BABY WITH THE BEAST Page 3

  “You’re blushing,” Cecilia says. “Like, hard. Blushing really, really hard.”

  “I’m not.” I turn away. Why is my heart hammering in my chest? I pick up a dress more my style. It’s long, cutting below the knee, and cutting high at the neck.

  “Are you a nun?” Cecilia says, snatching it away from me. “Is that it, Mona? Have you become a nun at some point without telling me? Because that’s the only reason you’d pick that.” She leans in, whispering, “By the way, Rocco’s not the marrying type. From what I’ve heard he’s a real scoundrel, the screw-them-and-leave-them type, so if you do decide to follow your urges, just keep that in mind. It wouldn’t be seemly for a nun to have a one-night stand with a biker now, would it?”

  “I hate you,” I say, fleeing to the other side of the rack. “I really, really hate you.”

  “For pointing out how ugly this dress is?” She tilts her head at me. People have said that when Cecilia tilts her head like that, she looks like me, but I don’t see it. I just see Cecilia being Cecilia.

  “Why do you we have to wait until two o’clock for lunch?” I ask. Before she can accuse me of being eager, I quickly add, “If we’re doing this, I’d rather just get it over with.”

  Cecilia shrugs. “Work,” she says. “Shotgun’s a very important man. He’s the leader of his club, remember. He has a lot of responsibilities. He can’t just go to lunch whenever he wants. He has too much to do.”

  Chapter Four

  Rocco

  Shotgun leans back in his chair, sitting at his desk, as he waves me off. He doesn’t seem to want to come with me. He doesn’t make any move to stand up and follow. I think of the old days, when he wouldn’t be caught dead letting somebody else lead a protection gang. But that was before he was a starry-eyed teenager in love and unable to think about anything else. That was before his mind got all bent out of shape by a woman.

  Liam and Philip lead us to the warehouse in their pickup truck, us being me, Beast, Jerry, and Poker Face—a scarred enforcer whose features hardly move when he talks. I once saw him kill a man while staring blandly at the wall. We ride into the city, following the truck, stopping about a quarter-mile from the warehouse district. I climb from the bike and approach Jerry.

  “Watch the bikes,” I tell him.

  “Aw, come on!” He’s short, reedy, with a small mouth and a high-pitched Irish accent. “I need some experience too, Rocco. I can’t just—”

  “I said stay with the bikes. That’s the second time I’ve told you.” He goes silent, stepping back. I lean forward, whispering so only he can hear. “If somebody steals or breaks these fuckers, what’re we going to do if we need to make a quick escape? This is an important job. Do it well. And don’t forget your place. You’re still just a pledge.”

  I turn to the group behind me. Liam and Philip stand at the front of it, looking strange next to Beast and Poker Face. “I hope you have a plan,” I say to Philip.

  “You better,” Poker Face says, and he could be talking about anything. And yet there’s a menacing air around him; there always is a menacing air around him.

  “They will.” Beast smiles broadly down at them. “They wouldn’t lead us out here without a plan. That’d be very silly, and these aren’t very silly men. Are they?” He talks to me, but he stares at Philip’s tattooed dragon.

  Philip swallows. “No,” he says. “The rest of our men are getting into position. The delivery should be here soon, and then we’ll hit it, and then we’ll leave. Simple.”

  “Simple,” I mutter. “And how many robberies you been a part of?”

  Philip hesitates, and then says, “Twenty or so.”

  “Stealing your momma’s watch to get more drugs don’t count,” Beast says.

  “You better—”

  “He better what?” Poker Face says quietly.

  “Nothing.” Philip bows his head. “This is my first large robbery, okay? But I’ve had lots of experience with smaller jobs.”

  “Well, my advice to you is be ready for anything.”

  “I always am,” Philip says.

  “All right.”

  I turn away, light a cigarette, and then toss it without taking a drag. I’m not in the mood to smoke. I stare at the highway, a few meters from our cluster of bikes and Philip’s car. The warehouse is across a stretch of concrete, covered in broken glass and graffiti and the remnants of a homeless man’s tent. I watch the cars go by with my hands in the pockets of my leather, thinking about Shotgun. Then my cell buzzes in my pocket. A text from the man himself, telling me that after the job I need to meet him at the mall. Lunch, apparently. I almost crush the phone in my hand. Lunch, lunch . . . and here I’m about to go on a job. A man doesn’t need lunch after a job. He needs a whisky and a woman.

  “Everything all right?” Beast looks down at me.

  “Fine. We ready to go?”

  “I don’t think this tyke’s boys’ll show. He’s just a chancer, one of those fellas who come back from holiday telling everyone they fucked a model when really they ain’t fucked a hole in the ground.”

  I laugh. “Maybe so. We get paid either way.”

  “Time was Shotgun’d be leading us here,” Beast says, watching me carefully. For such a big man, he can be surprisingly cunning.

  “He’s busy,” I say. “He’s got important club business.”

  “A lot of the fellas would be happy with you as the boss—”

  I turn to him, staring up into his eyes. “Say one more word.”

