“This isn’t up for discussion, Carmen.”
“He’s right,” Carter adds, joining the conversation. They all circle around me.
I know their game—intimidate me until I surrender.
But they’re gonna die, and it’s gonna be my fault. This is what happens when people fly too close to Carmen. They get burned.
“This is my fault. All of it.”
“Don’t talk stupid,” Skipper says.
“It was me who decided to attend the auction in the first place. I dragged you into my mess.”
“Technically,” Carter challenges, “it was my fault for betting on you.”
“Which you wouldn’t have done, had I not been there that night.”
“Carmen.” Carter’s voice has the potential to break bones. “I don’t think you realize. Men like us don’t get second chances at life.”
Vex shifts beside him.
Skipper does the opposite and tenses up.
Carter continues, “You join a place like this when you’ve given up on life. I can’t speak for Skipper and Vex, but a year ago after my mother’s passing, I became a prospect here to give myself a reality check. To drink, forget, and punish the world for being so unfair to me. But now I have a son. A woman. Those things are worth fighting for.”
Skipper’s jaw hangs open. “Since when do you have a son?”
“Since a few hours ago. Otis is mine.”
Vex’s jaw joins Skipper’s on the floor.
Carter waves away their questions. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now we should save our energy to fight.”
Their enthusiasm is nice to hear, but it doesn’t get rid of the stabbing pain in my gut. These men have double-crossed Conrad O’Neill once before. That puts the bikers at the top of his kill list.
I raise onto my tiptoes to try and view the screen, but Skipper decides to be a pain in my ass and tuck the device into his chest. “You’re staying here where it’s safe,” he says.
“Thank fuck this isn’t happening all the way over in New York,” Vex says.
“I know,” Carter agrees. “Conrad would’ve struck before we even made it out of the state.”
Their willingness to fly over to New York and save me knots my stomach even more. Why can’t they be the reckless bikers I once thought they were? It’s easier to feel nothing than it is to feel heartbreak, and I already feel fragments of the organ cracking as I sit here admiring all three of them for what could be the last time.
I stretch out my hands and silently demand a hug. Skipper embraces me and he’s the one with the burner, so I play my cards right and slip the phone from his hand when his guard is down.
“Ah-ha!” I scuttle away over to the bar and launch myself over the bench to read the screen. I only need a few seconds…if the goddamn screen knows how to switch itself on.
Squatting under the bar, I tap on the screen until the device eventually decides to work. A message thread appears with Conrad. Scrolling past the hilarious but equally terrifying threats the bikers have sent, I finally get to the address.
The zip code tells me that this place is far from civilization. And when I copy and paste it into an old-school internet browser, the air in my lungs starts to feel toxic.
I choke on my next breath. A distribution center in the middle of fucking nowhere.
A fantastic place to keep a two-year-old hostage.
Vex rips the burner from me and shoves it in his pocket, unimpressed. “See. You can’t go to a place like that by yourself.”
I shut my eyes. It’s exhausting keeping them open.
