I couldn’t stop thinking of my fist crashing into that fool. The whole dinner, I’d been fantasizing about slamming him into the wall and using him as a punching bag. Mario couldn’t be with Noah—that was that. I didn’t want anyone to be with her, actually, and I didn’t care to think about why. I couldn’t take my eyes off her the whole meal. The way she laughed—so different from me—how easy she was to talk to, that way she unconsciously rubbed that part of her neck where she was tattooed, all of that drove me crazy the whole night.
After seeing her leave with Mario, I had gotten up and taken Anna home, and I now found myself on the way to a bar. I couldn’t stick around Anna’s place; it was unbearable. I’d been spending too much time with her these past few weeks. If I didn’t want things getting serious, I’d need to find another girl to hang out with. I headed for a club I’d been to a lot in recent years, in a rough part of town where many less than respectable people hung out. The door guys knew me, so I didn’t have to wait in line. Inside, the music was deafening, and the blinking lights gave a strange, even eerie glow to the sweaty bodies dancing there. Who knew what they were all high on.
I walked over to the bar and ordered a whiskey while glancing around at the crowd. Since the year I’d lived with Lion in that neighborhood far from my father, his money, and everything the Leister name represented, I’d found my place among these people. They respected me, they accepted me, and they were the perfect escape route from everything I hated about the life I was now being forced to live. I’d run away as soon as I’d turned eighteen. Since Mom had left, my relationship with Dad had dwindled away to nothing, and I didn’t think anyone would care if I just up and disappeared and tried to go it alone. But Dad had wound up sending his security chief, Steve, to find me. It had been ironic, seeing a tall guy in a suit showing up at the house I’d been living in then, and even more so when he’d realized that if he wanted to make me go back, he’d need an army.
Steve had worked for my father since I was a kid, and he knew me well enough to recognize there was no way he could force me to go home against my will. But then the thing with my sister had happened, and I’d needed my father’s help.
The day after Steve showed up, all my credit cards had been canceled, and my checking account had been blocked. I’d had to get a job at Lion’s dad’s garage to make a living. But I had never felt freer or more myself.
Life in that neighborhood had been tough. I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me as soon as I’d shown up there, and I’d realized that I would never make it, being a millionaire’s son, unless I turned into one of them. I had started training every day without fail: no one was going to put their hands on me again without knowing I’d hit back. Lion had shown me how to defend myself, how to throw a punch, and how to take one. My first real fight had come two months after I’d started training. I’d left Ronnie laid out on the ground covered in blood, and that had gotten me the respect of all present. The races and the gambling had come a while later, and Ronnie and I had made a truce, but that meant people started choosing sides. There were Lion and our guys and I and then Ronnie and his dealers and delinquents. He knew it worked out better for him to be cordial with us, especially after my father got us out of jail when we’d been charged with disturbing the peace.
Everything had changed when I’d come to need my father’s help. I couldn’t have ignored the fact that I had a sister and wanted to meet her. Dad had said he’d help with the trial and get me visitation rights if I’d move home, go to college, and stay with him for at least three years. I’d had to agree and go back to Leister mansion, and once there, I had realized my father wasn’t indifferent to me. Our relationship had improved, but my life had basically stayed the same. I lived with him now, but I spent most of my time with Lion, getting drunk, getting high, and getting into trouble. As long as I slept at home and went to school, Dad didn’t get mixed up in my life, and I stayed out of his business, too…and things had continued that way until now.
Fights and races were an everyday thing for me, and Ronnie’s and Lion’s gangs were getting into more and more confrontations. Things were worse now than before, but I’d always seen the hidden resentment in Ronnie’s eyes. We needed that truce: we lived in the same town, and we ran with the same people. But our friendly rivalry had turned into a feud between two gangs, and it was getting dangerous, as last time had shown. Me smashing his face at the last race had been an affront, and there was going to be backlash, I just didn’t know when. Noah beating him was the greatest humiliation imaginable, and I knew I’d end up having to deal with it. The problem was, Ronnie wasn’t just a street fighter anymore. This was getting ugly. I knew after he shot at us how dangerous he could be, and I couldn’t stop thinking he’d come for Noah at some point in the near future.
Damn her. Why’d she have to do that? Damn her for fucking up everything for me. I needed to stop thinking about her, get back to my life, have fun the way I always did, enjoy myself the way I always had…
A blond stuffed into a skimpy halter top and black-leather pants sidled up to me at the bar.
“Hey, Nick,” she said, and when I saw the dragon tattoo on her collarbone, I realized I’d hooked up with her before. Her name started with an S: Sophie, Sunny, Susan, something like that.
I nodded to her. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but I was in the mood for other things. She was already close to me; it didn’t take much to turn that proximity into a kiss.
I grabbed her waist and pulled her into me. Her breath smelled like vodka and something sweet. She was exactly what I needed to relieve the tension from the past few days. I grabbed her hand and dragged her to one of the VIP tables, where we could escape from the lights.
But when I saw how Susan’s hair shone in different colors as she passed under the neon, I thought of Noah. Cursing, I pushed her against the wall harder than I needed to, but she sighed with pleasure, so I felt free to keep going. Her body pressed against mine in all the right places, but her lips were too greedy, that wasn’t what I wanted. I leaned in and kissed her on the neck. She smelled like liquor and smoke. I pulled aside her hair and looked at the dragon tattoo…but the tattoo I wanted to kiss was another, and that wasn’t the neck that drove me wild as soon as I looked at it.
