Chapter 19

All eyes were on Mixer.

“Alright,” said Stone. “What’s your idea?”

Mixer took a step forward. “Om’bai kept saying he had to put up these ‘theatrics’ to get the shit in the safe, right?” He looked at everyone in the room. “So, like, he don’t have it yet.”

“What’s your point?” asked Stone.

“Well…” Mixer paused for effect. “Anybody thought to maybe check the safe to see if shit’s really missing?”

Stone frowned, “Hero said—”

“Fuck what Hero said,” Ace snapped. He turned and looked squarely at Stone. “If all you know how to do is what Hero says, how are you gonna take his place?”

Olivia nodded and looked at Stone. “Come on. Maybe what Hero needs right now is the people who love him to admit he’s wrong.” She looked at Ace. “You know I’ve got the combination. Let’s go down and take a look.”

They went down to the basement and huddled around the safe.

“Here goes,” sighed Olivia. “One, two…”

Everyone held their breath as she got to the final digit. She pulled down the handle, and the sound of the lock disengaging echoed through the room. She pulled it open…

…And burst into hysterical laughter. Inside the safe, there was another safe.

“Okay—okay—” Wildcard’s eyes were full of fear. “I’m sick of this confusing-ass shit. Where’s the part where we start shooting people?”

Stone looked at Olivia. “What is so funny?”

No one else was laughing. Except Kang’ju, who just followed Olivia’s lead.

“Come on, you guys!” Olivia laughed. “No one else finds this funny? Like how incredibly convoluted this whole situation is? None of you!?”

“I almost shot you in the face tonight!” Ace spat. “Are you fucked in the head?”

“Yes,” said Olivia. “I think that’s pretty clear at this point.”

Mixer started to chuckle too.

“There,” said Olivia. “Someone else is starting to see the humor in this.”

 “I’m just picturing Pansy’s face when she opened the safe and found that,” smirked Mixer. “She underestimated my hy’ung.”

Olivia looked back at the second safe. “Okay, this one seems to be fingerprint locked. Which makes sense – that’s what smart people would do.” She looked at Kang’ju. “Come here, munchkin. Put your finger right here.”

Kang’ju placed her finger on the lock, and after a couple short beeps, voila. Open sesame, and there it was. All of it. The baggies, the bundled cash, the ledgers. Everything.

Now Ace started laughing. “Oh, thank God.” He frowned. “No wonder Hero was so mad when Kang’ju was in the house.”

Stone’s jaw went agape. “But how—how did Hero know someone opened it?”

Olivia held up a tassel hanging from the door of the combination safe. “He must have had this sitting on top of the inner safe. If someone pulled the door open, it would fall. When he opened the safe and saw it had fallen, he knew someone had opened it. Pretty goddamn clever.”

“Alright,” sighed Stone, scratching his forehead. “Mixer, now that we know we have all the money, how is that gonna help us get Hero back?”

Mixer was still smirking. “Om’bai is helping Pansy because he thinks he’s gonna get all that shit in there. But she don’t got it. That means Pansy’s gonna want to keep Hero alive as long as possible until she figures out how the fuck she’s gonna get out of this mess. So we got more time than we thought.”

Ace stared at Mixer. “When did you get so smart?”

Mixer smiled. “I always been smart, just do a lot of drugs is all.”

Ace frowned. “Then stop it.”

Wildcard held his arms out. “Okay—alright—I think I got most of all this now, alright – Pansy got the combination from shorty here, Hero thought it was Olivia that opened it ‘cause of the construction worker shit, but – why the fuck did Hero make such a goddamn big deal out of the fucking combination and go through all this fucking trouble if everything was in a goddamn fingerprint thing?”

Olivia looked at Wildcard. “Because Hero is psychotically paranoid about whether or not someone can be trusted.” She looked back at the innards of the safe, and closed it. “Especially a woman.” She stood up. “It was never anything but a trust game. And finding out who he could trust was worth dying for.”

Stone looked at Olivia. “So how do we find him? No Blade is gonna know where he is, and certainly no Dragon is going to help us.”

“That’s easy,” said Olivia. “Who is the one person who knows all the dirt on both gangs?”

Olivia insisted on going into A’pa Sei’s alone. No guns, no boys, no bullshit. Even despite needing help to find Hero, Olivia and Falynn had unfinished business.

Falynn put a box of Twinkies on the counter. Olivia chuckled to herself as she watched through the window. Twinkies. Yeah, and I’m the queen of France. Twinkies might be saturated in hydrogenated oils, but not enough to make the box that heavy. Olivia opened the door.

Falynn twisted on her heels as she heard the door ding. For a moment, the two women made heated eye contact. The following seconds happened in strange, bullet-time speed, and before Olivia was even conscious of her instincts and how they moved her body, shots were fired, and she was on the ground.

A jar of pickles exploded next to her head. She grunted in childish complaint before shouting, “Why are you shooting at me!?”

Falynn’s gun stayed pointed. “Because usually when I shoot at people, they go away.”

Falynn shot rounds down the aisle, but Olivia wasn’t running away, nor was she running toward the door. She outran the shots all the way to the counter, and on the next shot, what should have been a bang was an empty click.

Falynn turned to the Twinkie box to grab more rounds, giving Olivia just enough time to tackle the woman to the ground. This didn’t dissuade Falynn, who simply flipped the tiny girl in the black mini dress onto her back and clasped her fingers around her throat.

“The Dragons took Hero,” Olivia choked. “They took Hero.”

Falynn froze. Her arms relaxed. Her eyes went wide, but for just a short moment. She jumped back, and leaned her back against the opposite aisle, looking at the ceiling.

“How the fuck could you let this happen!?”

“What!? Me!?” Olivia cried, climbing onto her butt. “You’re the one who—fuck—you know what? Just fuck you. If you hadn’t hired the Shank to kill those Cunnington boys, I wouldn’t have spent last night bound and gagged.”

“Who said I’m the one that hired the Shank!?” Falynn put her head in her hands. “You retard. Don’t you fucking get it yet? I didn’t hire the Shank to kill those kids, alright? I hired him to find Seneka’s killer.”

“What? Who else would have done it!?”

“Pansy did it. She did it herself. For her little plot to work, to break Hero’s heart and make you a traitor, she naturally needed him to be, like, alive, right? She hired the Cunnington kids to kill Seneka, to beat the hell out of her, and kill Hero at Oregon Park. Then, she hired the Shank to kill them before they could do their last task.”

“You knew all of this!?” cried Olivia. “And you never thought to tell anyone?”

“My business was putting guns in the kids’ hands and putting a blade in the Shank’s,” said Falynn. “I’m a weapons dealer. Not a philanthropist. You seemed so damn gung ho about being Hero’s little angel, I thought for sure you would have had a better handle on things than this. I overestimated you.”

“Do you know where Hero is right now?”

“Of course I do. Fuck if I’m gonna tell you.”

Olivia glared at her.

“So,” said Falynn, beginning to get up. “I guess we’re done—”

Olivia’s voice rose from her throat in a deep, sinister bellow. “Not so fast.”

Falynn stopped.

“For all the shit you gave me,” said Olivia, “for treating the Blades like a roller coaster and not giving Hero the respect he deserves, you got a lot of fucking nerve. You thought I was too scared to buck up and make a choice? Look at you. What’s it going to take for you to admit that Hero is your friend? Not just a customer—a friend. For all your posturing, street-wise bullshit, there’s a human being in there that doesn’t want Hero to get killed. You wouldn’t be so pissed off at me if that weren’t the case.

“I took your advice. I made my choice. I gave up my big mansion and my Westcliff life and I committed myself to Hero. This time, my highly pigmented princess, the action you take down here will follow you home. So how many skeletons do you think you’re gonna have in your closet before this is over?”

Falynn stiffened, took a breath, and tilted her head. “Touché .”

“Damn right, touché.”

Falynn sighed. “Look, the only reason Om’bai has let Hero live this long is because he wanted the bliss. Now that he’s got that—”

“He doesn’t ‘got that.’ He thinks Pansy has it, but we have it all.”

“Well, that’s good news.” Falynn’s eyes were on the floor. She reassembled her thoughts.  “In that case, Pansy’s going to stretch her time with Hero as long as she possibly can, because as soon as she’s done with him, and Om’bai finds out she’s full of shit, well… let’s just say the Dragons don’t have the same code that the Blades do about women.”

“What do you reckon this ‘time with Hero’ entails?”

“Torture, I’d bet.”

Olivia’s blood went cold.

 “But Om’bai wants Hero in one piece, alive,” said Falynn. “So he can hang him off the edge of one of the towers. Publicly. So 8^th Block knows the Dragon Blades are back together with one man, Om’bai, at the top.”

“So they’re at 8^th Block?”

“Bingo.” Falynn stood up. “I’m gonna get those bullets from the counter. We’re gonna need them.”

Stone’s Escalade, with Falynn’s truck not far behind, rolled into the gates of the Thomas Chaucer. Officer Gates, who had already had a trying afternoon, wobbled to Stone’s driver’s side door.

“Good evening, Stone,” he said. “You know the drill, I’m gonna need you to step out of the car-”

Stone pointed his gun at the officer’s head.

Olivia looked over from Stone’s passenger’s side. “If you truly want peace here at 8^th Block, you better go ahead and let us through.”

The officer’s hands were in the air. “Go on through, son.”

Stone smiled, and drove right on by.

The crew stormed through the courtyard of Thomas Chaucer, guns ready and exposed. Fearless. There were a few standers-by, but no one, black or Asian, made a move. Everyone was stoic. Respectful.

“You’re sure Kang’ju is alright?” Stone asked Olivia.

“Don’t worry,” said Olivia. “She’s taken care of.”

A young black boy sat outside the gate of the north tower. “Yo, Stone! They in here!” He pointed up the stairs. “They got Hero on the top floor!”

A woman’s hands came through the door frame, grabbed the boy, and pulled him inside. “Dammit, didn’t I tell you don’t…” Olivia heard him whine something like “mom” before he disappeared into shadows.

