Chapter Five
Mason
I wake up to crying. Of course I do. Every night, it’s the same.
Covered in my own sweat, I charge blindly from my bedroom out into the hallway and into the room down the hall, my heart hammering in my chest.
Millie’s on the floor already, her tiny body bowed so badly it looks like her spine is about to break. I stop myself from grabbing her up and holding her to me. Instead, I lace my fingers around the back of my head and press my face in the chipped paintwork of the wall beside me, trying not to scream through my clenched teeth.
Fuck. This is so fucking fucked. Mil’s heels begin to kick against the bare floorboards as the seizure worsens. Her eyes are rolled back into her head, her jaw clenched tight as he body spasms over and over again. I want to smash my fist into the wall. I feel fucking useless. There’s nothing I can do to help her until the fitting stops, so I just have to stand here and wait like an evil son of a bitch while my six-year-old sister goes through this again. Again.
I sink down into a crouch, covering my mouth with my hands, just watching her, waiting for the moment, the very instant she stills so I can go to her. The seizure lasts for two more minutes, which is a long fucking time. I’m lifting her into my arms, cradling her to me as soon as it’s done. She starts crying, tiny little breathless sobs, her small hands curling into my t-shirt, and I feel warmth spreading over my legs as she pisses herself.
Fuck.
“I’m—I’m sss—sorry, Mase. I’m ss—sorry.”
“Oh, god.” I feel like my heart’s being ripped up through my chest and out through my fucking mouth. Holding her closer to me, I stand up and carry her into the bathroom. “Don’t be sorry, little mouse. Don’t worry about a thing. Here, c’mon, hop into the bath real quick. We’ll get you cleaned up and then you can go back to sleep, okay?”
This is our nightly ritual. I wish we had a fucking shower; it takes the bath so long to fill with the water barely dribbling out and the pipes thunk, thunk, thunking away, and poor Millie standing in her piss-soaked PJs, looking like she’s about to cry some more. She rubs at her eyes, tired and sore from fitting, and all I want to do is pick her up and walk out of this shithole. Take her somewhere clean and fucking nice. Have enough money to get her on the books with a proper fucking doctor, who will look at her as an individual and not just another kid living below the poverty line who can’t be helped.
I jam the plug into the plughole and collapse onto the cracked tiles, and then I pull my sister’s tiny form into me, not caring about the pee. I hold onto her until there’s enough water in the tub for her to wash without her freezing her ass off.
Winter was bad. Going through this on a nightly basis with the place so frigid we could see our breath hanging in the air was seriously something I never want to go through again. I’ve promised myself, fucking promised, that next winter me and little Millie will be in a place that at least has fucking heating.
I don’t care if I have to sell the car; I’ll carry her three miles to school every morning if I have to. I don’t care that I have to wear shitty clothes, covered in grease and dirt from work, and I don’t care if we don’t have a TV. I don’t give a shit about drinking with my friends, or going to the fucking movies. All I want is for Millie to be safe and clean and happy. There has to be a fucking way to make that happen. I refuse to let her down the same way our mother did.
I’m not perfect at this, but I’m trying so fucking hard. The last thing I ever expected as a twenty-three-year-old was to be taking care of my little sister. She’s quiet as I bathe her. She’s always quiet, like she’s afraid to fucking speak or move or do something wrong. She’s all skinny arms and skinny legs; she’s gonna be tall like me eventually, but right now she’s just a skinny, underfed kid who needs proper parents, and all she’s got is me.
I carry her back to her room and put her in fresh PJs, and I sit with her until she falls asleep again. The seizures are exhausting for her. She never has problems going back to sleep. Seems that’s all she does. The meds they have her on rob her of all her energy, turning a six-year-old little girl into a zombie, sleepwalking through a life that’s meant to filled with toy ponies and hair braiding, and I don’t fucking know what else. But not this. Not meds and pain and midnight baths and crying. It fucking kills me.
I sit with my head in my hands while I run myself a much colder bath so we don’t have to fork out for the hot water, and then I lay in the tepid water until it’s freezing cold and I’m shivering, my side aching from where that guy at the gym pummelled me.
The alarm clock on my bedside table reads three-forty when I climb back into bed. Three hours. I’m gonna get three hours sleep before I have to get up and drive Millie to school.
That’s more than I usually get.
******
“You’re late, asshole.”
Mac’s bent over a Firebird that must have been brought in last night when I arrive to work. I’m eight minutes late. I don’t even bother trying to explain how difficult it is to get a small child up and ready for school, or what a nightmare it is to drive across town in rush hour. Mac doesn’t give a shit. All he cares about is that I’m here for work on time, and if I’m not—frequently the case—then he reams me out about it.
