Hannah really didn’t care for whatever crap Gabe got up to when he was out all night drinking and spending what measly paycheck he got from the bar on poker tables. He said he had a natural born poker face because he was pretty. Not handsome, not dashing, pretty. He was the epitome of what the grizzle alpha male types called a pretty boy because his hair was perfectly combed, even on his roughest nights, his jaw was chiseled, there wasn’t a spot of acne to be found on his porcelain face. This made him the kind of person that people wanted to talk to, believe, do anything for.
But gambling was about a lot more than looks. It was about a lot more than lying. There was luck involved, and some God-give abilities, but there was also talent, smarts: something that Gabe seemed to think he could just avoid learning and call it a day. He’d tried using that face for a lot of things, confidence scams, real estate crap, opening some kind of hipster coffee shop. This time it was gambling, and he was worse at it than he had been with any of the other schemes he tried.
She ignored it. If she didn’t look then she wasn’t culpable and she’d just have to deal with cleaning up his busted lips and bruised face later. It’s not like the bar he worked at was some upscale place or anything. He could get by looking like he just walked out of some fight club dungeon. She turned her attention to her closet. She had a half hour before class to get dressed and she made the mistake only once of just wearing work clothes to school and smelled like an onion the entire day. So instead she perused her closet, looking for something that didn’t quite scream that she was a poor waitress. Unfortunately, most of her wardrobe seemed to say just that.
Whatever. It’s not like she was trying to impress anyone. It was about the goal, not how good she looked getting there, no matter how many people in her class dressed in expensive Blundstones and flannels that cost more than her dinner last night. She could worry about dressing nice for her trials, not for some professor who probably had no idea what her name was. She threw something on and heard a timid knock at the door.
“Did your boyfriend leave?” she asked.
“Hannah, I gotta talk to you, can you open the door?” said her brother’s voice through the wood and she groaned, though she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t at least a little nervous for his tone.
She buttoned her pants and walked over, pulling the door open. Gabe was standing there, still practically naked in his Star Wars boxers and nothing else. He looked so scrawny. It was one of the reasons he never tried to apply that angel face to modeling or acting. He tried his hand at bulking up muscle in high school and couldn’t gain more than five pounds. He had one of those fast metabolisms everyone was jealous of.
He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“You might be a little more intimidating to your loan shark friends if you actually got dressed,” she said, looking in the mirror to start applying makeup. “Am I going to come home from school and find the place trashed and your blood staining everything?”
“Listen, he offered me a deal and before you make a decision on it, I really want you to consider it,” he said. “He’s giving me an extra week to get him the money, which is perfect. But he’s taking collateral.”
Oh here we go…
“In the form of?”
“You.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“He wants you as the collateral.”
“And did you tell him this is the 21st century and that I’m a person, not a piece of merchandise that can be tossed around at anyone’s whim?”
Gabe was cringing. He walked over and dropped down onto her bed. He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at the base tightly. He let out a groan and slammed his fists onto the mattress where they bounced back.
“Hannah, he’s going to kill me. I don’t mean that like ‘oh, mom’s going to kill me’ but literally cut my throat and leave me bleeding in some back alley. I know I fucked up and maybe this is my rock bottom to try and fix it, but I really need your help,” he said, his voice cracking. She wondered if she was actually going to see him cry.
“You got yourself into a fucked up situation and now you’re asking me to put my life in danger to try and get you out of it,” she said. “Do you even hear what you’re asking from me?”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going to get him the money ASAP, I swear. He won’t hurt you. If he does he knows he won’t get his money.”
“And when you fail to give him the money what do you think he’s going to do to me then?”
“I won’t fail. I swear to God Hannah, I won’t let him hurt you.”
She wanted to scream.
“I have class, Gabe. I’m becoming a lawyer. I’m finally moving toward actually helping people instead of getting them coffee and ignoring when they try and grab at my ass and you expect me to put all that on hold for a week to go play house with a biker?”
“I’ll fix it, I swear. I just need your help. Please. Please.”