She looked around the perimeter of the building. A crowd was beginning to form. Blacks, Asians, kids, adults, all looking up at the ominous yellow window light at the tip of the tower. The blinds were wide open, but it was too high up to see what was going on inside.

As Stone began to push into the room, the kid escaped his mother’s grasp and grabbed Stone’s pant leg, speaking in an ominous, hoarse whisper. “They gon’ know you coming.”

The crew marched up flight after flight of stairs. Focused. Silent. Olivia could barely stand the smell. She stared at each step as they past, her heart pumping lightning bolts through her body. The stairs were endless. She was beginning to believe she would never reach Hero. It felt like she would die first, if only to meet him on the other side.

They got to the door. Olivia almost wanted a moment, some handful of seconds to prepare, but this wasn’t so intimidating for Stone. This wasn’t the kind of thing he was unfamiliar with. Regardless, his hand was on the door handle in milliseconds.

They shoved the door open, only to find a nearly empty and decrepit project apartment and Hero tied to a chair. There were four armed, faceless Dragons to either side of him, Pansy on her knees in front of him, and the Shank stood behind him. He had a dagger under Hero’s nose. Om’bai, who sat at the end of a dirty, tattered kitchen table, stood up, and the Dragons pointed their weapons at the Blades.

Pansy wept. “Just do it!”

The Shank pressed his knife deeper under Hero’s nose. Blood trickled down his lip.

Stone looked to Om’bai. “Stop this. Pansy is lying and she doesn’t have the bliss or the money. Hero will be dead and you will have nothing.”

“He can’t prove anything!” Pansy shouted. “Do it, Shank! Cut his fucking nose off! I want him to die ugly!”

Om’bai lifted his hand. “Pansy knows the rules. Hero doesn’t die until we have the contents of the safe.” He looked at Pansy. “You know the rules, don’t you?”

Pansy’s bottom lip was quivering. Her eyes filled with tears.

Stone pulled his phone out of his pocket and slid it down the table. A photo of the open safe was there.

“Look at the date and the time,” said Stone. “That picture was taken twenty minutes ago. Pansy doesn’t have shit. She lied.”

Pansy began to whimper with fear. “I…”

Om’bai looked at her with cold, dark, calculating eyes. It was impossible to say how his look would end, but Pansy wasn’t brave enough to find out.

She dashed for the door.

Guns changed their direction. The Dragons pointed at Pansy, Stone rushed after her, and the Blades fired at the Dragons. Olivia hit the ground and took cover, and in seconds, other bodies joined her. Two Dragons with cracked skulls, and Om’bai with a knife in his stomach.

Two Dragons remained, guns pointed, shaking in fear.

Falynn pointed her gun straight forward. “Fuck off.”

The Dragons stepped over their dead leader and fumbled out the door.

“Ugh…” As Falynn lowered her gun, she revealed the blood dripping down her arm

“You alright?” asked Ace. He touched her arm. “Did you fire that shot with a round in your fucking arm?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Falynn, nodding to Olivia. “Untie Hero.”

Olivia dove onto Hero’s ropes.

Falynn had a bandana sticking out of her pocket so Ace tied it around her wound. “Nice shooting.”

Falynn shrugged. “No big deal. Longer barrel. Higher muzzle velocity, so—”

“Flatter bullet trajectory,” nodded Ace.

Falynn and Ace smiled at each other.

Olivia looked at Hero as she fought with his bondage. “Do you trust me yet?”

Hero was silent.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

The Shank pulled his bloody knife out of Om’bai’s stomach . “My apologies, old friend. You were outbid.”

He dragged Om’bai to the open window, pushed the dead man’s torso over the windowsill, and proceeded to the shove his entire body right over the edge. He looked over, waiting for a satisfying thud. He enjoyed the sound, along with the screams of the crowd. He then turned around, and smiled fiendishly at Falynn. “Let’s go find Pansy.”

Ace nodded in agreement. “Olivia, you got Hero, right?”

Olivia smiled. “I always have.”

The others fled the scene, and Hero and Olivia were alone with two Dragon corpses. She finished untying Hero, but his arms flopped to his side lifelessly.

“Hero, don’t give up,” said Olivia. “Come on. Get up. You have work to do.”

“You wanna know…” He was barely speaking. “You wanna know… why I like flowers so much?”

Hero’s shirt was soaked in blood. Olivia lifted up some of the fabric. He was covered in slices.

“I know why,” said Olivia, pulling the shirt back down. “It’s because something beautiful can come from nothing. You told me.”

Hero’s eyes began to close.

“No, no, no, Hero, wake up,” said Olivia. “You did make something beautiful out of nothing. You made your daughter. So you have to get the fuck up. Right now.”

A presence came toward the door. Ace. “Olivia. Come here.”

“Not yet.”

“Olivia. Please. Come over here.”

Olivia followed Ace a couple doors down the hall. The door made an ominous creek as Ace pushed it open. She could hear Mixer crying.

Stone’s eyes were open, but no light of life shone through them. The back of his skull was cracked open, exposing bloody lumps of brain matter. His hands were limp, his knees bent, twisting his body into a contorted, empty corpse. The pool of blood beneath him was fresh, still moving, still flowing, still draining.

“She killed him,” spat Wildcard. “That fucking bitch killed Stone.”

Olivia was stunned. No synapse she could fire in her brain would allow her body to move. She could barely make herself form breath.

“Where did she…” Olivia managed.

“No one saw where she went,” whispered Ace. “We gotta get Hero and get out of here.”

“We can’t just leave him here, hy’ung,” sobbed Mixer.

Falynn moved toward the body.

“Get the fuck away from him,” Wildcard snapped.

They lingered too long. Hero was in the doorway.

“Hero, no,” Olivia moved toward him. “Get out of here, you can’t—”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” snapped Hero, and he dove toward the body. He collapsed to his knees, his blood meeting his friend’s. “Stone, no. No. Not you.”

Olivia began to cry. “Hero—come on.”

She grabbed his arm, but he pushed her away and erupted in furious weeping. He pulled up Stone’s body, cradling him in his arms. “I told you I fucking needed you. Don’t fucking leave me now.” He covered the hole in his friend’s head with his hands. He pressed his fingers into his bloody, matted hair, desperately trying to put the pieces of his skull back together. “You always saved me. I gotta save you back.”

The sound of shifting weight broke the silence of mourning. A thump. From the closet.

Ace pulled out his gun, cocked and ready. Hero’s eyes shot lasers at that closet.

“Mixer,” bellowed Hero. “Open that door.”

Mixer did. Pansy poured out like liquid, quivering and gelatin-like. Her gun rattled with terror as she attempted to point it at Mixer. He jerked it out of her hand with ease.

She fell onto her stomach, her palms on the ground. “I defended myself! He was gonna kill me!”

No one said anything.

She lifted her head and looked at Hero with pleading eyes. “You can’t kill me. I’m the mother of your child.”

Hero stared at her. His eyes were blank, lifeless, but coated with a thick layer of rage.

Ace pointed his gun firmly at Pansy’s head. “Hero, say the word and it’s done.”

“You can’t kill me, you’re a Blade!” Pansy shouted. “A Blade can’t hurt a woman! Punishable by death!”

“Hero,” said Ace, firmly. “We’ve made exceptions to the code—”

“And look where it got us,” said Hero, cradling Stone’s body in his arms. He closed his eyes. “I just wanted to make something out of nothing. What did I make?”

“Hero, snap out of it,” hissed Olivia. “This was not your fault. It was her – it was all her.”

Tears flowed down Hero’s cheeks. “I can’t. A Blade can’t harm a woman.”

A voice of crystal clear wisdom rose above the haze of emotion.

“He’s right,” said Falynn, raising her eyebrows. “A Blade cannot harm a woman. It’s in the code.”

Olivia looked at Falynn. “Not you too.”

“But at the same time…” Falynn said, smirking devilishly at Olivia. “…a woman can’t be a Blade.”

They looked at each other. Falynn took her revolver and pressed it into Olivia’s hand. “It’s all yours, snow bunny. But remember. The shit you do down here will follow you home.”

Olivia gripped the gun tightly. “I am home.”

She looked at Hero. He looked back. Stoic. Approving.

Bang.

Club Lanka. After hours. The Dragons and the Blades hadn’t shared a table since Seneka’s birthday party, and there they were again. This time they weren’t drinking or partying. This time they were silent as death. At the center of the table were two framed photographs of Seneka and Stone.

Hero stood up and addressed the table. Olivia looked up at him, her face aglow with pride.

“As you’re all well aware,” said Hero, “some serious changes were made in our organization last night. It’s come to my attention that the way we’ve been doing things down here, to put it simply, doesn’t fucking work.”

Olivia smiled.

“I want to propose some changes to the code,” continued Hero. “First of all, no more pimping. In Sequoia Grove a woman’s body is her own fucking business and she will have one hundred percent of the fruits of her labor. The girls can handle themselves. On that note, a woman sure as fuck can make just a good a Blade as any man.”

Falynn smiled at Olivia.

“Secondly, I appoint Mixer, Wildcard, Ace, and Olivia my personal council who will at all times have access to Blades finances. They’ve earned this right by proving the content of their character.

“Things are going to get harder before they’re going to get better. There may even be more violence before there’s peace. But that’s the way it’s gotta be. It ain’t gonna change that this is the right way to go.”

The Shank smirked.

“Until today, this has been an organization built on racism, sexism, bigotry, and deceit. Tonight, we’re gonna write a new code. Johnny Law leaves us alone down here. In Sequoia Grove, we can build whatever world we want to. We owe it to ourselves and each other to make it a new one.”

Hero sat back down.

Wildcard looked up. “Does this mean we’re gonna like, vote and shit?”

Hero stared at him blankly.

“Alright.” Wildcard looked down. “Maybe not.”

Margaret tilted her head. “Umm… honey?”

Dan relaxing on the couch watching TV as Margaret went through the mail. She tightened her lips, reading the latest bank statement.

“What’s the matter?” asked Dan.

“Our joint account is a lot lower than I expected…” Margaret said. “There’s a withdrawal in here that’s… well… it’s pretty large.”

“Well, it costs a lot of money to have an Asian gang leader assassinated, dear.”