  For a moment, fear makes Beast’s eyes wide. “Uh . . .” He takes a step back. “I’ll get ready.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I turn back to the road. Despite my anger—Shotgun was my surrogate father once upon a time—I know that Beast speaks the truth. I’ve heard the rumblings, and I hate them. I don’t want to be the boss. I want Shotgun to be the boss. “Lunch,” I whisper, finding the concept absurd. Lunch after a raid. Might as well go bowling after a shootout.

  “Our boys are in position,” Philip calls over. “It’s time.”

  I turn to the men. “Let’s get to it, then.”

  We jog to the warehouse, crouching down near some boxes and watching. The warehouse sits in a slight dip of land, a miniature valley, so that across the way we can see the rest of Philip’s men. There are three of them, and all three look just like Philip and Liam, scrawny and drug-addicted. I take out my pistol, check its ammo. Around me, I can hear Beast and Poker Face doing the same. Philip and Liam just crouch down.

  “Check your piece,” Poker Face says.

  “Piece?” Philip asks.

  “Piece?” Liam echoes.

  “Fuck’s sake.” Beast clicks his neck from side to side. “Your boys have guns, at least?”

  “Johnny does,” Liam tells Philip.

  “Johnny does, apparently.”

  “You kids are real amateurs, hot damn.” Beast spits. “This is too dangerous, Rocco.”

  “Maybe so.” I nod. “But we have our orders.”

  We sit and wait for around half an hour, and then a large truck pulls into the warehouse. The warehouse seems deserted, abandoned, a dead-forgotten building in the middle of an industrial estate. But when the truck pulls up, two Crooked Demons walk out of the side doors. One of them flips a switch to open the big main door. I get a quick peek inside. I see one more Demon, but no more. There could be more men deeper inside. All I can do is hope that there are not.

  “We can hit it anytime now,” Philip says. “But it has to be before the next truck comes. Really, it ought to be right now. They might start unloading the truck and then we’d have to load it all back on again.”

  “What a slick plan you’ve constructed,” Beast mutters. “A real slick customer, this one.”

  “All right, let’s just get this done. Poker, Beast, we’re going in quick, clear the room, get the truck, and get out of there. Philip, you lead your men around the back, work through that way. Let’s go.”

  I smash
through the small door beside the big service entrance with my shoulder, knocking it almost off its hinges, and then aim the gun at both corners, heart pounding in my ears. No matter how many times I do this shit, my heart always pounds in my ears. The room is large and long, with boxes scattered all over the place. Lowlight touches everything, turning it a pale white. A man emerges from behind one of the boxes, a confused look on his face. I run at him and smack him across the face with the butt of my pistol before he can react. He flops to the ground like a fish, and then lies still.

  “Get the truck,” I whisper to Beast, who stands a few boxes away.

  “Boss.” Beast nods.

  Boss. I don’t say anything. Now isn’t the time.

  Poker Face and I watch as Beast clambers into the truck. I hear Philip’s men smashing the door down from the back. It was a mistake sending them that way. It was a mistake sending them in at all. We’d be out in a couple of minutes if it wasn’t for them. As soon as Philip breaks down the door, the sound traveling through the warehouse, the gunfire starts. I roar above the noise, “Leave the truck! We’re getting the fuck outta here!”

  I’ve been in my fair share of gunfights. It sounds like there are at least twenty men firing. If Philip was telling the truth and his men only have two guns between them, that means that there are eighteen tooled-up Demons in this place. The three of us charge through the warehouse as a unit, eyes alert, guns raised, checking every angle. Soon we’re on the fringes of the gunfight. I was right. Eighteen men stand and kneel behind the boxes, firing wildly at Philip and his men. Most of the men wear the Crooked Demons’ leather, a sigil of a devil with crooked horns marked on the back. I gesture to Poker Face and Beast. We choose our targets.

  We fire quickly, brutally, dropping twelve men in the time it takes to turn around. But then the men are running, firing randomly, and we can’t get them all. Three men flee out of a side door, leaving their fallen comrades to bleed into the concrete. I step over the men, approaching Philip. “We’re leaving,” I say.

  “What about the shipment?” He’s crouched low, hands over his ears.

  “Give him the keys,” I say to Beast.

  “They’re in the ignition,” Beast says.

  “Well, there you go, then. We’ve done our job. We’ve protected you. Now we’re leaving. Come on.”

  When we’re back at the bikes, I call Shotgun and tell him about the shootout, about how three of the men got away. “The Crooked Demons are going to be angry, boss. That Gerald fella, Red Fist or whatever they wanna call him . . . he’s going to be angry.”

  “But they got the shipment?” Shotgun says, ignoring me. “The job was a success?”

  “That depends on what you mean by a success—”

  “Are you still coming to lunch?”

  I’ve just killed six men, I want to say. The last thing I need is to sit around a civilized table for a civilized lunch. And anyway, we need to plan how we’re going to deal with the Crooked Demons. They’re going to seek revenge, no question.