“Sorry, Mac.”
“Sorry, Mac?” He looks up from the engine block, wrench in hand, face full of grease, and frowns at me. “Sorry, Mac ain’t gonna cut it much longer, kid. Sooner or later, I’ll be finding someone else to take your place, you hear me?” He points the wrench at me, and I feel like ripping it out of his fucking hand and smashing it into his face.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll work something out.” I’ve been saying the same thing for a while now.
“I don’t get it,” Mac says, returning to his work. “You should just hire a child minder or some shit to take your kid sister to school. That’s what I did with my kids.”
“I can’t afford a child minder.” He knows this well enough. He’s the one who pays my meager weekly pay-check. This is just how Mac likes to start the conversation with me. The conversation. The one where he tries to get me running cars for him.
“Well, you know there’s always extra work here for you if you need it, Mase. Just say the word.”
If it were just me and I wanted to make some extra money, I wouldn’t have a problem saying yes to his repeated offer.
But Millie…
If I got busted by the cops, there would be no one to take care of her. Even if I didn’t get sent down, Child Protection Services would deem me an unfit guardian and take her away. She’d grow up in the care system, passed from pillar to post. Probably get caught up in drugs just like my mother did. I can’t do that to her.
“Yeah, man. I’ll let you know,” I tell Mac, but he and I both know I won’t. Mac doesn’t like the fact that I work here and I know about all the shit that goes down after dark, and yet I’m not involved. Makes him nervous.
I work my ass off for the rest of the day, fitting out three cars before close of business to try and get back in the boss’s good books. I haven’t even stopped to eat by the time five o’clock rolls around.
I may not be able to afford a child minder, but I am lucky enough to have a great neighbor who brings Millie home from school with her own kids, and takes care of her until I get home from work. Wanda’s a godsend. Without her, I’d be fucked. I shouldn’t really take advantage of her kindness. I should head straight home and pick up Mil, but when I walk out of work the very first thing I see is the gym. Blood & Roses. Weird fucking name for a gym, if you ask me. The shutters are up, the lights still on in the back, and I can hear the familiar sound of guys fucking up each others’ shit.
I was so surprised when that guy didn’t hand me my ass the other night. I thought for sure I was dead; he looked like a UFC fighter, for fuck’s sake. And he sure as hell didn’t look like a nice one. Two nights a week for the past month, I’ve been picking the lock over there. Only when Wanda could look after Millie late into the evening, which was never for long. But now, maybe I could spend half an hour after work training there every night. Wanda probably wouldn’t mind that.
Working out’s never been top on my list of priorities, but when my best friend Ben started earning big money in the fighting scene, it got me to thinking. If I can get good, if I can get strong, if I can get an in, I could be earning good money, too.
I shoot Wanda a text to make sure she’s okay with the kid for a little while longer, and she replies almost immediately, telling me to bring her some milk on the way home and we’ll call it even. And then I’m walking across the road, walking straight into the gym, and walking straight into the guy who could have kicked my ass the other night.
“Whoa, man. Sorry,” I say, backing up a step. It’s like he was waiting there for me in the shadows, ready to fucking pounce.
He doesn’t say anything about the fact that I almost crashed into him. He does pierce me with a very appraising glare, though. “Must be weird walking through the door when it’s already open, huh?” he says. His voice sounds like it’s coming up from somewhere around his goddamn boots. Vin Diesel’s got nothing on this guy.
“Yeah, a little.” I attempt a smile, but it feels all wrong with him staring at me like that. I feel like I should be groveling or something. Shame my pride won’t ever let me do that. “So…you said I could train here, remember? With you?”
“Oh, I remember.” He doesn’t say anything else. Just stands there with his arms folded across his chest, his freakishly large muscles bulging out of the long-sleeved black shirt he’s wearing. He keeps staring at me; it’s starting to make me sweat.
“If you’re busy, I can come—”
“Oh, I’m not busy,” he says, with a grim, downturned smile on his face. “Come with me.” Turning, he stalks off through the gym, apparently oblivious to the looks he’s given as he passes people sparring or just working out. Every last guy in the place follows him with their eyes like he’s some kind of fucking god. They watch him until he reaches a metal stairway, jogs up them and disappears through a lit doorway at the top. I stand at the bottom, wondering whether I’m supposed to follow him. That question is answered when he appears in the doorway again, and leans against the doorjamb. “Come the fuck on, Mason Reeves. You expecting me to carry you over the fucking threshold or what?”