Margaret scoffed. “I’m being serious.”

Dan smirked.

“I just wish you would talk to me if you’re going to buy something that expensive. I mean, I’m not going to ask you what you bought or anything.”

“Okay.”

“I mean if you want to tell me, that’s fine too. Whatever you want to do. I just don’t—”

There was a knock at the door.

“I got it.”

Margaret was still talking, but Dan didn’t listen to it before opening the door. Standing there was a beautiful four year old Asian girl. She was doe-eyed, confused, and holding a ballerina doll. Her other hand had a small note. She held it out to Dan.

Dan frowned, took the note, and unfolded it.

Try Again. Love, Olivia.

Dan held the note tightly in his hand, looked at the little girl, and then back at the note, his face pinched with thought.

“…I mean this is the joint account, after all, so maybe we should talk about these purchases together. Dan, are you listening to me?”

“Uhh, yeah,” said Dan, folding the note and putting it in his pocket. “I want a divorce.”

THE END.

Thank you for taking this crazy journey with me over the past three and a half years.

Now I gotta go write the movie.

Chapter 18

Olivia ran. She crushed gravel, digging tiny pebbles into her bare feet. She ran with tunnel vision, her eyes dry, her chest heaving. She sucked in breath after breath, the air stabbing her lungs like tiny daggers. Her bag bounced against her hip, making her itch and go numb. She closed her eyes, knowing all she needed to know about where she was headed – it was further away.

She knew where Hero was going. He was going to check the safe. If Pansy’s attackers were Cunnington laborers – it wasn’t going to take long for the Shank to give Hero the news. And if Olivia, her knowledge of the combination, and the safe were alone together all night… Hero was going to make sure.

But Olivia knew damn well that safe was going to be empty.

It was the perfect set up. Empty the safe while no one’s home. Set up Hero at Oregon Park while Olivia is home alone - and be sure to hire goons that directly related to Olivia. She, the Westcliff newcomer, becomes the perfect patsy. This wasn’t just about killing Hero – this was orchestrated quite carefully to frame her.

But if this was the case, someone else had the combination, and that someone else knew Olivia had it as well. But how was that possible?

Olivia reached the end an alley way, but not before a car ripped in her way, engine roaring, headlights aglow. Olivia could see Ace’s hat before she saw his face. She pointed her gun at his head and caught her breath.

“I’m being set up,” she shouted.

“Whoa, alright. Calm down. Put the gun down, and come get in the car.”

“I didn’t empty the safe.”

“I know,” said Ace. “But that doesn’t change the fact that every Blade in the Grove is looking for you right now. We gotta sort this shit out.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Fuck. Sorry.” Ace tilted his head and frowned. “I didn’t realize you were overwhelmed with options.”

Olivia lowered the gun. Wincing, and thighs in pain, she got in the car.

“Okay, now take a breath, and tell me what happened,” said Ace, pulling onto the street.

“Not until you tell me where you’re taking me.”

“Just driving around,” said Ace. “Keep you moving so no one can find you. So what’s this about the safe?”

“It’s empty, isn’t it?” asked Olivia. “That’s why the Blades are after me now?”

“Why would anyone think you emptied the safe?” asked Ace. “That’s insane.”

“Because apparently some guys attacked Pansy so they could set up Hero at Oregon Park, and the guys have all worked with my father – someone hired them on purpose,” said Olivia.

“Fuck, that’s clever,” said Ace. “How did you figure that out?”

“My Dad called me and told me who got killed,” said Olivia. “Ace, you have to tell Hero I didn’t do this.”

“Hero’s too angry to be reasoned with right now,” said Ace. “Trust me. I tried.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He just told me to find you,” said Ace. “But if we’re gonna convince him you didn’t betray him, we gotta break this down, all right?  Now, the only other person who was in the house was Pansy, so when could anyone else have gotten into the safe?”

“It had to have happened before Hero and I got there,” said Olivia. “All the Cunnington guys must have broken in somehow.”

“Without Pansy noticing?”

Olivia glared at him.

“Don’t look at me like that. I believe you. But that ain’t gonna convince Hero.”

“Pansy was barely conscious,” Olivia hissed. “There has to be something else going on over here because I didn’t do anything. Why is no one blaming the Dragons? There’s a whole other gang out there—”

“A gang that got the safe combination how?” said Ace. “If you got answers, I’m all ears.”

“Fine. Then why did I do it? What the fuck was my motive? My parents are filthy fucking rich.”

“That may be,” said Ace. “But five years ago a lot of white Westcliff people got killed by Hero’s hand. It ain’t unlikely that you knew at least one of them.”

“What, like all white people know each other? That’s a real fucking stretch.”

“Fine. If you wouldn’t want to go after Hero, who would?”

Olivia pictured everyone she had met since she came to Sequoia Grove. Ace. Wildcard. Mixer. Stone. The Flowers. “Fuck,” said Olivia. “Who wouldn’t?”

 “Well, let’s be fair and look at how this shit looks from Hero’s point of view,” said Ace. “Let’s say five years ago, a few of your friends, Kai’lah’s kidnappers, were killed. You bided your time, you pulled your resources together, and you made a plan. You showed up at Lanka and the first thing you did is seduce any Blade you could get your hands on-”

 “Fuck you.”

“Don’t you want to know what they’re saying?” asked Ace. “Don’t you want to know what Hero is thinking?”

Olivia went silent.

“You couldn’t set up Hero without the help of the Dragons, so you promised them the safe combination,” continued Ace. “The Dragons helped you act like Hero’s little ideal, and they helped you set up Crash and Daniel, everything you needed to gain trust. And they put up the money to get your Cunnington boys on board.”

“Nobody can prove any of this.”

“But you had to keep your end of the deal and get that safe combination,” said Ace. “First you manipulated Seneka in thinking it was a good idea. As soon as she poured her heart out to Hero, the next part was easy. Have her blown away, and Hero would be so torn up with guilt he’d have to fulfill baby sister’s final wish.”

“But I never told her I wanted the combination!”

“Well, she can’t exactly back you up on that can she?” Ace frowned. “So once you delivered the combination to the Dragons, you were quick. Pansy gets attacked, Hero runs out to get revenge, the safe gets emptied in his absence, and here we are.”

“So Hero told you all of this?” Olivia asked. “Kinda sounds like you put all of that together yourself.”

“What makes you say that?” Ace asked. “I told you. I’m on your side.”

Olivia stiffened. Her blood went cold. She realized her fatal error. Ace never said the safe was empty. She did. He dished the game, she lost it. He’d been playing her since before she got in the car. Wherever he was taking her, it wasn’t anywhere good.

“Oh yeah?” asked Olivia. “Tell me you’re the queen of France.”

“What?”

“I want to hear what you sound like when you tell a lie. Tell me you’re the queen of France.” She pointed the gun at him. “Do it.”

Ace pulled the car over, gently bringing it to a slow halt. In still silence, he took in a soothing breath. “Fine.” He smiled at her. “Olivia, I’m the queen of France. Will you calm down now?”

She reached for the car door, giving Ace the opportunity to jerk her own gun out of her hand and point it straight at her head.

“You know, chag’ya, it would have been a great plan, if you hadn’t been so sloppy.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You didn’t expect Blondie, your little boyfriend with the dark eyebrows, to stumble into me at A’pa Sei’s shop,” said Ace. “He got all up in my grill, giving him shit about fucking and beating his beautiful little Olivia.”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” spat Olivia. “Blades can’t hurt women.”

“Hero gave me a pass once, didn’t he?” said Ace. “I’m sure as fuck he’ll do it again.”

The last thing Olivia could remember was white cloth pressed to her mouth.

Stone dreamily watched the light from the buzzing fluorescent lantern slide up and down his arm as he tapped the corner of his worn down cell phone. He waited for the plastic gadget to deliver him with a boredom-vanquishing ring. If there was one thing Hero was good at, it was making people wait.

A moldy but empty smell saturated the long-since abandoned classroom. Mixer chewed the inside of his mouth. The rim of Ace’s navy fedora covered his eyes. Wildcard leaned his head against the tattered wall.

Olivia’s eyes fluttered open. She saw her four friends, out of focus, and felt ropes binding her arms to a chair.

“Man,” said Wildcard. “I really hate killing people.” He leaned his face close to Olivia’s. “But I’m willing to make an exception for you, princess.”

“Shut the fuck up, Wildcard,” scoffed Ace. “You ain’t killin’ nobody.”

“Then why the fuck did I bring my gun!?” Wildcard snapped. “I’m so sick of this shit.”

“Wildcard!” snapped Stone, tapping the phone. “How many times we gotta go over this shit?”

Olivia fidgeted. “Where’s Hero?”

“Well, rise and shine, chag’ya,” said Ace. “Sleep well?”

“You guys can’t kill me, can you?” asked Olivia. “Where’s Hero? What about the code?”

Ace punched her in the face.

“Hey!” snapped Stone. “Not until we get orders.”

“Don’t worry,” said Ace, eyes heavy on Olivia. “She likes it.” He grabbed her face in his hands. “Don’t you, you little freak? You gonna get wet for me again?” He slid his thumb across her bottom lip.

“Ace, back the fuck off,” said Stone, pointing his gun. “We wait for orders.”

She pulled at her ropes. “There’s someone out there stealing from the Blades and betraying Hero and you’re wasting your time on me!”

Mixer looked down. “They gonna kill you, O, and it’s gonna be nasty.” He looked at her. “Just tell us where the shit is at and we gonna let you go. Swear it. We’d rather not hurt nobody else.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” She looked at Stone and Ace. “If you kill me here tonight, I’m not the only one you’ll be killing.” Her eyes burned. “It will kill Hero, too.”

Hero stood outside the door, just staring forward, thinking.

You made your choice. Too late to go back now.

But if it was too late, what was he doing there? There of all places?

He pictured Olivia’s face clearly in his mind, trying to forgive himself. Forgive himself for not seeing what clearly had to be the truth. She could not have ever been the person she claimed to be. The evidence was piled so strongly against her. But he couldn’t cope with the stress, hearing his heart say one thing, but his mind say the other. His mind had to be right. But then why did his heart have no doubts about this girl? How foolish was he?

