem to be in some kind of competition. See, I thought you ran a legitimate business,” I started.
“I do,” he responded quickly, standing up and turning to face the frosted windows looking out onto the warehouse floor.
“You’re part of the same criminal element as Falcon,” I told him, knowing that I was going to piss him off by putting him in the same class as a lowlife biker thug.
“No, no, don’t make that mistake, little sis. He only wishes he could play on my level,” Leo corrected me.
“Oh, please. You’re both making the streets less safe for those of us who try to live within the law and play by the rules,” I said dismissively.
“We have rules,” he argued. “We have to. It’s competition. It’s war. There are definite rules.”
“Are there any rules about using your sister as bait?” I snapped.
“Sure. Haven’t you ever heard the saying all’s fair in love and war? You’re fair game, sis.” He took a perverse pleasure in throwing my argument back at me.
“You disgust me. I can’t believe I trusted you.” I looked away from him.
“But did you really trust me, Clementine? You went behind my back and continued seeing your little biker anyway, didn’t you? Regardless of what I told you, you just did what you wanted to, didn’t you?” He was good at turning shit around. He should have been a politician, because nothing ever stuck to him.
“I had no reason to think there was any substance to any of your claims. I knew from the start that Falcon was part of a motorcycle club,” I responded.
“Gang,” he corrected me.
“I knew from the start he was in a motorcycle club,” I repeated without his correction. “He didn’t hide that from me. He didn’t try to be someone he wasn’t, like my brother had done for all those years. You pretended you were a successful businessman. I actually looked up to you. I was proud of my big brother for being such a success. Then, I get out here, and I find this.” I spat the last word out.
“I am a successful businessman, Clementine,” he insisted. “You didn’t seem to mind when I bought you your first car and paid for the registration and insurance. You didn’t mind when I helped you out during college or paid for your apartment after Grandma died. You didn’t mind when I sent her money every month like child support so she could take care of you.”
I gritted my teeth. He was right, but I hadn’t known then where he got his money. I hadn’t known what exactly it was he did. Hell, most of the time I ignored the fact that Grandma had more money than she should have for a retired old lady who didn’t do any extra work in her retirement.
Thinking back on the things my brother had said and done over the years, it was all starting to make sense. I understood why he had tried so hard to keep me at arm’s length for so long. He didn’t want me to come out here and figure out what he was really doing. I wondered if my family knew where all of his money came from. I wondered how much he gave our grandmother to keep her quiet. I wondered if I had been the only one who believed him when he said he was working a legitimate business.
Well, there was definitely nothing legitimate about having his sister tied to a chair in an office inside an abandoned warehouse. Thankfully, he had noticed that and dropped all pretense of running a consulting firm. I was in the thick of it now, and he was letting me see it all.
“Or did you think that Grandma made enough money off of Social Security to support both of you?” he asked spitefully. “I took care of you, Clementine, for far longer than you realize.”
I tried not to think about what he was really saying, because it sounded like he was trying to tell me that he’d been doing this since before our parents died. Admitting that meant that it was more likely that he’d had something to do with their deaths. I couldn’t handle learning that on top of everything else I’d learned while sitting in this chair.
Everything came rushing back to me, and it all suddenly made more sense. It made sense that he had stood in the back, away from everyone else at the funerals for our parents and then for our grandmother. It made sense to me that he had always spent so much time separating himself from the rest of the family. He had been keeping us all at arm’s length. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know what he was really up to.
When he’d liquidated our grandmother’s assets and sold her house as quickly as he had, even that suddenly seemed like part of his real business, the business of keeping people like his sister tied up in chairs in abandoned warehouses while he plotted the death of his rival crime bosses.
Jesus Christ, my brother was an underground crime lord! When he bought me my first car, it was with blood money. The money he used to pay my rent was blood money. Everything I had ever thought about Leo was a lie. He was the one who wasn’t who I thought he was. But if my brother was the bad guy, then Falcon had to be the good guy. Unless they were both bad, which seemed to be a very real possibility at that moment.
“So, back to my original question. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” His tone shifted from serious and harsh to light and friendly. I could hear the fake smile he’d put on his face.
“What’s the bad news?” I asked reluctantly, my voice heavy in my chest.
“The bad news. Well there are a couple of pieces of bad news. You already know the worst of it. Your boyfriend is going to die, and probably today, if he’s not dead already. The other bad news is that I couldn’t reach him when I called, so the bad news could be the worst news already.” He was practically laughing while he talked. “He could already be dead. I don’t know, but I left a message for him.”
“What’s the good news, then?” I asked, fighting back tears. Falcon wasn’t my boyfriend, no matter how badly I wanted him to be. Despite Leo’s taunting, I knew that if he showed up at the warehouse, it wouldn’t have been for me. If he were coming, he was coming for my brother. I wasn’t bait. I was just a pawn, for both of them. They were both using me to get back at each other for something no one wanted to explain to me.
Leo made a face like he was thinking about how to answer my question. He tapped his chin while he contemplated the good news. I sighed while I waited. I knew there wasn’t any good news.
