Julia
“I’m ready to talk,” Gage said as he joined me at the table in the clubhouse bar.
“To talk? What about?” I asked him.
“I think it’s only fair that I explain a little bit about what’s going on before you go back down there to talk to Dimitri.” He didn’t grab anything to drink. He’d just walked straight over to the table and sat down.
“Okay, what’s going on?” I asked him, taking another sip of wine.
“How many of those have you had?” he asked, suddenly sounding concerned.
“This is only my second glass,” I assured him. “I had the one with you, and I started this one after you were downstairs a while. Besides, what does it matter?”
“I don’t want you going down there trashed and trying to talk to him. I need you coherent, so if you get something, you can bring it back to me.” He placed a hand over the top of my glass to keep me from drinking any more. With his other hand, he grabbed the stem of the wine glass and slid it away from me.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I cried. I wasn’t really upset, just more shocked that he was so bold and commanding. I was even more shocked at how it made me feel. I wanted to be offended that he was trying to control me, but I wasn’t. I was turned on by his dominance. I’d never known another man with such a take-charge attitude.
“I want to make sure you’re listening to me. I need you to take this seriously, Julia,” he said, his dark eyes penetrating through my nerves and anxiety.
“Okay, I got it,” I told him. I took a deep breath, realizing that in spite of my reservations, I had allowed myself to get too comfortable being here. The pace seemed so much more relaxed here than what I was used to. It was easy to let it steal my sense of urgency.
“Alright, you already know I need to know where this Ivan person is. I need to know what his next move is and who all is involved,” he explained, diving headfirst into the world surrounding his relationship to Dimitri and dragging me with him.
“Hold on,” I said. I held my hand up to stop him. “Let’s start over. Let me ask the questions. Don’t just vomit random information at me.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting back in his chair. He seemed antsy and ready to divulge any information he had for me instead of letting me pull it from him.
“First, who is Dimitri? What is his background? And if you tell me he’s Russian, I’m going to slap you.”
Gage laughed, visibly relaxing a little in his seat. “Dimitri works for a man named Ivan. Yes, they are both Russian. Ivan is a local mob boss; he’s pretty big news. He has ties to the Russian mob, and we think that’s where Dimitri came from. He’s Ivan’s right hand man, and he’s what some guys would call an enforcer. I think he likes to think of himself as an assassin, but that didn’t work out too well.”
“Wait, he tried to kill you?” I asked, my jaw practically hitting the table.
“Yep. That’s how he wound up in our basement,” Gage explained to me.
“Why the hell was he trying to kill you, Gage?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And to think, I was working for this guy. I was getting mixed up in his world of mob bosses and hitmen. I had told myself that I didn’t need to know this much, but I was eating up everything he could tell me.
“We’ve been working to shut own Ivan’s drug operation for a while now,” Gage explained, “and not too long ago, we broke up a pretty big deal between him and a long-time client. So, of course, it just makes sense to send someone to handle that situation,” he explained.
“I see.” I did see. I saw more than I wanted to. He hadn’t said anything but I could tell that he was telling me his guys had taken over part of Ivan’s drug operation. That client they’d shut him out with had become their client, surely.
“So, why do you want to know where Ivan is?” I asked him. “Revenge for sending Dimitri after you?”
“There’s some of that, certainly,” Gage admitted. “But really, we just want to take him down. We’ve been working on taking him out for a long time now, and now that we’ve got one of his men—his top man—we’re finally in the right position to do that.”
“So what you’re telling me is that you just pulled me right in the middle of some sort of turf war,” I stated, summing up the information he’d just given me. “Ivan is the other boss, and his organization is threatening your business, so you’re pulling me in to help you get information from one of Ivan’s top guys to help you shut down his organization.”
“Something like that,” Gage agreed.
“This is not what I had in mind when I got my degree,” I told him, laughing nervously. I had gone from sitting across the table from a biker with the body of a god to sitting across the table from the violent leader of a motorcycle gang, a criminal organization in the midst of trying to eliminate their competition.
“Well, I tried to tell you that you didn’t want to know what you were really helping me do here,” Gage countered.
“Good point. But why tell me now?” I asked.
“Because I felt like you wanted to know,” he told me. “And I feel like you deserve to know what you’re doing here. You’re helping us shut down a violent criminal organization that law enforcement is either powerless against or just clueless about, because they’re not doing anything.”