At that very moment, at the abandoned high school, Olivia was tied to a chair, and Stone was sitting by his phone, awaiting orders. To kill, to damage, or to set free. The mere idea was a blatant violation of Blades Code. To harm a woman. But Hero was already a hypocrite. He had already hurt a woman badly since the code was written. It just wasn’t physical harm, and now it was time to tie up this one last loose end.

He sent a text to Stone.

kill her.

Stone was frozen. He couldn’t believe what he was reading.

“What did he say?” Wildcard asked, spotting Stone’s hesitation.

Stone didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” said Olivia. “I’m dying to know myself.”

Stone looked at her. “Shut up.” He looked at Ace. “Gag her.”

“You don’t gotta tell me twice.” Ace grabbed the bandana and tied it around Olivia’s mouth. She didn’t bother resisting.

Mixer was tempted to ask what was about to happen, but he really didn’t want to.

“Okay,” breathed Stone. “Hero just sent me his command... but I think the four of us better go outside and discuss it.”

The three boys looked at him questioningly.

“Outside,” said Stone. “Now.”

With heavy frowns, they followed Stone out the door. He left the phone on the table.

Hero knocked on the door. As it creaked open, his eyes were at the dusty floor. He followed a pair of thin, elegant legs all the way up to a familiar, sweet face.

“Hi,” said Pansy.

“Hi,” said Hero.

Pansy hesitated. “What are you doing here?”

“Will you just let me in? I want to talk to you.”

She moved bashfully on the side, watching his frame glide into her tiny apartment. She stared at him, astonished and moved, as she closed the door behind him.

“What’s wrong?” asked Pansy. “Are you okay? Where’s Olivia?”

“I don’t want to think about her right now.” Hero put his hands through Pansy’s hair. “I just came here to apologize.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” said Hero. “For everything. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Tears formed in Pansy’s eyes. “I forgive you, Hero.”

He leaned his head into Pansy’s. “I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”

Pansy started to cry. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” She leaned her mouth into his and kissed him, tear drops lining their mouths.

“Wait.” He gently pushed her away. This was a mistake. It didn’t change anything. “I didn’t come here for that.”

“Then what did you come here for then?”

“Just to apologize. And that’s it. I just wanted to see you.” He turned his body back toward the door. “I gotta go.”

“Wait,” said Pansy, sniffling. “Wait. Please stay.”

“I can’t.”

“You must be hungry,” said Pansy. “Let me make you some food. Please? Let me cook you something. It won’t take long.”

Her eyes were wet and hopeful. “Okay. Please, sit.” She dashed into the tiny kitchen corner.

“One,” said a fuzzy cartoon voice. “One, two.”

“One, two bananas!” said a child.

Hero looked into the tiny living room area. There was little Kang’ju, sitting on the floor. Kang’ju pressed another button, and the cartoon voice said, “Five.” She pressed it again.  “Five.”

“Five bananas!” shouted Kang’ju.

Hero went over and sat next to her. “When you gonna learn to count in order, princess?”

“I’m not counting,” said Kang’ju. She pressed the buttons again.

“One,” said the computer. “Two.” The computer spoke on with every button pressed. “Five. Five. Three. Two. Eight—”

Hero grabbed the computer from her. “What are you doing?”

“Pressing the numbers,” said Kang’ju. “So I don’t forget.”

Hero frowned. “You still know that number? It’s been a minute, how do you—”

“One, two,” she said. “Five. Five. Three—”

“Hero?” said Pansy from the kitchen. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” said Hero. “No, I don’t… I don’t think so…”

Pansy came back in and looked into the room.

“Pansy, how often does Kang’ju play with this little number thing?”

Pansy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Mommy loves the numbers game!” said Kang’ju. “She laughed a lot.”

“Did she?” asked Hero. He looked at Pansy with a warm smile, though his heart flopped in his chest. “I’m glad to hear she’s smiling.”

Pansy smiled and looked straight at the floor.

“Mommy, mommy!” said Kang’ju. “Five. Five. Three, and then what?”

Hero looked Pansy in the eye. “Yeah. Then what?”

Pansy gulped. “I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. Then what?”

Pansy gave him a big hug. “I’m just so happy you’re here. Can’t you just stay? Just be here with me and Kang’ju tonight. Please. Everything gonna be great, you’ll see. We could be so happy.”

Hero stroked her hair. “Okay. I’ll stay. But you gotta do something for me.”

“Anything.”

“You gotta tell me those numbers. I want to trust you.”

“Okay,” said Pansy. She was desperately uncertain, but his eyes were persistent and warm. She gave in. “One, two...”

Hero didn’t leave her eyes.

“Five, five, three...”

He nodded encouragingly.

“...two, eight.” She gulped.

He put his fingers through her hair. “It’s okay. Calm down, okay? You were scared. I understand.” He looked at Kang’ju. “I knew that Kang’ju would repeat that number enough times that you would catch on. The same seven digits over and over? If Kang’ju didn’t tell you straight up, you were gonna figure it out.”

Pansy let out a sigh of relief. “Then why didn’t you just tell me? I would have been honored.”

“You definitely wouldn’t have stolen from the safe if I had told you directly – it would have been too obvious it was you,” Hero explained. “If you had the combination thinking I didn’t know you had it, well, that’s a different story.”

“It was a test?” Pansy asked.

“A test that you passed,” he said. He kissed her forehead. “Someone else, unfortunately, did not.”

But he had spoken too soon.

Hero couldn’t breathe. He tried to take in oxygen, and all that came through were tiny, dizzying ripples. His throat went dry, but he kept his face calm. Do-rag. Do-rag on the chair. Crash’s do-rag.

Hero thought fast.

“What’s wrong?” asked Pansy. She could feel him grow tense.

“Alright,” Hero shuddered. “I have to go handle something very important. Okay? I’ll be back. I promise.” He kissed her. Her mouth tasted toxic.

The phone buzzed. Olivia stared at it.

She shouted through her ropes as loud as she could, twisting, fighting, and pleading. It was no use.

Buzz, buzz, buzz. Short pause. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Please. Please. Someone. It’s him. He’s telling you not to kill me. Where are you?

Sweat collected at every corner of her face. Salty drops fell onto the bandana. No matter how much she wailed, only a mild, muffled sound came through. Saliva-soaked fabric rubbed the corners of her mouth raw.

Buzz, buzz, buzz. Stop. Silence.

More silence.

And the boys came back in.

“Okay.” Stone looked at Olivia, holding his gun at his side. “Let’s get on with it then.” He lifted the barrel to her forehead.

“Wait,” said Mixer. “Don’t do it.”

“Mixer!” said Ace. “We decided!”

“We didn’t decide, Hero decided,” said Mixer. “And back in the day, he decided we don’t hurt women. I chose to be a Blade and follow the code.”

“You lost your sister,” Ace reminded him. “And this bitch killed mine.”

“No she didn’t!” Mixer said. “Those white boys did – and they already got what was comin’ to ‘em!”

Ace looked at Stone. “Don’t let Mixer trip you up. Just do it.”

“You don’t want Olivia dead either, Ace!” Mixer shouted. “You wouldn’t be so mad at her if you didn’t love her so goddamn much!”

Ace pointed his gun at Mixer’s head. “Shut the fuck up!”

“See?” Mixer spat. “You’re so out of your mind you got a gun on me now!”

Ace clenched his teeth and repositioned his barrel. Olivia was the new target. “Fine. Stone, if you’re not gonna do it, I will.”

The end of a new pistol pressed against Ace’s head.

“Put the fucking gun down.”

Hero.

 “I think I speak for everyone in this room when I say...” said Wildcard. “...what the fuck?”

“The ‘fuck’ is we have to get out of here right now,” said Hero. “We break in different directions, meet back up on third and Washington in fifteen. I’ll explain everything then.” He lowered his gun and went to town on Olivia’s ropes. “Crash probably knows we’re here.”

Mixer helped Hero get the ropes completely untied as Stone pulled the gag from Olivia’s mouth. “Crash?”

Olivia shook off the ropes and jumped from her chair. “Shut up and move!”

They collected outside the high school, but it was too late. Four cars had already pulled up and parked just outside the door, plenty of armed goons in toe, with Om’bai in the spotlight, a gun to the side of Pansy’s head. Pansy was weeping.

“All we want is Hero,” said Om’bai. “Come with us, and Pansy doesn’t get hurt.”

Hero frowned. “No deal.”

Om’bai chuckled. “Oh, Hero. For all your posturing, you always were willing to let an innocent woman die, weren’t you?” He clutched the side of her neck, making her whimper.

“Please, Hero,” whined Pansy. “Please, don’t let him hurt me.”

Hero breathed hard, frowning, thinking, and pausing.

And Olivia’s eyebrow twitched. “...really?”

Stone stared at her, hissing a whisper, “What the fuck is the problem?”

“I mean, who says that?” Olivia was perfectly calm. “‘Don’t let him hurt me?’ Please. Aren’t you supposed to say like, don’t give in? Don’t worry about me? Save yourself? I mean she’s being kind of a whiney bitch, I’m just saying.”

Stone’s eyes popped out. “Olivia, now ain’t the time to--”

The sound of another car door opening jerked their faces back to center stage, where Crash emerged with his hands on Kang’ju’s shoulders. A few feet away, Pansy was now free and armed, pointing her gun at Hero’s head.

“Okay, now I’m really confused,” said Wildcard.

“I don’t blame you, Wildcard,” sighed Om’bai. “I really don’t like these theatrics either. But, my associates and I really want the contents of the safe, and if all we have to do is play Pansy’s little game, it’s a price we’re willing to pay.” He looked at Hero. “I overestimated you, Hero. Giving the combination to your four year old daughter was a wildly irresponsible move.”

Daughter? All eyes on the Blades side were now pointed straight at their leader. A liar.

Hero smirked wryly. “Yeah, I’m gettin’ that.”

