TOMMY

Promising Tara I'd find her sister was the easy part, actually delivering might not be. But I'll do the best I can, save at least one girl from the fate Shade has in store for hundreds more like her before I leave him to it. Just thinking it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but what else can I do? He's the President of the MC.

I know of only one way to make this search go smoothly, and I'm getting nauseous just considering it. But it will kill more than one bird with one stone, provided I'm believable. Which I will be. Deception comes naturally to me.

Apart from one of the prospects scrubbing the floor, the Nest is deserted. I asked Shade to meet me here, but he's now more than an hour late. He probably wants to pay me back for keeping him waiting and not answering his calls. It's fine. It gives me the chance to have more than one beer before I have to face him. I'd go for something stronger, but then I might not stop.

The bright sunlight as he opens the front door blinds me, since I've been sitting in this dark room for so long.

"You wanted to speak to me, Tommy?" he says pulling up a chair. But I get up.

"Let's go in the back."

His acquiescent shrug still somehow lets me know he's the one giving the orders around here, but he follows me into the conference room without saying anything.

I don't like being in this room. Everything in it reminds me of being the snake that I am, because I'm planning to leave all this behind and betray my brother our leader, spitting on the loyalty that is the backbone of this MC. But I've made my choice. I can't be a part of Shade’s plans. I'll find Tara's sister and then the three of us will leave together.

I turn to face him, wiping all that from my face. "I don't want to fight you anymore, Shade. I'm sorry for being so difficult lately—"

"Difficult? That's one way of putting it," he interrupts.

"You're the President now, and I will fall in step behind you, like I should've done from the start," I continue as though he didn't interrupt. "If you think running whores is the future, I'm behind you. I've kind of been itching to get my hands dirty again. It's been too long. Like you said, Blade had noble ideas, but all that was actually very boring. I miss the excitement."

I grin at him, and he's grinning back, but I don't know if he's buying any of this. I used to be wild and vicious, there was no job too dirty for me. And that wasn't so long ago. I'm counting on him still remembering that.

"As for the drugs," I say, chuckling. "Hell, I'm not even against that. I even tried to convince Blade it was the way to go for awhile."

"I remember that," Shade muses. "I remember you made him very angry suggesting it."

It's true. But that was a long time ago, back when I spent my days and nights completely wasted.

"So we're cool?" I ask.

He extends his hand for a handshake, pulls me into a hug when I take it, slapping my back hard. "But no more talk of full attendance, Tommy. I call the shots and the execs vote, like it's always been."

"Yeah, I don't know what got into me," I say. He's still gripping my hand, and I'm not entirely sure he believes any of what I just said. But I'll find out in due time. For now, I'll assume he does.

"As for the whores," I say, releasing his hand and sitting down in one of the chairs, right by the carving of the naked woman. "I think the first step should be reclaiming the local whorehouses. We can start with the ones we get rent from and then move on to taking over some of the other ones. What do you think?"

The MC hasn't been running whores for years, but we still collect money from the establishments that do on what was once our turf. I always thought it came to the same thing, tried to get Blade to give that up too, but he was a slow mover, Shade is right about that.

Shade is looking at me like he's impressed.

"I like your way of thinking," he says, taking his seat at the head of the table. "But let's do it on the DL for now, just scope them out to start with, go around checking that they're all up to date on their payments, and that they're not misrepresenting their earnings. That way we can get a feel for what we're dealing with before we start running them out."

I lift myself out of the chair by pressing against the table. "Sounds like a plan. I'll get started today."

He frowns at me, his eyes narrowing. It's the first real sign that he thinks I'm full of shit.

"I've been dying for some productive action," I say, grinning at him. "It's what's been making me so antsy. But if you want to send someone else, that's fine."

"No, no, you go, but don't go alone," he says, and I have to fight down my sigh of relief. As it is, I'm not sure it's not showing plain on my face.

"I'll take Brett," I say and head for the door.

Hopefully, I'll find Tara's sister today. If I get started right now, I should have most of the nearby whorehouses checked out by the time Crystal's closes.

* * *

I had no luck in the first ten whorehouses we visited. Calling those places houses is actually generous. Mostly they're just containers, or old converted warehouses, places that no one should be forced to live in. Just the idea makes me nauseous, and that on top of seeing all those poor girls makes me wish I'd had that stronger drink before I went on this errand. Or ten, with maybe a line or two of Coke to chase them down. But I'm done with all that. Forever.

The sun is setting, and Brett and me just pulled up to yet another whorehouse. This one's even worse than the others. It's made up of a series of dilapidated warehouses surrounded by a thin wooden wall. There are four more places I still planned to check out tonight, but I don't think I can. I just want to return to Tara now, hold her, and kiss her for awhile. We don't even have to do anything else. I wanted to return to her with good news tonight, but the truth is, if her sister has been held in one of these places since Christmas, even finding her won't be entirely good news.

"Why are we doing all this again?" Brett asks as I get off my bike, looking at me like he's trying to find that out without me having to speak.

"Shade's orders," I say and walk towards the biggest and foremost building, which I'm sure is the reception area, or the office, or whatever the fuck they call it.

