“Thank God?”
“I…I wanted you to be a good guy,” George said, looking like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “So badly.”
“Yeah? I get that.”
“So, you were…undercover?”
“Yeah. Can’t talk about my last case too much—still hasn’t gone to trial—but I wanted you to know. I…I guess I’m tired of looking like a bad guy all the time. Although…I’ve done some pretty horrible things.”
“In the line of duty?”
He grimaced. “Yeah. Didn’t always feel like it, though.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know how to explain.” He took a breath and rubbed a hand over his face, wishing everything were more like the movies—all black or white, good or bad. How could he explain this in-between shit to a civilian?
“Going undercover’s like…like a blood transfusion or something. Like you’ve got to make room for the soulless bastard you’ll be pretending to be for the foreseeable future. And to do that, you’ve got to willingly rip out essential parts of yourself—parts like honor and humanity. The shit that made you want to do your job in the first place. That shit’s got to go, ’cause it’s what’ll get you made, right? So, by the time I’d finished with the Sultans, I was one of them. A full-fledged, motherfucking asshole of a murderous Sultan.”
George gasped and started to speak. “Wha… Wait, I don’t… Did you—”
“No. No, but there were moments where I got pretty fucking close, times when I’d be egging one of my brothers on and—” He stood, clearly startling George, and pulled his shirt up to reveal the severe burn on his side. “Remember you asked me about this? Who did this to me? I did, George. Me. I took a hot-ass iron, dialed it up high as it would go, and pressed it right over the tat there. You wanna know why?”
* * *
No! Stop it! George wanted to scream. Don’t say another word. I don’t want to know. But the desperation on Clay’s face was enough to make her stop and shove back the tears surging into her eyes and stinging her sinuses.
“Tell me.”
“’Cause I asked for that tat. Not like these.” He pointed to his eyes. “Or the ones on my hands. Those were forced on me, but this one…this one was my Sultan self feeling it. Feeling like one of the brothers.”
“What about the one on your back?”
“No, no. I got that when I became a full-fledged member. That one’s standard issue. If I wanted into the club, I had to get the colors on the back. This one? This was me—not me Clay, but me Indian Greer, telling those assholes that I’d die for them. Wanting to die for them.” He looked down at her defiantly and George wasn’t at all sure how he expected her to react. “How messed up is that, huh, George?”
The tears overflowed—the feelings too—and George stood up, went to where he sat in that old wingback chair, and ducked to wrap her arms around him. She didn’t say a thing.
“The worst part,” he went on, his voice floating into the air above her head as she squeezed into the tiny bit of leftover space, “the worst part is that those fuckers killed my sister.”
George stilled, shifted back, and waited, her breath audible in her ears.
“It was personal, me joining the Sultans. Always personal.” He sat watching her, defiantly. Waiting, if George wasn’t mistaken, for her to throw him out or something.
Instead, she took his hand and nudged him until he sat back and made more room for her beside him.
“Tell me the story,” she said, sliding in close.
“You don’t want to hear about—”
“I want to hear your story, Clay. Tell me your story.”
“My story?”
“Who are you? Where are you from? I don’t know anything.”
“It’s not very—”
“Tell me about you. And your sister. Please.”
