The beast in me, that savage I’d tried for years to curb with platitudes and substitutes raged glorious inside me, beat its chest like a heathen warrior claiming victory, like an alpha who had successfully protected his mate.
The guilt would come, I knew. It always did when I gave into the darkness at the pit of my person. But for now, I reveled in the wickedness, the rightness of vengeance.
My phone rang just as I pulled back into my driveway and I knew who it would be, as I always did when he called, before I answered.
“Dad.”
“Lionel.”
There was a heavy pause that relayed much. My lack of regret about my moral collapse, my obstinacy against his censure, and strangely, his willingness to cede to that.
“Listen, son, I’m prepared to cover this up for you,” he said the voice of the devil asking me to sign my soul over in blood ink. “Easy enough to do, the Rick Evans kid is scared brainless and barely admitted to Percy that you were even the one to beat him up. But kids get bold with time, as I’m sure you know,” he paused to let his thinly veiled point sink in, “So, it’s best we sweep this under the rug now, while we still can.”
My silence was my answer.
“Just need to know that I can count you as my right-hand man. There’re things goin’ down in the town and I could use a good man, the right man and my son as a player in it.”
“No.”
I could live with my crime. I’d lose my badge if it came to it, which would fucking suck, but I was willing to take the hit. I’d done a bad deed for the right reasons and I was okay paying the price for it.
“Not gonna let anything bad happen to you, son. It’s already dealt with, just wanted to loop you in. Join me for dinner at mayor Lafayette’s house this weekend. I’ll be introducing you to a good friend of mine, Javier Ventura. And, Lionel, next time I call, be ready to serve your brothers in blue.”
I stared into the silence after he hung up, furious with myself for not understanding the depth of depravity my father had succumbed to. He’d been waiting for this, some slip-up so that he could blackmail me into working with his crooked cops.
And I’d played right into his fucking hand.
I sat in the car staring at my grandparent’s old house, now mine, imagining as I often did the family I was going to plant inside, the wife and kids and dog that would brighten the empty farmhouse until it rang with laughter and noise.
I’d always pictured the white picket fence kind of life for myself, but I realized as I sat there, my father’s voice in my ear, Rick Evan’s blood on my aching knuckles, that the kind of woman I craved wasn’t that kind of woman.
She was the kind of woman that would climb a white picket fence just to graffiti the pristine house. The kind of woman who would punch a bully in the throat and toss her hair as she did it, magnificent and wild.
The kind of woman, seventeen years old and sleeping in my bed.
As bad as she played herself to be, as good as I acted, the truth was, of the two of us, she was the one who was too good to settle for me.
I needed to get out of town, away from her. She was too young and innocent for my deviancy and secret darkness, for the tangled web my father had just thrown me into with force.
I sat in my car and made two resolutions that changed the course of my life.
One, I was going to take down my father, or at least, part of the organization he worked for.
And two, I was going to stay away from Harleigh Rose Garro.
Danner
Old school rock music pulsed through the house like a heartbeat, too loud for a weeknight in a quiet, residential area, but no one would call the police.
Berserkers were partying.
It was their annual summer blow out so even though the night was still young, the empty bottles of booze were racking up and the acrid taste of cocaine was in the air, white clouds of it floating through the halls like chalk dust.
The highlight of the night was starting soon.
The Fight.
A tradition the Berserkers had of throwing each brother into the proverbial ring to see who came out the winner in the end.
There were thirty-nine brothers and all of them were expected to fight but Reaper, who proceeded over the fight like the Emperor of Rome over in his colosseum. I’d helped the brothers set the stage, a small circle of earth in the backyard that was marked with stakes and strong white rope and highlighted by huge industrial lights that would blind the competitor’s eyes. We’d had a summer rainstorm through the night so the grass was slick, the ground beneath it soft and sucking.