She was becoming a lawyer because she wanted to help people. And her brother was people. More than that, he was her baby brother, someone she was sworn to protect on instinct. He was her family, her responsibility and if she couldn’t find a way to help him, how could she be expected to help the dozens and dozens of low income people in the area she claimed she was going to help with her law degree?
This was not at all how she imagined her day going.
***
Chance liked getting out of town. He loved his home. He loved the familiar smells, he loved the way everything seemed to fit into place. He liked knowing he had a position here, people knew his name, knew who he was. But he also liked getting out. The town could be stifling, he could be easily caged in. Business trips were always the best excuse out. He didn’t take vacations. Though the guys often told him he should try, that there was nothing wrong with taking a few days off, he didn’t like the idea of being absent. He was the president of the club. His father never took time off when he founded Satan’s Knights. He wasn’t going to be the first one to go AWOL and break tradition.
So business trips were how he did that, got himself out of his box, out of his head, and away from that grind for a little while.
“First round’s gonna be on you, boss,” Moose said as they moved down the street.
Chance rolled his eyes but nodded. Moose was the only one he ever took with him. His best friend, his bodyguard, the only person besides himself that he trusted completely implicitly in the world. He’d be happy to buy Moose a drink any day of the week and name several of his children after him one day.
They moved down one of the residential street. The locals never liked it, but taking the neighborhood roads was one of the best ways to avoid trouble when they had somewhere they needed to get. He didn’t want a turf war or some bone head deciding to pick a fight when he was on his way out of town and on his way to his own version of a vacation. So they moved through a block of apartment buildings, turning onto Neville Street when he saw something familiar.
Ben’s bike was parked outside one of the apartment buildings and a girl was getting on the back. Another man, more of a boy than anything else, was standing nearby, practically naked except for the boxers around his waist. He was shivering in the morning air. The closer they got, the more miserable he woman looked and the more scared the boy seemed. Chance knew scenes like this, he’d seen them often where Ben was concerned.
He signaled to Moose and pulled over.
The group on the sidewalk looked at him.
“Boss,” Ben said with a halfhearted salute.
“What’s going on here?” Chance asked, trying to remain casual, and pointing to the girl.
“Little tough guy over there owes us some money. I’m generously giving him an extra week and taking some collateral for good measure,” he said.
Chance turned towards the woman. She was young, she was no child, but she was young enough to look more than a little scared at the whole situation. He knew exactly how Ben planned to pass the time while he waited for the boy on the sidewalk to pay or not pay his debt back.
“You going with this guy willingly?” he asked the girl.
“Oh for fuck’s sake—”
“Shut it, Andrews.” He turned back to the girl. “Well?”
“Yeah,” she said, quietly. “No one is forcing me to do anything I didn’t agree to.”
Chance looked at her. Ben had done this before and it ended in quite a lot of tears for the girl who was quickly forced into the gang’s pass-around girl. He wasn’t sure how many of the men had raped her before he finally stepped in and got her to a shelter, Ben laughing the entire time at her whimpering and tears. That scene had been painful for Chance to endure. He remembered his mother’s own tears. Her life as his father’s old woman had not been ideal. In fact, it had been torture. He promised not to let that happen again.
“Fine,” Chance said. Ben went back to getting the girl on the back of his bike. “But she’s coming with me.”
“What?” Ben practically spat.
“She’s our guest. She’s going to be kept safe. She’s not an animal or a toy. The only way I can trust that will happen is if she’s with me,” he said. “We’re not having any repeat incidents and until you earn my trust back, she stays with me.”
“You could maybe not talk about me like I’m not here,” the girl grumbled. Chance fought down a smile. He liked the idea of a girl with an attitude.
“That’s bullshit,” Ben said, stepping up to Chance. “It’s me her brother owes the money to. I get to decide to do whatever I want with my payment.”
“She’s a human being, not your plaything. And if he owes money to you then he owes it to me. And I outrank you. She comes with us.”
Ben looked ready to explode. Chance was waiting, daring him to throw a punch and give him a reason to kick his ass into the ground. It didn’t come, however. Ben got on his bike, kicked the engine on, and sped off in a huff. Chance watched him go with mild interest and turned back to the girl. He removed his helmet and offered it to her.
“You coming?”