“How could you lie to me for so long?” wept Pansy. “You told me we couldn’t be together because Kang’ju and I would never be safe. But what about her?” She tilted her chin toward Olivia. “You weren’t too scared to hold her! That was supposed to be me!” She sniffled. “I just wanted you to suffer. I wanted your heart to break like mine did.”

Hero looked at the floor. Calculating. He looked back up. “You just want me?”

Stone looked at Hero. “You ain’t gonna give in to them are you?” Hero raised a silencing hand.

“Yes,” said Om’bai.

“Fine,” said Hero. “The Blades will trade me for Kang’ju.”

“No deal,” spat Pansy. “You can’t have my daughter.”

“Or, we could just all start shooting each other and see who’s left standing,” said Hero. “Your call, Om’bai.”

Om’bai looked at Pansy. “Your daughter is useless to me. Hero, however, isn’t.” He looked at the Blades. “Deal.” He nodded to Crash.

Crash lifted his hands from Kang’ju’s shoulders.

“Come here,” said Hero. “It’s okay.”

Kang’ju walked awkwardly to her father. He gave her a hug.

“Stay here with Stone. It’s gonna be okay.” He gently nudged her toward Stone, and looked at his crew. “Don’t follow me.” He started to walk toward Om’bai’s car.

“Hero!” Olivia snapped. “Do I at least get an apology?”

Hero glared at her. “Sure. I’m sorry you didn’t listen the first time I told you to stay the fuck out of Sequoia Grove.” He looked at Stone again. “I’m serious. This is my final order. Do not follow this car.”

As Hero sat in the car, Olivia dashed to the door, her fingers locking its edges. “I know you want a woman to punish you for what happened to Kai’lah, but don’t make the rest of us suffer for your guilt.”

He jerked the door out of her fingers, but she shoved her arm in the door.

“It wasn’t your fault Hero,” Olivia cried. “You did the right thing.”

He pushed her arm out and slammed the door shut. The engines roared, and the Dragon caravan disappeared into the city.

The Blades crew rushed back into 912, broken, confused, and shaken. Olivia was holding Kang’ju’s hand.

“You a goddamn coward, you know that?” Wildcard shouted, chasing Stone into the house.

“Hero said do nothing, so we do nothing, end of discussion,” hissed Stone, closing the door behind them. He looked at Olivia. “Now why don’t you get back on the train and go back to Westcliff where you belong?”

“Fuck you,” spat Olivia. “I made Hero a promise, that everything I do is to protect him and his family, and I intend to keep that promise.”

“I made Hero a promise too--to abide by the code,” said Stone. “And guess what? Code says no woman can be a Blade.”

“The code also says that only Hero has the combination-and no harm to women,” retorted Olivia, “so we can clearly see how seriously he takes your precious code!”

“Olivia’s right!” said Wildcard. “We need to mount up! Those motherfuckers killed Seneka just to get to Hero! It’s time to tear those motherfuckers down!”

Stone ignored him. “Olivia, look. You want to keep your promise, why don’t you spend that energy trying to figure out what we’re gonna do about his daughter? She can’t stay here.” He looked at Ace and Wildcard. “Y’all need to figure out how we gonna recoop our losses.”

“Your biggest loss right now...” Olivia grumbled. “...is Hero.”

 “Cut your ‘love conquers all’ shit, O,” interjected Ace. “He was an inch away from letting us pump your skull full of holes. Why the fuck are you so gung ho about saving him?”

Olivia shot him a lightning glare. “I fucking dare you to question my motives again, asshole.”

“I’m taking you up on that dare, snow bunny.”

Olivia stomped toward him, ready to throw a hard punch to his jaw, but was interrupted by the sound of glass shattering. Their heads jerked to the side, seeing the remains of a shattered glass fall from the wall to the carpet. Mixer stood nearby.

“I can’t believe you guys treat me like a child,” said Mixer, “when you act like this.”

Stone frowned. “Mixer--”

“Shh.” Mixer folded his arms. “Stop being babies.” He looked at Stone. “Olivia’s right. We can’t just sit here.”

Stone took a deep breath. “Mixer, Hero said--”

“You only want to do what Hero said because you don’t have any better ideas,” said Mixer. He stood up straight and looked everyone in the room square in the eye. “But I do.”

Chapter 17

WARNING: This chapter includes adult material not intended for anyone under the age of 18 or anyone in my family. Read at your own risk.

Olivia couldn’t relax. Every time her tension began to slip away and her eyes lost their grip of focus, she would snap back into complete attentiveness. She gripped the bottom of her pillow and could feel the warmth of Hero’s back against hers.

Going to sleep at 912 was rarely silent, but Olivia found herself hyper-aware of every sound. Every footstep, every groan, every creek. Who was awake? What were they doing? Was Mixer high, playing video games? Was Ace cleaning his gun? Was Stone drinking? The beep reverberated in her imagination.

Stone and Olivia had stopped speaking to one another. It wasn’t so difficult; they hadn’t spoken often to begin with. But that smell, that odor of liquor, that look in Stone’s eyes... Living under the same roof was getting under her skin. Did he know she had the combination? She couldn’t be sure. And even if he did, did it even matter?

“You aren’t talking,” whispered Hero.

“Aren’t I supposed to be sleeping?”

“But you’re not.” Hero turned around. “You don’t think I did the right thing.”

Olivia rolled over and managed a smile. “I don’t think there’s ever a clear right or wrong thing. Especially not down here.”

He glared at her. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I never bullshit you.”

“But you don’t think I was the target, do you?”

Olivia was silent, the image of Seneka’s death buzzing in her mind like television static.

“Okay, smart girl,” said Hero, frowning, snide, “why would anyone want to kill Seneka?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly. Because there is no reason.”

“Hero, come on. I already said I was supporting you. Why are you picking a fight with me?”

“Because if there’s any reason, I want to hear it.”

Olivia looked away from his eyes. “Falynn said Seneka was the peace keeper in the grove, so now that she’s gone…”

“Now that she’s gone, what?”

“Well, maybe somebody doesn’t want peace.”

Hero turned onto his back. “I’ll pick you up from work tomorrow. I don’t want Stone doing it.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I really don’t need a ride.”

“Well, I want to give you one. And my will is stronger.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Olivia lay their silently, letting the insomnia dig its claws into her belly once again. She listened to him breathe. He breathed hard, in and out, and fidgeted heavily. After a few moments, she heard the sound of fabric sliding against fabric. His arm reached around her belly, he pulled her onto her back, and the warmth of his leg hugged hers.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Olivia. “What are you doing?”

“Fucking you. What do you think I’m doing?”

“I don’t want to.”

He sighed and pressed his lips together. “Don’t you want me?”

“Not right now. Not like this.”

He lay on his side next to her, his elbow rested on her left side, his right arm over her body, looking down and over her. He looked up at her eyes.

“Do you love me?” Hero asked. “For real?”

“Of course! Come on, Hero, you know I’ve given up a lot for you—”

“Not your heart.” He shook his head. “I don’t feel it.”

“I didn’t think you cared.”

“I do.” He stroked her hair. “You and I have risked a lot for each other. What did we risk it for?”

Olivia put her hand on the side of his face. She brushed the hair from his eyes and let her fingers trail his cheek. Her chest tightened up with an acute, stinging sadness. “I’m really sorry I ever made you feel like I don’t love you. It’s a tragedy.”

“Then tell me I’m wrong.”

“You are wrong,” she said, slightly laughing. “You are the only person, in my entire life, who has ever bothered to ask me what I wanted.” She raised her voice a bit, freeing herself. “The only thing I know I want for sure is to be yours. This is the only time I ever felt special. In my whole life. And if anyone tries to hurt you, Seneka, the flowers, or anyone you care about ever again, they will fucking pay. And that’s it. They will fucking pay.”

Hero’s breath jolted a bit with emotion and his gentle touch to her hair became a grip. He could hear the desperation in her voice. He could see the devotion in her eyes.

“They will pay,” he said. “And you are special. You are all that is special and precious to me.” He kissed her. “You and me together. We gonna run the fucking table.”

“Fuck yeah, we are,” Olivia said, building a smile from deep in her gut. “Nobody hurts us and gets away with it.”

“Damn, girl,” he said, with a hesitant laugh. “You as ruthless as you are beautiful.”

“Count on it,” she smiled. “I swear. As far as I’m concerned, my purpose on this planet is to make you happy and do what’s best for your family.”

“Our family,” he said with a smile. “And I promise to protect you and love you for the rest of my life. That’s my word.”

He kissed her hard, gripping her body and seizing her senses. He owned them, but she gave them to him. He was not a thief, he was a welcomed recipient.

Her hands slurped up the flavor of warm, soft skin as they traveled the landscape of his body. Her legs slowly rose to hug his thigh and she enjoyed the steady, intoxicating heat of his groin against her thigh. Her feet rubbed against his giddily, soaking up more sensation.

He slid the blanket from her body, carefully studying every part he exposed. He venerated her skin, respecting it as the most precious gift the universe had ever given him. He was rediscovering her. It was as if they had never touched before.

His teeth tightened together, partnering with a grunt of aggression as he pushed his body into hers, joining them. A sultry grunt escaped his throat and a white hot surge of lightning launched through her body. She could feel it from her teeth to the tip of her toes. He collapsed into her as her arms wrapped him into safety, rocking him up and down. Caressing him. Loving him.

“Come for me, chag’ya.”

And the pleasure unleashed, ripping though her veins and tearing through her body with brute ferocity. His eyes never left hers, and though the pleasure temporarily fazed her senses, her focus remained on his face. His freefall into climax rippled from his bucking abdomen straight out of his mouth in a long, rippling moan. She could feel his warm breath on her mouth and chin and she could see the pleasure in his soulful, rich gaze.

Still and calm, they looked at each other in the wake of their recovery. He rolled to her side with a gentle kiss, and she was weakened and satisfied. He kissed her again, wet and warm. He kissed her again, short and sweet. And again. And again. Again and again, picking up the speed of hummingbird wings as the kisses faded into a big, solid smile.

Everything was going to be okay. As long as they had each other, everything would be okay. Olivia slept soundly.

