Why?
No fucking clue. I don’t know this old lady, don’t give a shit about her, but the judgment in her look is stronger than a kick to the groin.
She leads us deeper into the club, past an open garden courtyard lit by candles and filled with tables that sing with the click-clack of tiles. Art hangs from the walls, photos, too — of families, of friends, and of groups of dark-suited men, some of whom I swear I’ve seen before — and then up a flight of stairs and down another hallway until we come to a plain wooden door.
“In here you will find a shower, towels, robes, and a bin of clothes that have been left behind. You are welcome to all of it,” she says to Adriana, who enters. I approach the door, ready to enter too, but she holds up a hand and, with a single finger to my chest, brings me to a stop.
“What?” I say. I try to make it sound challenging, loom over her, let some of the anger and indignation inside me find its way out through my eyes. She sniffs.
“What do you do for a living, young boy?”
“I ride with a motorcycle club. The Twisted Devils MC.”
She nods, processing, then rolls her eyes. “Your parents must be so disappointed.”
“They’re dead.”
“Then they see everything you do and know everything about who you are. They must beverydisappointed, then.”
Before I can close my mouth, which is hanging open like a barn door, she turns and elegantly totters away. It’s then I realize that, even if I found the words to retort or the desire to take a swing at her, nothing I say or do could actually hurt her.
Stung, I put my hand on the door and push it open, my mind reeling with regrets and shame that I haven’t felt in months — about something other than what I did to Vanessa.
Then I hear it in the dark. And see it, too. A sight and a noise that ease my pain just a little.
Although she hates me and wants to — hopefully — murder me, I see her and hear her: smiling and giggling.
Smiling.
What a fucking sight. I can’t help it — I smile too.
Until I see the rest of the room.
Then my smile disappears.
Chapter Nine
Adriana
It’s a disturbing thing to see a smile on Ricky’s face and feel one on my own at the same time. To be sharing a smile, a laugh, amomentwith the man who killed my sister. But as much as I want to fight it, I can’t. Because right now, killing Ricky isn’t at the forefront of my mind. That thought sits behind the fact that he saved my life, that his smile has this charming way of lighting up his eyes and dancing past all my defenses, and that I really, really want a shower and some clean clothes.
And as I step into the locker room, I can’t help but laugh and smile as my eyes take in a small room filled with a couple wooden benches, a bin with some fresh, fluffy towels and a few fluffy robes inside it, some lockers with wooden doors carved with names in both English and Mandarin, and a single showerhead sticking out from the wall above a section of tiled floor and a single drain and…oh, fuck.
A single open shower.
“God fucking damn it,” I say. My cheeks are burning. I want this shower. No, I fuckingneedthis shower, need it as much as I need to breathe, or as much as I need to eat something, I realize, as my stomach rumbles and it hits me it’s been hours and hours since I’ve eaten something, and in the meantime, I’ve killed someone, nearly died several times, and been thrown into a dumpster; a burrito would be perfect right now.
“My thoughts exactly,” he says. “I’ll go tell that old lady we need a second room.”
My eyes go wide, and I reach out and take hold of him before I realize what I’m doing. “You can’t do that.”
“What? Why not?”
“Do you have any idea who she is? No, of course you don’t. Let’s just say she’s not someone you want to insult by throwing her hospitality back in her face.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“We’ll make do.”