I grabbed her face. There wasn’t a single freckle on it. Her blue eyes weren’t honey-colored, her lashes weren’t long.
I pulled away.
“What is it?” Susan asked, her hands moving down to my crotch and stroking me. I grabbed her wrist and jerked it away.
“Sorry. Gotta go,” I said and turned my back. I didn’t even bother listening to her complain. I needed to leave.
I walked around a corner toward an alley, trying to ignore the intimation that I was screwing up. Bad. I was so angry, so self-absorbed, that I didn’t even realize who was at the end of the street until familiar voices made me look up. Right away, I was on edge.
Ronnie and three of his drug dealer friends were leaning on a car, a Ferrari…my Ferrari. I stopped, clenching my firsts, struggling to restrain a fury that was crying to get out.
“Look who we have here!” Ronnie shouted, stepping away from the hood and toward me. “Daddy’s little rich boy.” He laughed, and his goons laughed along. I recognized all three of them: two tattooed guys who were high as a kite and Cruz, Ronnie’s right-hand man.
“You here to beg for your car back?” Ronnie asked. I’d have happily knocked that smile right off of his face.
“You mean the car you cheated your way into getting?” I asked. “Whatever. Maybe with a real car, you’ll actually learn how to drive. I mean, you don’t want to lose to a seventeen-year-old girl again, do you?”
It was deeply pleasing to see how the remark affected him. He wasn’t smiling now. No, the veins were swelling in his neck.
“You’ll regret that,” he threatened me, trying to act calm. “Get him!” he shouted.
I had known that was going to happen. I knew it as soon as I saw them, and I was ready. I punched the first guy who came over and grinned when I felt his nose break. Someone grabbed me from behind, and I fired back with an elbow, striking something hard, probably someone’s mouth. Cruz came over to help the two others, but before he got there, I’d already hit goon number one again in the face. Now it was my turn to suffer. Someone punched me in the right eye, hard enough to knock me aside, but still, I managed to kick whoever was trying to grab my arms. I held out awhile longer, but three against one was too much even for me, especially with Cruz in the picture. He was every bit as tough as Lion. One-on-one, I might have taken him, but with the other guys restraining me, there wasn’t much I could do.
Cruz started pounding me in the ribs, and I tried not to scream as I thought how much I’d like to kill him with my bare hands. Ronnie came over. The look on his face told me this wasn’t going to be the end of it.
“Tell your little sister I haven’t forgotten what happened on the track,” he said. Noah’s innocent face appeared in my mind. Ronnie grabbed me by my hair and pulled my face close. He stank like cheap beer and weed. “And tell her when I see her, I’m going to make her pay, and I’m not just talking about cash or a car.” I saw red all over. I was trembling with violence. I was going to kill that motherfucker.
“I’m gonna bust her wide open, Nick,” he said. If I could have moved, I’d have headbutted him and knocked his nose bone up into his brain. “And when I do, I’m gonna wreck that pussy so bad you won’t even want to go near it.”
“I’ll kill you,” I said. Three words, one promise.
He laughed and punched me in the stomach. Every ounce of air in me came out, and I had to bend over to cough and spit up blood.
“Don’t come around here no more or I’ll be the one to kill you. Don’t think I won’t,” he said, turning around. The guys holding me let go after one final punch in the face.
Those sons of bitches.
I stumbled off to my car. I barely made it home. Everyone was asleep; it was after one in the morning. Strangely, there was no light coming from Noah’s room. No way she was still out. I opened the door. Her bed was made.
I cursed, walked into my room, and pulled off my clothes, trying to grit my teeth through the pain. I was in bad shape; it had been a long time—four years to be exact—since I’d received a beating like that. It had been dumb of me to wander down that alley by myself. I’d made it easy for the bastard.
I got into the shower and let the water wash away the blood and sweat. They’d mostly stuck to my stomach and ribs, so I could cover up my bruises with a T-shirt. The black eye and busted lip were a different story. I’d need to come up with a good explanation for Dad or avoid him until the swelling went down. I had some practice. I didn’t get hit in the face often, but when we had our fights and money was on the line, sometimes there was nothing I could do about it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how Ronnie had threatened Noah. He must have wanted to strangle her after that public humiliation at the races. The mere thought of that scumbag touching her made me so mad I could hardly keep from punching the mirror in front of me.
I dried off and threw on some sweatpants. I stayed shirtless, since some of my wounds were still bleeding. I rinsed out my mouth and made sure I hadn’t cracked any teeth, but I was good. My lip had even stopped bleeding, but it was red and purple, just like my eye. And both would be that way for some time.
I grabbed my phone and walked out into the hallway, thinking I’d try to find out where the hell Noah was and get some ice for my wounds.
Five minutes later, as I was walking out of the kitchen with my phone to my ear, I heard the key turning in the front door, and the main reason for my bad mood appeared.
Her phone was buzzing. It stopped when I hung up. She looked up at me. Her eyes were surprised and then horrified.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked.
