Jax
Trip is still sitting in the living room. He’s wearing an unobtrusive expression that indicates he heard everything.
“Is it surprising?” I ask him.
“Is what surprising?”
With a bitter smile, I say, “Knowing that your boss is as big an idiot as the rest of them. I fell for Bella Russo of all women.”
Trip shakes his head, sliding his foot side to side over the black tiles. “You’re not an idiot.”
I flop down on the couch and glare at the black cityscape on the wall across from me. All the buildings are fused into one black rectangle with white squares of lights, while the sky is a single ashen swirl. It’s the view of an apocalypse, of no hope, of how I’m feeling right now.
“Yes, I am, Trip.” Even as I speak, I’m reaching for my phone on the table. To check if Bella’s texted me.
“Your sister is right, boss.” Trip’s voice is low, sure. He takes a swig of his water. “She’s right, you know.”
As I stare at it, the cityscape is changing before my eyes. Instead of being a somber ode to gray and black, it’s actually that of hidden light: its white pattern on the buildings, the ivory of the sky amidst the gray.
“You realize what you’re saying I should do,” I say.
Trip responds by gulping down the rest of his water.
I rise and check my phone again. Still nothing. If I’m going to go back to the Russo house, I’ll have to do it soon, before…
The door swings open, and Whitey and Brax walk in.
Seeing me and the empty space on the couch where Sarah was, tentatively Whitey says, “Uh, boss?”
I stride to the door and walk past them. “Sarah is fine, I have something I have to do,” I say over my shoulder. And before I can change my mind, I hurry to the hallway and get on the elevator.
I rush outside and through the parking lot. It’s only when I get to the van that I realize I’m not alone. Trip is waiting there, leaning on the hood of the ugly old thing.
“How did you—?”
Trip gives the hood a pat. “Elevator is slow. So is the van.”
“Hiya, boss, we’re coming!” Whitey says as he and Brax jog on up.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to do,” I tell them.
Brax shrugs. “Trip filled us in on the staircase.”
I stare at him evenly. “And so you know just who I’m going to see.”
“We believe in love! We believe in you!” Whitey says.
He’s smiling like an idiot, and I turn to Trip, who shrugs. “Really, they’re hoping you find out she’s a lying bitch and kill her.”
I turn back to Whitey and Brax, whose scared shitless expressions indicate Trip’s telling the truth.
When I stretch out my arms, Whitey jumps. Smiling, I say, “Okay.”
Trip pats the car bumper again. “Van is slow. Bikes are fast.”
I shake my head. “Bikes are fast, but the van is unobtrusive.”
Trip casts a derisive look over to our old white Honda, then, with a scowl, stalks over and gets in. The others pile in, I get in the driver’s seat, and we’re off.
The trip is fun. The others have the same frenetic energy I have, clearly, enjoying me speeding this van along for as good as it’s worth. Soon, the van is flying toward the Russo house at an incredible pace. Cars are obstacles to weave around, sidewalks are roads to use during red lights and the police? They’re nowhere to be found.
Our ride is one smooth-sailing race to the Russos. By the time I park down the road from it, my blood is boiling, and I’m running on fumes. I’m ready. I’m more than ready.
I get out of the van, take out my phone and send a message to Bella:
Where are you?
And then I wait, leaning against a ten foot high stone fence with the others.
Five minutes pass, an old woman hobbles by with a trailing stare, and no response comes.
Finally, I call her. It goes straight to voicemail.
When I look down the road where the house is, in the sky, I see a plume of smoke. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
“You guys wait here,” I tell them, starting for the house.
But Whitey steps in front of me and shakes his head so hard that his hair spikes move with it. “No way. We came here to back you up. We’re not letting you go in there alone.”
I take out the White Lady. “You don’t get it. You guys can spot me outside, but you can’t come in the house. If it’s a trap, then we’ll all be done for.”
The others frown at my words but don’t argue – can’t argue with common sense.
So we go.
We walk at a natural pace, only throwing easy glances around as if we’re not the guys who just blew up several buildings and are actually returning to the scene of the crime. Either our strategy works, or there’s no one to attack us because we creep up to the Russo property’s front gate undetected.
The gates are wide open, as if beckoning us to enter. It’s ominous, and yet, it certainly makes things easier.
“You wait here,” I tell the others as I head inside.
“We’ll wait at the door,” Trip says.
I turn to glare at him and find myself glaring at all of them as Brax and Whitey are also following behind me.
We stop at the front door, which is still lying on the ground from my first forced entry.
I take a step into the doorway and stop. I turn to my friends. I look at them, really look at them. My friends, my brothers. My men whom I may have just led into a trap, and yet who would follow me gladly anyway, through countless traps, through unspeakable danger. Through everything.