  But instead I say, “Yeah, boss.”

  I ride through the city, trying to convince myself that Shotgun is still the same man who picked me up off the streets all those years ago. I’m angry, even if I don’t want to be. Sitting around with Shotgun and Cecilia after a gunfight . . . it’s a joke.

  I feel out of place as I walk through the restaurant looking for them, my leather on my back amidst fancy-looking men and women.

  When I see her, I don’t mistake her for Cecilia. She has a similar face, maybe, but otherwise she’s a completely different woman. She’s in her early twenties by the looks of it, with blonde hair so long it reaches down to her lower back. Her eyes are the brightest blue I’ve ever seen. Her face is subtle-featured. Cecilia is wearing tiny shorts like any club girl, but this woman wears a long, flowing spring dress, her legs barely visible beneath the almost transparent fabric. She looks innocent. She looks like the sort of creature who’ll flee at the sight of a man like me. She looks goddamn beautiful.

  Shotgun jumps to his feet when he sees me. “Rocco!” he exclaims, wild-eyed. He’s always wild-eyed when Cecilia is around. “I’ve mentioned that my fiancée has a twin sister, haven’t I?”

  Chapter Five

  Simone

  Cecilia leaps to her feet, dragging me with her, and plants me in front of the biker called Rocco. It’s awkward enough, standing in front of a man who I saw topless a few hours ago, without Cecilia making it more so, but if there’s one thing Cecilia knows how to do, it’s make things awkward. She pushes me so that I almost bump into him, and then stands beside me.

  “This is my sister, Simone,” she says. “And this, Mona—I call her Mona—this is Rocco Greene. He’s Shotgun’s second-in-command.”

  Rocco’s lip twitches when Cecilia calls him that. Neither Cecilia nor Shotgun catch it, but I do. He wipes the look off his face at once, though, and takes my hand. “It’s a pleasure,” he says.

  He holds my hand a little longer than is necessary, and then the four of us sit at the table. Cecilia has skillfully arranged it so that Rocco and I sit on one side of the table and she and Shotgun sit on the other. This would be fine if it wasn’t a circular table, meaning that Rocco and I are almost sitting separately from the other two.

  “Shall we have some champagne?” Cecilia cries, waving her hands in that overdramatic way she does. She’s always floating on air when Shotgun is around. Shotgun is, too. They’re like a couple of teenagers who’ve just had sex for the first time, and are insane from the passion of it. Without waiting for anybody to answer, Cecilia flags over a waiter. “A bottle of champagne, please.”

  “Isn’t it a bit early for champagne?” I say, addressing Cecilia.

  I feel Rocco’s dark eyes on me. Close up, in real life, I see that they’re brown, but they look black from almost every angle. “You don’t like champagne?” he says.

  “Oh, I love champagne,” I reply. “I also love alcoholism.”

  Rocco growls out a laugh. “What’s that? A word for people who have too much fun?”

  “No, it’s a word for people who trick themselves into believing they’re having too much fun so that they can continue destroying themselves.”

  Rocco tips an imaginary hat.

  Cecilia looks from him to me and back again like a mad scientist whose creation has come to life. She looks far too pleased with herself. “Don’t worry about her,” Cecilia says, pointing, but not looking at me. “She’ll liven up once she has some champagne in her. Once she drank two bottles and went home with an entire football team.”

  “Ceci!” I snap. She’ll do this sometimes, tell random lies just for the sake of it.

  She blushes, shaking her head. She knows she’s gone too far. “None of that was true,” she says quickly. “Not even the part about the champagne.”

  “Why don’t you get control of yourself?” I ask. “Think before you speak.”

  “Okay, I said I’m sorry.”

  “Actually, you didn’t. Not until just then.”

  The champagne arrives and the waiter pours four glasses. I push mine aside, ignoring it and taking a sip of water instead.

  “You’re not going to drink that?” Rocco says. We’re sitting so close I can feel his breath on my neck, sending strange tingles all over my body. I should ask him to move. He’s sitting too close. But I don’t.

  “No,” I say. “I don’t see any reason to drink champagne.” I shoot Cecilia a look when I say this. I know she gets the message. She mouths, “Sorry,” but my cheeks are still red from blushing. I ignore her.

  “Fair enough,” Rocco says. He picks up the glass and drains it in one sip. Replacing the glass, he says, “I hope you don’t mind, Simone.”

  He used my name, I reflect nonsensically. Why should it matter if some leather-wearing brute uses my name? He’s a big man, taller and wider than Shotgun. He barely fits at this table. He’s a muscle-bound leather-wearing day-drinking cigarette-smelling giant of a man. I t
ell myself I have no interest in him.

  “What does everybody want to eat?” Shotgun says, smoothing down his red hair.

  “I know what I want to eat,” Cecilia says, before leaning into Shotgun and whispering in his ear for the next three or four minutes. The waiter skillfully stands aside, watching but not approaching. I’m guessing Cecilia and Shotgun have been here before.