When Hero pulled up at Barrington’s, Olivia had a spring in her step. She danced to the door, her purse swinging. As soon as she threw her butt into the passenger’s seat, they exchanged smiles, and she pressed her mouth against his in a fiery, joyful kiss.

“Hey chag’ya,” he smiled. “How was work?”

“Fine,” she said, kissing him again. “How’s the manhunt?”

“It’s like the fucker fell off the face of the Earth,” sighed Hero, starting the engine. “I don’t understand it. “Nobody’s ever evaporated like this before. Not since Crash.”

“Crash is still missing too?”

“It’s damn weird,” said Hero. “The Shank has people. He know where everyone is. Always. But the Shank says if he can’t get a lead by the end of the week, I can have my money back.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Nothing good about any of this,” he sighed. “But in the mean time, your beauty can’t waste away in that cramped house all night so tonight we are going to go to dinner, have drinks, and have a good time. What do you think?”

“That sounds amazing.”

Olivia and Hero spent the evening having an adventure together. They ate until their bellies were full, they drank until they could barely stand, they laughed until their eyes watered. They told stories, they shared jokes, and they formed new ones. They people-watched, they talked shit, and they sang along with the radio. Right when she thought there was nothing more to see, Hero had one more thing to show her.

“This is 8^th Block.”

They parked on a hill, overlooking the towers. They were tall and dark, with only a few scattered lights in a few of the windows. Every way she looked, the perimeter was lined with crooked gates and damaged fences. There was a huge front yard with patches of dead grass and scattered trash, lined with a few dimly lit seating areas and drying laundry.

“That’s the pit,” said Hero. “I grew up in the second tower, right there.”

“Can we go down there?” asked Olivia.

“Nah, you don’t wanna go down there, I just wanted you to see it.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

He shrugged. “It’s where I came from.”

“I thought with the Blades it’s not about where you came from, it’s about where you go.”

 “Maybe we just can’t escape where we came from when we choose where we go.”

Olivia leaned into Hero, smiled at him, and gave him a big kiss. “Thank you. For everything tonight, and for showing me this.”

He put his arm around her and kissed her back. Perfect.

When Hero and Olivia turned onto Branden street, a peculiar shape caught Olivia’s eyes. A trickle of blood led up to a tiny frame, a girl, huddled in their doorstep. A high heel shoe sparkled under the porch light.

Hero stiffened. “What the fuck…”

The car ripped onto the driveway and the couple leapt out of it, muscles tight like cats about to pounce, and they dashed to the front of the house. A young woman, hair in her eyes, was crumpled into an awkward ball. She crawled, leaving streaks of blood behind her, scooting to Hero’s feet. Pansy. She grasped his pant leg.

“I’m so sorry,” she wept. “They didn’t give me no money, Hero. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” She looked up at him, her eyes swollen and bruised. “It’s my fault.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Pansy, come on.” Hero opened the door and helped her inside, Olivia following. He guided Pansy to the kitchen, sat her on the chair, and knelt before her, one hand on her leg and the other on the side of her face.

“Pansy, calm down. I forgive you. What happened?”

She sucked up tears. “I just… I was…”

Hero looked at Olivia. “Get her a towel.” He looked back at Pansy. “Just take a breath. Calm down. Where’s Kang’ju?”

Pansy looked up, eyes dripping. “Kang’ju?”

“Yes, Kang’ju. Your child.”

Pansy’s face twisted. “She’s fine.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s fine, Hero.” Her eyebrows clenched. “She’s at 8^th. With Cojack and Orchid. She’s fine.”

“Alright,” said Hero. “Okay. Now what happened to you?”

“Some white boys. Came up to the club, lookin’ to party. I didn’t smart off or nothing, they just got bad taste. They liked it.” She started crying again. “They all wanted a slap at me, Hero.”

Olivia handed Pansy a towel and folded her arms. “And they just dropped you off here?”

Hero shot her a glare. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“Well, why didn’t they just leave her at the club?” said Olivia. “She doesn’t even live here. And how did they know you did? Isn’t that a little fishy to you?”

Hero looked back at Pansy. “Where are they now?”

Pansy looked down for a second. “They said, uh—”

“Don’t.” Olivia stepped forward. “Don’t tell him where they are.”

Pansy looked back at Olivia, but Hero turned her face back to him. “Forget her. Just tell me where those motherfuckers are.”

“Pansy,” Olivia pressed. “They used you to set up Hero. They attacked you and left you here to tempt Hero to get revenge. Don’t let them win this.”

“Olivia,” Hero hissed. “This ain’t some big conspiracy. They’re animals, and they need to be put down like such.”

“Hero, if you leave this house you are a retarded person. I guarantee they are ready for you.”

“Oregon Park,” said Pansy, looking Hero square in the eyes. “They said they was going to some kegger or some shit at Oregon Park.”

Hero stood up. “Olivia, stay here with Pansy. Call Ace, have him come here, and have Stone go check on Kang’ju.”

Olivia jutted her face forward with a heavy frown. “Did you not hear anything I just said?”

“I already let Seneka’s killer get away, I ain’t gonna sit by on this one.”

Olivia chased him to the door. “Of course you’re not. They’re counting on that. You’re playing right into their hands.”

Hero opened the door. “Just do what I said.”

Olivia put both hands on the side of his face, voice intensifying. “Hero. Please. I love you. Listen to me. They’re going to kill you--”

“I’m not the one who’s dying tonight.”

“I’m begging you. Please. Don’t go.” She stood in the way of the door. “It’s a set up. Please. Have I ever been wrong!?”

Hero frowned. “Why are you so sure?”

Olivia’s face fell. “What?”

“You know something you aren’t telling me?” Hero asked.

She froze, lips parted, tears in her eyes. “No. Just look at the facts for a second, Hero. Use your brain.”

Hero pushed her out of way and pulled the door open. “Stop wasting my fucking time.” He slammed the door behind her.

Hands on the wheel, clenching fists, engine roaring. If only the gas tank were connected to Hero’s veins, he could’ve driven faster.

When Hero parked, he saw a bonfire in a trash can in the middle of a field. It was oddly still, other than the dance of the dying flames. There were no voices, no movement, nothing. Hero got out of the car. Was Olivia right? But how elegant could their trap have possibly been? What, did they have landmines? A sniper? How could that be? He took a step forward.

A knife pressed against his neck.

Hero gulped, his Adam’s apple bouncing against the blade. “And who are you?”

A soft cackle tickled his ear. He could feel the smile spreading behind his shoulder.

“Who do you think I am?” said the rough, sandpaper voice. It danced from the man’s mouth like a jovial child.

Hero frowned. “Okay. But if you really are the Shank, why am I still alive?”

The man’s laugh was so tiny, like the fluttering coo of a baby bird. “Because you aren’t the one I was hired to kill.”

“Alright. Then why is there a knife on my neck?”

“Dramatic effect.”

“Okay…” Hero paused. “You mind, uh, lettin’ up on that dramatic effect a little?”

The Shank removed the knife. “With pleasure. However, I do have one final assignment.”

“Is this the killing me part?”

“No. It’s the telling you to take a step forward part. So, uh, take a step forward.”

Hero did, and caught sight of a shoe. No, two shoes. Three… four… Four bodies. Golden against the licks of firelight. Bloody. Broken. Slices. And arranged in a perfect square. He caught notice that none of the pairs of shoes matched. In fact, the man closest to them seemed as if his legs were two different lengths.

The Shank giggled. “I switched all their arms and legs.” He stopped giggling. “Just for fun.”

“You have a fucked up idea of fun.”

“So do they,” said the Shank. “Beating and raping a girl. And leaving her at her at her pimp’s house just to lure him to his death? Strange idea of fun indeed.” He shrugged. “At least I do it for money.”

Hero turned around to the Shank. “Who’s money?”

The Shank just smiled.

“Let me guess,” said Hero, raising an eyebrow. “Redhead? An affinity for firepower? No sense of tact?”

The Shank just smiled some more.

He looked down. “And I’ll bet she knows how these guys got their firepower…”

The Shank crept back into the shadows.

“Wait,” said Hero. “Who are these guys? Why did they want to kill me? Did they kill my sister?”

“I will inform you as I’m informed,” said the Shank. “And as I’m paid.”

Olivia slammed her phone on the bathroom counter. “Shit. Still not charged enough to make a single damn call. Not even a text. Do you have a phone?”

Pansy was in the bathtub, she held her knees close to her chest. “I don’t know where it is.” She sighed, dejectedly. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” said Pansy.

“You just marched Hero off to his death. Who could be mad?”

Pansy put her cheek on her knee. “Hero will be fine. It’s those guys who are stupid. We have a saying in my country… you will get caught if your tail is too long.”

Olivia sat on the toilet seat. “Do you think these are the same guys that shot Seneka? What kind of car were they driving?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Pansy waved her hand through the water, pressing her lips together. “Seneka came to see me right before she died.” She pouted a little. “She was worried about the baby.”

Olivia didn’t say anything.

Pansy focused on her own hands, waving through the reddened water. “She was so scared. You don’t have a baby so you don’t know that kind of fear.”

“I know what it’s like to fear for somebody you love. That’s how I feel right now.”

Pansy stared at her. “A child, Olivia. Do you know how it feels to love a child!?”

Olivia froze. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Pansy. “Don’t be mad that I told Hero where those boys are. Hero will be fine.” She sniffled and wiped her nose. “Hero has to be fine. Hero is all we have.”

Olivia leaned closer to the tub. “Look. You and Kang’ju don’t have to live like this. I could get you a job at Barrington’s. I’m sure that Hero can figure it out, he’s got plenty of money. You could start a new life.”

 “I’m not the one who can’t handle this life, Olivia,” said Pansy, breaking her despondency with a small laugh. “You are.”

The door creaked. Olivia had fallen asleep on the floor next to the couch where Pansy was wrapped in a blanket, lost beneath layers of unconsciousness. The sound of the door stabbed Olivia awake. Her first sight was Hero’s foot crossing the door frame.

“Oh, thank God.” Olivia jumped up, ran to the door, and threw her arms around him. “You’re okay.”