I rush up the stairs, kicking myself for not just following him straight up. Now I look like a dick. Perfect.
I find myself in a small, incredibly neat office. The huge guy with the muscles pulls out a chair from behind his desk and places it right in front of me. “Sit down.”
“What? Why?”
He glowers at me, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I get the urge to turn around and run back down the stairs, but I don’t. I can’t. I can’t ever turn my back on a problem. That’s exactly what this guy could be to me, it seems. “Just. Fucking. Sit. Down,” he growls.
I grimace, but I do as I’m told. The guy walks around me and faces me, arms crossed again. “You into drugs?” he asks.
“No.”
“You steal shit?”
“No.”
He crouches down in front of me so we’re at the same eye level. “You run cars?” By the way he asks, he knows exactly what goes on across the road at Mac’s place.
I look him right in the eye and firmly say, “No.”
He stares at me some more, probably trying to work out if I’m lying. After a second he straightens up and starts pacing the room. “You involved with the Italians? The Russians?”
I know about the Italians. A couple of brothers from out east, expanding their business, raising some hell here and there. The Russians, I know nothing about. I shake my head, letting him know I don’t work for either group.
The guy assesses me some more. The way it feels like he can see straight through me is more than a little unnerving. “You about to ask me out on a date or something?” I snap.
“Watch your fucking mouth. You wanna walk down those stairs in a moment or you want your ass thrown down them?”
I refuse to answer him. Instead, I just fix my gaze on the wall, clenching my jaw. The guy paces again, and I avoid looking at him.
“My name is Zeth. Like I said yesterday, you can come here and train with me a couple of times a week. But you step outta line fucking once, and you’re gone. You hear me?”
I suddenly feel really goddamn sick. Zeth? I may not know a great deal about the organised crime in this town, but I sure as hell know that name. Mac used to have to pay dues to Charlie Holsan before he died. Nearly twenty percent of his profit from both his legit and illegal businesses went into that crazy English bastard’s back pocket. News spread like wild fire when he was killed, and there was one name on everyone’s lips: Zeth Mayfair.
Mac closed the shop early the day he heard. He bought three bottles of Johnny Blue and kept pouring shots for his employees until every single one of those bottles was empty. Each time he lifted that shot glass to his mouth, the toast went to Zeth Mayfair. Does Mac have any idea that the guy who nearly gave him alcohol poisoning runs the gym over here? Fuck knows. I sure as shit ain’t gonna tell him.
I can’t believe I broke into his fucking gym. No wonder the guys down on the floor all look at him that way. The guy’s notorious.
“I said,” Zeth ducks down in front of me, “do you hear me, asshole?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course, man. I won’t step out of line, I swear.” Not now I know who you are, anyway. I’m not fucking retarded.
“All right. Go down to the lockers and grab a pair of gloves and a head guard. Mauy Thai today. Wait for me by the cage. I have a phone call to make.”
It was one thing being in a ring with this guy when I didn’t have a clue who he was, but now that I know he’s a stone-cold psycho and he wants to shut me in a cage with him, I’m having second thoughts. He can probably feel my hesitation pouring off me. “You don’t want to, that’s fine by me. Go hit a speed bag for forty minutes on your own, see what you learn. Either way, get the fuck out of here so I can make my phone call.”
He doesn’t need to tell me twice. I’m up out of the chair and jogging down the stairs before he can blink. The door to his office slams closed behind me, and I feel a bead of sweat run down between my shoulder blades. Jesus Christ. I should get out of here before he comes down, and I should not fucking come back. The guys training around me shoot me curious looks, as though they weren’t really expecting me to make it back down here again. I shake my head as I pass them, counting myself lucky that I did. I should just go home and grab Millie. I can figure out another way to train for the fights without the risk of associating myself with a guy like Zeth fucking Mayfair. But even as I’m hurrying across the gym floor in a direct beeline for the exit, my mind is already racing. What other option do I have to train? Especially an option that’s as good as this? I mean, training with him? That’s like being trained by De Silva or something. He might be crazy and he might have killed the worst mob boss Seattle has ever seen, but that also means he’s the best. Where else would I get training like that? And for free?
I know, even as I’m slowing down, that I’m not gonna make it to the exit. The sigh that works its way out from deep inside my chest feels like resignation, tinged with a little panic. This could go bad for me. This could go really fucking bad. As I make a course correction, reluctantly heading for the lockers, I look up and see the man himself watching me from the window of his office. He’s holding a cell phone to his ear and his mouth is moving, but it’s clear his attention is solely fixed on me.
I wonder why the hell he’s doing this.