“Tell me then,” he says, refusing to let the subject drop. “What’s your plan? What do you think it will take?”
What will it take to feel safe from Branden?
I’d naïvely thought that finding my voice might do that. Strengthening my writing enough for my own words to speak for me. I thought stating the truth, even as distorted as I could, might help nurture some small, distant part of me brave enough to stand against him.
Weeks later and that hasn’t happened.
“I just need to get into the writing program,” I insist as dryly as reading a script. “Keep my job. Stay away from him. Nothing else.”
“The offer stands,” Rafe says while muscling open the door on his end. He mounts the curb, leaving me to scramble after him as he strides ahead for the back door to the shop. Halfway there, he stops short.
“Shit,” I hear him hiss as he raises a hand for me to stop. Low, his voice reaches me, barely audible. “Stay here.”
Chapter Four
He inches forward, his posture hunched like a guard dog. The only thing I can make out to explain his unease is the tail end of a bright red car. I’ve seen it before. Where?
Rafe’s already rounding the corner, but I can’t shake the instinctive urge in the pit of my soul to move as well—in the opposite direction. To run. Hide.
The second I take a step back, Rafe’s voice rings out, but directed at someone else. “Uncle. I was—”
“I know what the fuck you were doing,” a man replies. I recognize his voice—a guttural baritone that invokes the image of a snarling lion in contrast to Rafe’s figurative dragon. “Once again, you were shirking your responsibility. Making me look like a goddamn fool for leaving you in charge at all. A girl was killed in our fucking territory, Rafael. And yet you’re off wetting your cock while threats to us mount.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Rafe counters.
“It’s not? I heard what happened here,” Shen says. “That you cowered while those thugs sent you a direct warning. Even if this fucking excuse for a hobby is just a game to you, this place is under my territory. Mine.”
“Uncle,” Rafe starts. “I was going to—”
“You never called for backup,” the man says over him. “You never initiated retaliation. I had to find out about it from fucking rumors like it’s goddamn amateur hour—” he breaks off. “Come. We need to discuss this. Now. And in the meantime, you can explain why you covered Zhang’s tab in full. That son of a bitch doesn’t have that kind of money. Did you do it to impress the little whore that works there? Don’t look so surprised. Like father like son—easily distracted by a willing cunt—”
“I’m not some boy you can call to heel,” Rafe says, his voice gruffer than I’ve ever heard it. “I told you—confronting Gino head-on is what that son of a bitch wants. He wants to draw us into the open. I thought you wanted to lay low? That petty crime was above you now, Mr. Politician?”
The startled silence from his uncle’s end adds a chilling effect to the conversation. Despite not seeing either party’s face, I can easily pick up on the shift in the atmosphere—Rafe crossed a glaring red line.
“The cops are on his dick,” he continues more softly. “I know it. We need to—”
“We?” His uncle echoes. “You don’t decide a damn thing until you get your priorities in order. I may not be able to ‘call you to heel,’ but I’ll give you a choice. I have every intention of keeping my hands ‘clean,’ but you haven’t earned the same right.”
“What are you saying?” Rafe counters, his alarm apparent by the subtle inflection in his voice.
“I’m saying, either you take a job for me—now. Or I’ll extract double Zhang’s debt from the little cunt you covered for.”
“Job… I thought you were out of the fucking game?”
“I am,” Shen insists. “You’re taking the fucking risk. Or will you do the smart thing, Rafael?”
Silence falls, but I doubt the conversation is anywhere near over. I imagine them facing off, symbolically wrestling over a decision I don’t understand in full—but whatever it is, I sense it’s momentous. Life or death.
“Where?” Rafe says finally.
“Get in the fucking car,” Shen commands. “We’ll see how far you’re willing to go to prove your loyalty.”
Two sets of footsteps advance in my direction but stop short of the alley. I hear a couple car doors open and shut nearby. Minutes later, the red car vanishes from my line of sight.
When I creep from the mouth of the alley, Rafe is gone too, the street deserted.
A job. The way both he and his uncle uttered that word doesn’t bring to mind the image of a typical nine-to-five.
But whatever he’s doing, it’s because of me. That much is clear by his uncle’s reference to Mr. Zhang. He’s punishing Rafe because of me.
And I have no way of helping. I don’t even have anywhere to go. My only option seems to be waiting for him in the alley, or on the roof.
But as a flicker of movement catches the corner of my eye, I realize that neither option may be available. Headlights ignite a block down, belonging to a vehicle I can’t make out. It pulls away from the curb, heading toward me at a speed that sends my body lurching into motion. Run.
I turn on my heel and start walking, praying that the driver keeps going. I’m being paranoid, overreacting to any little disturbance. Instead, it slows, coming close enough for me to make out the model—a sleek black sedan, far different from Branden’s functional cruiser.
The driver lurks behind a tinted window, hidden from view as the car stops. The back door opens, and a figure climbs out. Tall and bulky, he mounts the curb, his dark eyes cutting in my direction.
This time, I don’t suppress my first instinct. Run!
I take