Hero closed the door behind him and twisted himself out of Olivia’s grasp. “Why the fuck didn’t you call Ace!?”

“My phone was out of batteries. I couldn’t call him.”

“I been gone an hour,” snapped Hero. “How long does it take to charge a damn phone!?”

“The phone couldn’t charge, I tried,” said Olivia.

“Where is it?”

“The bathroom.”

Olivia followed Hero into the bathroom. He pulled her phone from the wall and sighed. “You’re charger’s fried. Just hook it up to mine.”

She followed him back to the bedroom. He plugged her phone into the wall on her side of the bed.

“There ya go.” He glared at her. “No more excuses.”

Her jaw trembled. “Fuck you. Do you have any idea how scared I was!?”

“If you were really so scared you would have found a way to contact somebody.” He sat on the bed and started to undress. “And you would have been right too. It was a set up. The Shank had already killed them all before I got there. He didn’t tell me shit though.”

“Who hired him? Were they involved with Seneka?”

“What part of ‘he didn’t tell me shit’ don’t you understand?”

Olivia’s phone began buzzing up a storm. She glanced at it. Five texts and a voice mail.

“Now let’s just go to bed,” said Hero, sitting on the edge of the bed. “We can’t do shit right now.” He buried his face in his hands for a second.

Olivia circled the bed, stood in front of him, and scowled hard.

He put his hands down. “What the fuck is your problem?”

She slapped him across the face.

“Argh!” he touched his stinging cheek. “What the fuck was that for?”

“I was right. You were wrong and you were lucky. Admit it.” She shoved him. “Admit it! And stop being an ass!”

She pulled her hand back again, but he grabbed her wrists. “Fine. Calm down.” He looked into her eyes. “You were right. I should have listened to you.”

“Damn right you should have.” She relaxed. “You promise to believe me from now on?”

He looked down.

“Promise me!” she hissed.

He looked up at her. “I promise.”

She kissed him.

Beep.

Stupid text message reminders. Ace had long since come, gotten debriefed, and taken Pansy back to 8^th Block, and Olivia had nearly dozed off with Hero at her side before her phone decided to give her a heart attack. She thought that sound was ancient history.

She grabbed the phone and checked her texts. She figured they would be from Hero, but every single one was from the same sender. Her father. Please call. If you get this, please call. Where are you? She sat upright in her bed, Hero asleep at her side, and listened to her voicemail.

“Olivia,” said Dan. “Please call me as soon as you get this message, I need hear you’re alright.” He took a breath. “Honey, something happened in Sequoia Grove tonight.”

Olivia felt sick.

“Logan, Bennett, Aaron, Joe… I don’t know if you remember them. Good guys, friends of mine. Friends of the company. Hard workers. You probably remember Joe, you used to make fun of him because his hair was bleached but he had really dark eyebrows.”

Olivia trembled.
“They were killed,” continued Dan. “In Oregon Park. It was pretty brutal.”

Hero’s phone rang. She paused the message.

“Shit,” said Hero, sitting up. “Unknown caller. Must be the Shank.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. She didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was, it was happening fast, and she needed to think. She continued playing her father’s message. “I understand if you don’t want to come to the funeral, but please let us know you’re okay. Thanks.”

Olivia put her phone down, fingers clenched around it, and pressed against her thigh.

“Hmm.” Hero’s back was to Olivia’s. She could feel the heat of it. She knew the Shank was on the phone, and thanks to Dad, she knew what Hero was being told. She felt it. “Thank you.” And Hero hung up.

“Was that the Shank?” asked Olivia, heart pumping.

Hero sighed. “Uh, yeah.” He curled back up into their bed sheets. “He doesn’t know anything yet.”

Olivia turned her face his direction. “He called you to say he didn’t know anything?”

Hero exhaled. “Yeah.”

Olivia’s heart drummed against her rib cage.

“I gotta go check on something,” said Hero, climbing out of bed.

“Check what?” Olivia asked, in a hoarse whisper.

“I’ll be right back, don’t worry,” he said. He crossed the bed, and kissed her forehead. “Just relax. Everything’s fine.” He exited the room.

What was he checking on? No one was home, Pansy was gone. He left his phone in the room, so he didn’t need to make a call.

Olivia thought further. They hired Cunnington workers. The attack, luring Hero out of the house… Why? Come on, Olivia, figure it out. What were they trying to pin on her?

What was Hero checking on? She heard a slight creak and weighted stomps as Hero descended stairs. They were fast. He was hurrying.

She gasped. Olivia was the only one who had the safe combination. Or maybe not.

Olivia threw her phone and her Sig into her purse, pulled a dress over her head, and dashed to the window.



Chapter 16

Just like that. One second, they were all celebrating, hugging, laughing, and then a second later Seneka was gone. The boys didn’t take as much as a full breath before dashing to their cars, roaring engines, and chasing after the black Toyota Camry that launched the attack. Stone had to carry Wildcard’s limp, weeping body and force him into his back seat. Hero moved, fueled on blind fury alone.

The culprit got away. Somehow, in the blind, black turns of Second Circle, the Toyota was lost, and after a few furious, tear-drenched phone calls to friends in both and high and low places, the night was over. Roll credits.

Wildcard didn’t speak until the morning before Seneka’s funeral. Surprisingly, it was just Hero’s attempt to pour him a glass of orange juice that knocked him out of his vow of silence.

“Fuck you. Give me that.” Wildcard took the carton away and began chugging away at it, orange liquid trailing his jaw.

Hero attempted an unthreatening stance. “You alright, man?”

Wildcard slammed the carton down and wiped his mouth. “Fuck you! Am I alright? I was gonna be a dad. And don’t you dare come at me with no ‘I know, I been there’ bullshit, ‘cause you know damn well this is your fault.”

Hero bit back an angry retort. “I know you’re in real pain, but keep your head straight. You know damn well I had nothing to do with this.”

“Bullshit! You think some Grove nigga would drive by Lanka and pop off baby girl at close range? Fuck no. You pulled some shit, and that gun was pointed at you.” Tears nestled in his waterline. “Who would want to hurt that girl, Hero? Who would wanna hurt my baby? Nobody.” He pointed a hard finger forward. “That fool wanted the piece of shit standing next to her.” He knocked the juice over, letting it spill on the floor, and stormed out of the kitchen.

Olivia, who had observed the whole exchange from the other side of the room, took some paper towels and helped Hero wipe up the mess.

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Olivia. “I was there. The gun was close. I don’t know if this is hurting or helping, but… I’m pretty sure Seneka was the intended target.”

“Please,” said Hero. “Just stop. Stop talking.”

He had dark circles under his eyes, which made sense considering how little had slept the past three days. Olivia would wake, but this time not to Hero stroking her hair. He would be trembling, skin cold and slick with sweat, clutching her body for dear life. She wouldn’t dare ask, but she suspected he was having a recurring nightmare: a repeating image of Seneka, smiling and teary-eyed, and then disappearing in a flash of blood and skull fragments. She believed this because she was having the very same one.

Pow. Over and over again. The dream felt more real than the memory. Olivia could only process the event as some unreal, impossible thing.

Olivia felt really uncomfortable at Seneka’s funeral. Like an imposter. The drive to the burial site was so long and the past few days had been so exhausting, it was all she could do to stay awake. Her eyelids drooped, but the inevitable guilt that followed kept her awake.

When they got there and she saw that deep, ominous 6-foot-deep pit in the grassy earth, it became real. The site was beautiful – it wasn’t one of those crowded, claustrophobic urban cemeteries. It was a green, open field surrounded by a sea of flowers and encased by a crowd of trees. Heavenly. Muddled weeping became a steady soundtrack as the boys lowered the coffin into the awaiting space.

The Dragons and Blades, once again, shared the space below the 912 roof. They traded stories, drank beers, played cards, and ate extensively. When Olivia’s head floated through bubbles of conversation, they weren’t in English, locking her into exclusion. The gentle push of the unintended expulsion guided her toward the front door, and as she got closer, she saw little Kang’ju, sitting with her doll in the corner, in her mother’s arms. The child was crying heavy salty tears, and Olivia ran out.

No thought went into this, only animal instinct, desire to escape. Maybe it was Olivia’s propensity for escape that led her to Sequoia Grove to begin with, and now, it was what made her want to leave it.

There was a conspicuous red truck on the street. She hadn’t seen it when they got there, and couldn’t recall anyone in their group owning such a truck. The smoke drifting from the driver’s side window indicated a presence within, and the tan skin, black nail polish, and the black boot hanging out the window all the more enflamed Olivia’s curiosity. She approached the truck, and within seconds, she recognized the racially ambiguous face in front of her, and the red braids that framed it.

“Falynn.” Olivia said the name as if she were reading it off a pamphlet.

“Olivia.” Falynn mimicked Olivia’s tone without looking at her. “So Seneka got blown away.”

Olivia nodded slowly.

Falynn tapped her cigarette. “Bummer.”

“You wish it were me, don’t you?”

Falynn looked at her. “Why do you always think it’s about you?”

Olivia ignored her. “Why are you out here? I mean and not in there?”

“I can’t be seen in there.”

“But I can see you now.”

“Yeah, so why the fuck aren’t you in there?”

“Don’t spin this on me, alright? I know you’re the gun dealer in Sequoia Grove, and chances are you’re here out of guilt because you know who did this.”

“That brain of yours is gonna get you killed.”

“It’s gonna find Seneka’s killer first.”

Falynn laughed. “Sweet, naïve little girl. You watch too many movies.” She shook her head patronizingly.

“Do you know who did this?” Olivia pressed on. “Tell me.”

“I have someone working on it,” said Falynn. “That’s all I’m gonna say.”

“Not good enough.”

Falynn lunged forward, grabbing Olivia’s face in one hand, her cigarette still in the other. Her nails dug white tracks down Olivia’s cheek.

“Get back to your man before these nails leave marks that don’t go away,” she hissed. “And if these nails don’t do it… maybe this cigarette will.” She brought the end of the cigarette dangerously close to Olivia’s eyeball.

Falynn flashed demonic smile and Olivia jumped about three feet back. Olivia turned back toward the door, and Falynn laughed and laughed.