“Stop,” I told him. “Don’t say another word about it, Gage. I don’t want to know anything else. I just want to talk to Dimitri and get you the information you need on Ivan so I can go home.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “You don’t think you know too much already?” he asked in a vaguely threatening tone.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I snapped at him. “Are you threatening me, Gage? Is that what this is? Are you trying to tell me that now that I know more about what’s going on, I won’t be able to leave at all? It certainly sounds like that’s what you’re doing.”
He waved a hand dismissively between us. “Don’t worry. I was just teasing.”
“You didn’t sound like you were teasing.”
“I know. My voice doesn’t carry humor well,” he said with a dry laugh.
Likely excuse, I thought. I couldn’t believe I had tried to convince myself to trust this man. Unfortunately, it seemed like I didn’t have much choice in my current position but to try to trust him.
“Well, I was going to ask if there was a way I could interrogate Dimitri somewhere besides that little room down there, somewhere a little more conducive to talking. But I guess that’s out of the question,” I said.
“I’m afraid he has to stay down there,” Gage said. “And it’s important that he stays tied up as well. Don’t get any ideas when you go back down there to talk to him again. I don’t want things to get ugly.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” I commented under my breath.
“Yes, it would seem so, wouldn’t it?”
“I mean, you’ve got a guy tied to a metal chair in what is essentially a concrete bunker underneath your motorcycle club’s headquarters. Things are already pretty messy, aren’t they?” I asked him.
“Things are always messy around here, Julia, if that’s your definition of messy,” he countered.
“I guess so. Still, I’d like to think there’s got to be a better way to get information out of Dimitri. He doesn’t seem too interested in talking. Maybe if there was a way I could approach him in a less confrontational manner, you know?” I directed the conversation back to the matter at hand. I couldn’t just solely focus my energy on the fact that I was working for a criminal organization, essentially aiding them in the kidnapping of another criminal.
“It’s really for the best to have him down there,” Gage said flatly. “We can’t really do anything differently with him. I hope you understand after what I’ve told you just now.”
I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back down there to talk to him again after finding out that he’d been sent to kill Gage by the rival boss. “When do you want me to go back down there?” I asked him.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Gage answered. “The sooner you can get some information out of him, the sooner all of this will be over, just like you said.”
I really didn’t feel safe going back down there by myself, so I mustered up the courage to ask him, “Will you go down there with me?”
“Of course I will, Julia,” he said. “I’m not going to go back in the room with you, just because I agree that you’ll probably get more out of him if you’re on your own, but I’ll be down there by the door in case anything goes wrong. While you’re here you’re my responsibility,” he said. “I can’t let anything happen to you.”
I found his sense of responsibility for my well-being odd and almost out of place. He presented this rough, bad boy exterior to the world, but underneath, he seemed to be a rather upstanding gentleman. I was having trouble reconciling the two parts of him I was seeing.
I thanked him for his kindness and told him I was ready to go back downstairs.
As we got up from the table, he put a hand on my shoulder. “Remember when you go down there, I need to know where I can find Ivan and what his next move is. See if you can get a timeline of what he’s up to or what he has planned. Also, see if you can get specific locations as to where he is and where he might be,” he coached me.
“I got it,” I said. “Don’t worry. I think I can remember those questions. Now, let’s go before I lose my nerve.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as we started making our way back to the stairs.
“You’re sticking me in a room alone with the man who just recently tried to kill you,” I reminded him.
“Changes your perception of him a little, doesn’t it?”
“Just a little,” I agreed.
“Don’t worry, Julia.” In a change of tone, Gage had become very concerned about me, repeating that I would be alright and that he would be watching out for me.
Normally, I would have been quick to tell someone that I could take care of myself, but my confidence had been shaken by my conversation with Gage. I welcomed his offer to protect me and watch over me while I talked to the assassin that had been sent to murder him.
Gage kept going back and forth between someone I knew better than to trust and someone I didn’t have a choice but to trust. I looked around the room at all of the other bikers in their vests with their Kings of Hell logos and patches on. I knew that if anything went wrong, and Gage simply said the word, each of those men would be at his side to protect me.
Still, if he was supposed to be the good guy, just how bad was Dimitri supposed to be? I didn’t want to find out, but as I stood in front of the door to the interrogation room again, watching as Gage opened it, I knew I would probably find out sooner rather than later.
I shot Gage a look as I walked into the room, letting him shut the door behind me. He didn’t lock it, and I was sure Dimitri heard that as well.