What's left of the paint job on the once red metal door is peeling off, revealing gashes of rust. I'd hate to be locked up behind that door, it looks like something out of a horror movie.

"It's good that you're starting to follow his orders more willingly now," Brett says, jogging to catch up to me. "But you're VP now, you can make some of the choices yourself. Visiting these places can't be what you want to be doing."

He's not quick, but he always gets to the right answer eventually.

"Brett," I say, stopping suddenly and blocking his path. He almost runs right into me. "Let's just get this done. We'll talk about our feelings some other time."

I try to sound mocking, but it comes out very serious. I was barely able to stop myself from yelling at him to shut the fuck up. I'm so angry I need to lash out, at anything or anyone. But it won't be at Brett. He's quite possibly the last true friend I still have in the MC.

"Alright," he mutters at my back as I walk on towards the door. I know he has more things to say, but he's wisely choosing to keep quiet.

I swing open the door so hard it crashes against the wall, the metallic thump echoing through the courtyard.

"What can I do you for?" a sweaty, bulky man asks. He shot up from behind a rickety desk as I opened the door, and assumed a not very welcoming stance. But his face slackens and pales as he recognizes me.

"Tommy, is that you? To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

He looks vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place him. Maybe I met him back when I still did most of the dirty work for the MC. Those years are more or less a blur.

"I'm here to check that you haven't been falling behind on your rent money," I say just as Brett closes the door behind us.

"Of course we're up to date. I got the ledger right here," the man says, digging through a drawer, thick drops of sweat falling off his forehead.

"I also want to inspect your offerings, make sure you're not keeping anything from us."

The man straightens up, fidgeting under my glare.

"Sure, sure, let me just get the keys," he finally says. "But I assure you, everything is as it’s always been. We don't keep secrets."

It's a little irregular that I want to see the women, but none of the proprietors of the whorehouses we've visited so far objected much. I was almost hoping this guy would refuse to show me, so I could punch him a few times. It's scary how much I'm craving to beat someone up. I haven't felt like that in years.

If word gets back to Shade about me asking to see the whores, I'll just tell him I was checking out the wares.

It's Tara I see every time I peer into one of the rooms. And I don't know if it's because I want to be with her right now, or because the fear, the cold, useless anger, the resignation I see in the girls' faces reminds me of how she looked when she told me about the abuse she endured. It's the first, it has to be. Tara isn't as beaten down as these poor women. Most of them don't even dare meet my eyes as I look into their rooms, some don't acknowledge my presence at all.

The sadness and hurt is palpable, grows worse, more tangible by the minute until it's filling the whole building, crushing the life right out of me. None of the girls in the first or second building look anything like Tara's sister.

But the girl in the last room of the last building I'm inspecting has long dark hair. She doesn't even flinch as the door opens, just stares out of the black painted window. Her room smells of dirty sheets, piss and semen and the paint on the window is cracked and peeling off in places, so I guess that's what she's looking through.

"Hey! Turn!" the proprietor yells at her, and I come very close to punching him in the face, just for his mean tone alone.

She does it, slowly like she's just sleepwalking, like none of this is really happening to her, my heart thumping in my ears.

But my hopeful anticipation crashes like a full bottle hitting concrete, once I finally see her face. She has the same hair as Tara's sister, even has blue eyes, but it's not her. Not even close. This girl is ugly. And I hate myself for thinking it, almost as much as I hate myself for failing to find Tara's sister tonight.

"Shade called while you were inside," Brett informs me when I return to our bikes. He didn't follow me on the rounds. "Says your phone's off and you should charge it."

Shit. I hadn't even checked my phone once all day. Now it looks like I'm dodging Shade's calls again. Not the best start to getting him to trust me.

"Is that the entire message, or was there more?" I snap.

Brett pockets his phone and straddles his bike. He doesn't like my tone, but he's the last person in the world to just call me on it, especially since he understands how repulsive I find this work. I really appreciate that right now. "He wants you to meet him at the Nest for a drink. Told me to go home."

Great. All I want to do is be with Tara. Take her out somewhere, far away from all this. Or we could just spend the night locked in my apartment. That would work too.

* * *

It's getting light out by the time Shade finally lets me go home. We spent the whole night reminiscing about the good old days, while he drank a whole bottle of Jack by himself. Talking about the past is possibly my least favorite thing to do in the whole world, but I couldn't just leave. At least he seems to believe me that I'm back on his side. In as much as I ever was in the first place. Shade and me were never very close. He's too much like my father, and I could never see past that.

Tara's curled up on her side of the bed—the left side, the one closest to the door. But she's facing the center, the side where I would be sleeping. I want to wake her up so bad my whole body aches for it. Literally aches.

She's not crying now, but she was, the traces of tears still visible on her cheeks. I want to be the one to stop her crying in her sleep. I fucking yearn to be that guy. So I can't wake her up now, because I'll just be giving her bad news, more reasons to cry. She didn't believe me when I told her I'd do anything for her. But I meant it. And if she won't take me at my word, I'll just have to show her.

The sun rises before I finally start to doze off, and I only managed that because I caved and took hold of her hand.