I’d been hearing the same thing from my parents ever since I graduated from USC.“Go to grad school, Paige. You can affect far more people with an education than you can without one.”
While I saw the logic in that, I was sick of hearing it. After graduating, I got a job at the free clinic in the nearby city of Terrance and spent my days working with women and girls who couldn’t go to their parents for things like birth control or STD treatments. Many of them showed up pregnant and totally scared.
I was well aware of how lucky Bailey and I were. We were raised in Verde Hills, one of the wealthiest beach communities in LA. I went to a private college and had all my expenses covered. Bailey was on track to do the same thing, although she was more likely to go to UCLA and study law.
Terrance wasn’t exactly a bad neighborhood, but it did have some seedy areas. Working with the disadvantaged community there had sparked a passion in me to help people who didn’t have the country club upbringing Bailey and I had. I wanted to help make a difference where it was needed, not sit in some classroom writing papers about it.
I took a sip of my cold brew and shook my head. “I don’t know why you guys keep saying it’s dangerous. It’s La Playa, for fuck’s sake, not Tijuana. People choose to live there!”
“Yeah, people who go to Cal State La Playa. That’s not what you’re doing. You want to move to the worst neighborhood in all of La Playa, and what? Get a job as a waitress? Is that why you went to college?” Bailey was talking to me, but her eyes were following a couple of young men as they got into a BMW convertible. “Hey, Chad.”
They nodded hello before putting on sunglasses and pulling out of the parking space next to the cafe. Guys like that had no idea what it was like to work a minimum wage job for years to save up for a beat-up used car. In Verde Hills, most kids got a new car for their sixteenth birthday. Even I did, although it was a Honda and not the Porsche I’d asked for.
I sighed before pushing my chair out and standing up. There was no use talking to Bailey or anyone else about this. My family didn’t understand at all. I’d seen things that they didn’t want to see. I was a lot tougher and more streetwise than they gave me credit for. “You sound like Mom.” I threw away the plastic cup and headed to the car as Bailey followed me.
No, if I was going to do this—move to La Playa and help the people who needed it the most—I was going to have to do it on my own.
Three
Ryder
“Where the fuck have you been?”
I was sitting on the couch watching Cops when Lily finally came in. I’d heard the bike pull up and the engine cut a couple of minutes before, and it took all my self restraint to sit in here and not kill the guy with my bare hands.
“None of your fuckin’ business,” she said, throwing her keys in the bowl next to the door. Her hair was dark brown and curly like our mom’s had been, and it was tied back in a braid. She wore jeans and the same top she’d been wearing when I dropped her off at school yesterday. The material was too thin for her to have been warm all night, which meant that the asshole she was with probably lent her his jacket.
The idea of my sister wearing a Las Balas jacket made me want to puke. “It is too my fuckin’ business Lily. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. The Las Balas are bad people. When they see someone like you, they only want one thing.”
She was standing with her back to me in front of the open refrigerator, drinking orange juice straight from the carton. I marched over there and grabbed it out of her hand. “Stop that shit, Lily. It’s disgusting.”
She looked up at me, and for a moment I saw the little girl she once was. Those big brown eyes had once been innocent and trusting. One drunk driver had ended that for her when our parents died. What looked back at me now was an angry face, with a hard-set jaw and a bottom lip that stuck out defiantly.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ryder. Scorpion loves me. And when he gets his patch and becomes a member of Las Balas, we’re gonna move in together and you won’t have to worry about me anymore. I won’t be your problem.” She stomped off to her room, leaving me holding the empty container of orange juice.
There was no way in hell my sixteen-year-old sister was moving in with a twenty-year-old prospect. I’d kill him before that happened. He didn’t fucking love her, that was for sure. The only question was, why was he with her? Yeah, she was beautiful and young. Any guy with a dick would want to hit that (she’s my sister, but everyone is somebody’s sister and I’m not an idiot). She was also the kid sister of the Vice President of Outlaw Souls. There were tons of girls whose pants you can get into.The fact that she wasmysister had to mean something.
But there was no point in getting into that now. Lily was home and was safe. Maybe I’d talk to Padre and see what we could do about keeping Lily from getting too close to the Las Balas. They were responsible for some of the worst crimes in La Playa. If a kid got sex trafficked or someone OD’d from dirty drugs, it was likely the Las Balas who were behind it. Don’t get me wrong— the Outlaw Souls were not saints. We got our name when our founder stabbed three guys to death with a filero knife in a street fight in downtown La Playa in the 1970s. But sex trafficking and shit? That was low even for Outlaws.
Throwing the empty carton in the trash, I went into the living room to crash on the couch. It has been a long night, and now that Lily was home, I might be able to catch a few hours of sleep before heading to the bar later for our meeting.
* * *
“Where the hell is everyone?”
I pushed open the door to the back room of the Blue Dog Saloon. Padre’s brother owned the place, and the back room was where we held our meetings. Yoda called it “the chapel,” but the rest of us just called it “the back.”
The only ones in the room were Swole and Yoda. “I think they got stuck in traffic,” Swole said.
“All of them?” That wasn’t likely, unless there was a ride and I wasn’t aware of one.
“There was a car crash on the 710,” Yoda said. “Couple people killed by a drunk driver. They shut down the freeway.”
My stomach tightened when I heard that. It had been years since my parents’ car crash, but the memory of it was still fresh.
I yanked out a chair and twisted off the top of my Coke. Looking at my phone, I saw that it was only five minutes after. Per the rules, we had to sit here for twenty minutes and needed a minimum of five members to hold the meeting. Since I was the VP, if Padre didn’t show, I’d have to run it.
“I hope they get here soon,” Swole said. “Tammy is making dinner for us. It’s our anniversary.” Swole had pledged with us right after I did, and she was the first female member in the history of the club. There’d been a lot of arguments about whether to let women in. But she was a badass who fought like a dude, and that’s why we put her in charge of security. A lot of guys tended to underestimate Swole until she had them in a chokehold.