“I guess, from my perspective, that is the good news,” he said slowly. “Nope, wait. There is a silver lining. Everything’s moving along more or less as planned, and you will probably get to see your boyfriend again soon. Right before I kill him.” He gazed off into the distance for a moment before adding, “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the good news. I’ll let you see him first. Maybe give you guys a chance to say goodbye or something.”
“You rat bastard,” I growled.
“Aren’t you the feisty one all of a sudden?” He laughed and mocked me. “Did you get all of this sass from hanging around your biker thug and his biker friends?”
I glared at Leo. I couldn’t find the words to express my anger to him. I couldn’t find the words to express my anger at Falcon either, especially realizing that he’d kept me in the dark, just like my brother had.
I had known he was a part of Rogue Demons. I had even known he was the president of the MC, but I hadn’t known what they did. I thought MCs ran garages or tattoo parlors. I thought they went on charity rides and poker runs, things like that. I didn’t think there were still any leftover outlaw bikers from the old days, but that was exactly what Rogue Demons were. They were one percenters.
I laughed to myself. Falcon seemed pretty tame for a one percenter. But it was very likely that my brother knew a different side of him.
Falcon hadn’t introduced me to any of his brothers in the MC. I didn’t know if there were any old ladies associated with them or not. There was a whole world I was missing out on by not being a bigger part of his life. If he did try to save me, that was something I was going to have to get him to work on, I knew.
“Tell me what it is that happened between the two of you,” I said finally, making my old demand again.
“Do you really want to know?” Leo asked.
“I’ve asked enough times that you should know the answer to that question by now, Leo.”
“Fair enough. If you want to know, I’ll tell you.” He turned his chair back around and sat down in front of me again.
I sighed. He was talking again instead of saying anything.
“You want to know why you were such a great weapon for Falcon to use against me, don’t you?”
“I do, Leo. And I want to know why you think I’m good bait. From what you’ve told me, he’s going to come for you either way, whether you have me here or not,” I insisted.
“Oh, but he’ll come a lot faster with you here,” he said. “Trust me on that one.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Well, I don’t know what all you know, so I’ll start at the moment you two met and work my way back so it’ll make sense. You said he came into the store one night a few weeks ago, right?” he started.
“Right,” I nodded.
“That was right after he got out of prison. Did you know he served five years for murder and larceny?” Leo asked. He spoke patiently, like he was trying to explain it all to a child.
I realized then just how he’d been able to keep everything quiet for so long. He always treated me like a child. He always established his authority over me by talking to me like I was his kid sister, emphasis on kid.
“I read about it online,” I admitted. “I looked up the murder trial in an effort to find his connection to you.”
“Did you find anything?” The sparkle in his eyes told me he already knew I hadn’t.
“No, there wasn’t even a hint online of why you two would have any kind of rival, not even in the crime blogs I found,” I told him.
“Of course there wasn’t. I made sure of that. I pay good money to stay out of the public eye.” He sounded so self-satisfied again.
“Look, Leo, just stop talking and tell me,” I told him. “You talk so much and never say a thing. You do it to intimidate everyone, and it works. It’s worked on me for years. Now is not the time to do it. Now, I need you to fucking explain something for the first time in your shitty little worthless existence.” I could hear my exhaustion coming through in my own voice. My brother looked at me and blinked. It was as if he had finally heard something I said for the first time.
“Okay, fine. The reason he went after you like he did is because I am the reason he went to prison. I set him up on those charges. I found out Rogue Demons were getting weapons from the pawnshop owner. Now, this guy had it coming anyway. He had everyone believing he was staying out of it all. He was neutral, but he was also helping out so many different organizations in different ways. He was part of so many different supply chains, and he had been able to maintain his immunity for decades,” my brother finally explained.
“So you killed him?” I asked. I wasn’t even shocked by the time I found all of this out. Part of me had known the whole time, even though I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself.
“I set up a meeting with Falcon. We were supposed to be working on an agreement to establish boundaries between our businesses or some stupid pipedream nonsense like that. Anyway, after we set the time and place for the meeting, my guys went in, stole a bunch of guns, jewelry, and other things we could sell, and they shot the owner in the head. We also made sure the police were on their way when Falcon showed up.”
“Why didn’t you just take him out?” I asked. If killing people was such a normal, everyday thing for these guys, it didn’t make sense not to take each other out.
“I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to put him behind bars so he could watch his MC fall apart while he was on the inside. And it almost worked. They lost a lot of members, and the people who were left just crumbled without leadership. I didn’t expect him to start putting it back together successfully when he got out. I had paid the investigators and prosecutors well enough that he shouldn’t have been able to get out early, but whatever. If the attack on Rogue Demons HQ didn’t kill him, he’ll be dead once he shows up here. Then there won’t be anything else to worry about for either of us.”
I wondered what Falcon had done before all of that to make my brother want him out of the picture. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to eliminate the competition.
I was beginning to wish I had never met Falcon. It would have been better if my brother had eliminated him the first time, I thought.