Sarah may be family, but these men are family too. I look into their determined faces, and a pit of guilt rolls around my stomach. What have I done, put family in danger to find family?
I glance away.
“I’ll text you in five when I know the coast is clear or I’ve found her. You see anything, you text me.”
They nod. I nod. And then I run through the door.
Inside, voices are coming from down the hallway. From the room at the end of the hallway. None of them are Bella’s. Maybe I shouldn’t be here at all.
I creep toward the room slowly, ensuring each step is as gradual and soundless as possible.
I stop at the corner and take out my phone. Still no text from Bella, nothing. Either she can’t message me back or doesn’t want to. Which option do I prefer?
I switch back to Whitey’s conversation, so I’ll be ready to send him a message. No sooner have I tapped our conversation when something hard presses into the back of my head.
“Make a sound, and I’ll shoot,” says a familiar voice.
Shit.
“Hand me back your gun,” it commands, and I do.
An ironic scowl comes on my lips. Now the White Lady might actually be used on me. It’s not unlikely, since the man pulling me into the room with the voices, the man pressing the gun into the back of my head, is none other than Emilio Russo.
Inside the ornate Chatelaine-ready room are two burly men who look like they don’t belong. One is short, and one is tall and, at my entrance, grins slither onto their faces.
“Jax Forester… No fucking way!” the little one hisses out.
With one hand, Emilio tosses him my phone. “Yes way. When I give the order, send his men out there a text that the coast is clear.” He taps my head with the gun. “That is the plan, isn’t it? Fearless leader scouts it out first, then loyal troops rush in?”
I shrug, and he jams the gun into the back of my head again.
“You want me to shoot you right now?” As he walks around me, he slides the gun around to the front of my head too, so that we’re face-to-face, so I can see his red-brown eyes, his snarling mouth, see that he really means it. The hand not holding the gun is bandaged, but that makes no difference when the hand that is holding the gun has it pointed at my head.
“Go ahead,” I say, “The shot they’ll hear will be enough of a signal.”
Emilio’s snarl grows until he almost looks comical, like a caricature of himself. His glare shifts to the wall, as if imagining my blood spatter amidst the gold paisley design, and shakes his head. “No, you’ve caused me enough trouble already.”
He yanks me over to the clear sliding door and throws it open. “This’ll just take a minute,” he yells to the others.
They’re smirking like I’m dead already.
Now outside, he pulls me along, talking as we move. “When we capture your guys, don’t worry, we’ll make sure that they think you betrayed them to us. That you were planning with Bella to turn them over for months.”
We’re walking toward an open field, away from the house, away from my men, and maybe Bella too.
“Where’s Bella?” I ask, and Emilio laughs.
“You should’ve taken her with you.”
I struggle, and he laughs again, shoving me to my knees. The gun at the back of my head again. “Don’t worry about Bella. She’s going to get a first-hand experience of our trade.”
I twist to glare at him. “You bastard.”
His ugly smile doesn’t shift. “Ironic, like mother like son.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. Your mom was crude and rebellious to the last – until I finally put that bullet in her cheating whore head.”
I grit my teeth. “You’re lying.”
“Huh, makes no difference now really. I put her down, and now I’m going to do the same to you. Put you down like the dog you are.”
I stare at the dirt in front of me. The dirt that’s soon going to be wet with my blood. The dirt I’ll die on, just how Emilio said: like a dog.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
“Shut up,” he answers, pressing the gun into the back of my head harder.
“I’m going to die anyway, you’ve got a gun to my head, just tell me.”
A kick to my back sends me sprawling to the ground.
Then, after a reflective second, he says, “True. Besides, you really should know what a whore your mother was before you die. She’d been cheating with my father for years, you know. Was going to leave your dad for mine. Leave all of you. Really I did you a favor.”
Clenching my hands into the dirt, I hiss out again, “You’re lying.”
He kicks me again. “Guess you’ll never know for sure.”
I stare at the dirt, the dirt I’m going to die on in minutes, or seconds. This is it. And I never even made a go of it, fought for my life, anything.
I wrench myself around and lunge on him. The gun goes off, and I collapse back, my leg exploding with pain. There’s a bullet lodged in my left lower leg, blood streaming out already.
When I look up, Emilio is crouching down, smiling in my face, pointing his gun at my forehead. “You really thought you could fight a man with a gun, eh?”
He presses the gun into my forehead again.
“Though I can’t blame you; you are the great Jax Forester after all, fearless leader of the Renegade Devils. To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed how easy this has all been. I expected… I don’t know… more.”
Through gritted teeth, I growl out, “Just do it, you Russo scum. Just kill me.”
“Gladly,” Emilio says, and a gun goes off.