“Seneka was the peacekeeper in Sequoia Grove, my dear!” Falynn laughed. “No one can save you now!”

Olivia dropped her purse on the kitchen table and grabbed a beer out of the fridge, wondering if coming home to 912 after work would ever feel normal.

Everyone was home. Stone, Ace, Wildcard, and Mixer, all watching a movie in depressed little piles on the living room floor. She’d never seen them so motionless.

“If you guys are all here, who’s working at the club?” Olivia asked, taking a swig.

“Club’s still closed,” Stone said, expressionless.

“If the club is still closed,” Olivia frowned, “where’s Hero?”

Tires screeched across the sidewalk, but Olivia couldn’t see Hero’s familiar headlights striping the black night out the front windows. She thumped the beer on the counter with a cold thud, darted back the door to take a look, and there he was. His front left headlight was busted.

“Hero!?”

He got out of the car, a bit worn out and shaken, his feet moving him forward with the strength and purpose of a ventriloquist’s dummy. As he came into the light, Olivia saw blood on his shirt.

“Hero, what happened?”

He hobbled past her and made an immediate try for the stairs. She closed the door behind them and grabbed his shirt.

“Wait—what—” As she pulled on the shirt, she noticed wear in the material, the soaking sensation of sweat, and more dried remains of blood.

“I need to take a shower,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”

“What, so you can get a minute to come up with a good lie!?” Olivia shouted. “What did you do? What’s going on?”

He shook free of her, but she chased him into their bedroom.

“O, what do you want me to tell you?” He pulled down on his shirt, displaying it to her. “Obviously, somebody got hurt tonight.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What, you just picked somebody to have a fight with!?”

“Something like that.”

“Are you insane?”

He quoted her. “It’s possible.” He stripped his clothes and headed for the shower.

Olivia stared at him as he rinsed the remains of blood from his body. She watched steam stack onto the glass door, and then looked down at the clothes.

“Do I have to burn these?”

“Probably a good idea.”

In a fervent, fiery range, she pulled the shower door open, faced his wet naked frame, and gave him a swift upper cut to the groin. He buckled over and collapsed in pain.

“You are going to tell me what’s going on or I swear to God I’m digging my nails in next time.” She ignored her own embarrassment at ripping off Falynn’s threat.

He writhed in agony, attempting catch his breath.

 “What did you do?”

Hero reached up and turned the water off. “I killed somebody, alright? I saw a black Toyota, looked just like the one from the drive by. I rammed him, I questioned him, and he didn’t say shit, so I blew him away.”

Olivia reserved judgment without further intel. “Was he the guy?”

“Didn’t you fucking listen? He didn’t say shit!”

“So you blew him away just because he drove a black Toyota!? Do you know how many Toyotas there are in Monarch Hills!?”

She lifted her foot to give him another impact to his testes, he grabbed her foot, twisted her ankle, and forced her to fall on top of him.  He held her down with his arm across her shoulders.

“Will you calm the fuck down?” he growled. “This shit ain’t helping anything.”

“You killed somebody.”

“I realize that. I realize I fucked up, and I want to stop fucking up right now.” He squeezed her tighter, his jaw on her shoulder. “I set my mind tonight, and I have to tell you something and if you don’t stop acting like a dumb crazy bitch, I’m not gonna get this shit over with.”

Olivia took a breath. “Okay. Fine. What now?” She tried to move into a comfortable position, but it was impossible given the circumstances. Especially considering Hero’s ill-placed silence.

Hero held her tighter. “Will you stop fucking fidgeting?”

“Shut the hell up! I have no idea what you’re about to say. You might be on a murderous rampage, about to strangle me or something. Forgive me if I’m less than at ease.”

He pulled her hair back, placing his mouth right next to her ear. “One. Two. Five. Five. Three. Two. Eight.”

Olivia froze. “Wait. Let me write that down—”

He pulled her back, still by the hair. “No, no, no, you ain’t gonna write shit down. You a smart girl, memorize it. One, two.”

“One, two.”

“One, two, five, five.”

“One, two, five, five.”

“One, two, five, five, three, two, eight. Now say it.”

“One, two, five, five, three, two, eight. Got it.”

“Good.” He shoved her off. “Now get the fuck off me so I can wash this blood off.”

Olivia rose to her feet, exiting the bathroom and looked back at him for a bit, repeatedly in short jolted jerks, trying to decide if there was anything else she needed to say. There wasn’t. She knew the combination now. Now, there was no turning back.

“Wait.” Hero dipped his head, letting the water drench the back of his head.

Olivia stood perfectly still as if one wrong word would make her lose the trust she had just earned.

“I gotta make a couple calls, but uh… tell the boys meeting at Lanka in one hour. That’s sixty minutes, not a fucking minute later, feel me?”

Olivia nodded and rushed out to give the news.

Every Blade that Olivia had ever met was seated down the VIP lounge. Even the flowers were there. It was weird to see the place so empty, so frigid, so dusty. With the lights full on, she could see the streaks that stripper heels had left on the glossy stage. The silence from this crowd put more weight into the somber atmosphere; even Cojack was dead quiet.

Olivia sat on the other side of the tables, watching Hero as he stood at the end, arms outstretched, his weight on his palms. He looked straight down, almost ashamed. “I made a decision today.”

A silent shock rippled through the rows. They didn’t need to make a sound, it was felt. It was like everyone wasn’t sure his next move wouldn’t be pumping them all full of bullets.

“Recent events have made it clear to me that my safety may be…” He twisted his face a little. “In question. Therefore the assets of the crew must be accessible by some other means.” He took an embarrassed breath. “I have given someone else the combination to the safe in my home.” He said it firmly, but rather quietly.

“Who!?” Stone shouted.

Hero looked up. “I’m getting to that. Calm your ass down.”

Stone looked away.

“I gave the combination to someone I trust,” he said. “The person who has the combination…” He scanned the rows. “Is in this room.”

Ace choked out a laugh. “What, is this a game of fucking Clue? Is this shit Clue!? What are you, Tim Curry now!? You a butler? Do you buttle?”

Mixer elbowed him. “Come on, man! Listen to ‘im!”

“For the safety of the person who has it, I ain’t gonna reveal who it is,” said Hero. “But out of fairness to the Blades, I gotta let you know what’s going on. So that’s what this meeting’s all about.”

“With all due respect, hy’ung, what the fuck!?” spat Stone. “This whole thing makes the system fall apart. What if shit gets taken? No one’s going to know who the thief is.”

Hero looked Stone in the eye. “I will. And in such a case, you will soon after.”

“Not if you’re dead,” corrected Stone.

Wildcard smirked. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume Stone ain’t the guy with the digits.”

Mixer’s mouth formed a circle. “Ooh, or maybe he does got the combination, and this is like some elaborate trick to convince us he don’t got it, but through the arguin’ they still educatin’ us on the situation at hand. Clever shit.”

Hero glared at him. “Will you stop playing Clue and focus?”

Mixer sank into his chair with a pout. “Clue’s a great game, hy’ung. Fun for the whole family.”

“Seriously, though,” said Ace. “If you’re dead—”

“In the event of my death it is the responsibility of the person with the combination to come forward.”

Ace raised his brow and stated the obvious. “But what if he doesn’t?”

“They will.”

And that must have been what tipped off Stone. Hero’s use of the word ‘they.’ Not ‘he,’ but ‘they.’ Stone’s eyes went straight to Olivia.

“And that’s it,” said Hero. “Business as usual, only now y’all know there is a back-up plan in place. So unless there are any questions—”

“I got some fucking questions,” said Wildcard. “What about Seneka!? When are we gonna find her killer and put him down!?”

“I got a freelancer on the case,” said Hero. “The Shank.”

There was a big gasp, leading to vibrant undulation of gossip and murmurs.

Olivia turned to Mixer. “Who’s the shank?”

Mixer leaned toward her for mischievous commentary. “Ace said one time he saw the Shank eat a baby,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Hey,” said Ace. “I never said it was a baby. I said it kinda looked like a baby. Fuck, it could’ve been chicken, I don’t fuckin’ know.”

“Still,” said Mixer. “This is the type of dude who could be eating a chicken but you think it might be a baby.”

“Children!” shouted Hero. “Enough of this sewing circle bullshit. Get the fuck out of here and make some goddamn money.”

Olivia sat still, listening to the shuffling of feet, screeching of chair legs, and non-English conversations sewn into a fuzzy fabric of heavy breaths. Hero didn’t move either, just leaned over, hands on the table, not watching anyone leave. His eyes were closed.

Olivia tried to make a comforting face. “Are you okay?”

Hero lifted his chin and gave her a big, heavy, angry glare. “Why are you still here?”

“I don’t have any money to make, I’m not a prostitute. Besides, you drove me here.” She smiled. “I’m really proud of you.”

“Fuck off.”

She laughed. “I repeat. You drove me here.” She should’ve known such a condescending comment was bound to piss him off.

He sat down, fell into a pile of Hero, head leaning back, facing the ceiling. “What the fuck are you ‘proud of me’ for?”

Her smile was warm and genuine as she slinked over to him, taking a seat by his side. “You were wrong about some stuff, people got hurt, and as a leader it’s embarrassing for you.” Olivia frowned. “Speaking of you being wrong about shit, any word on Crash?”

“No,” said Hero. “What, do you think he’s involved in what happened to Seneka?”

“Maybe. I mean, of course. Don’t you?”

He held her hand. “I feel like I don’t know what’s going on any more. Like something’s coming, something I can’t see coming.” He shook his head with disbelief. “I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”

“If I see it first, I’ll let you know.”

He frowned and didn’t look at her. “I know.” He looked back at her face. “I know you will. Maybe that’s why I love you so much. Come here.”

He pulled her close and kissed her, but she had a knot in her stomach. She had said it once before, but for some reason she felt like she was keeping something vital to herself, something Hero was incapable of seeing himself.

The shooter was aiming for Seneka. Not Hero. Maybe giving Olivia the combination was a miscalculation.

Olivia’s heels were cutting into her skin as she crossed the tiled floor of the train station, the cool night air licking her bare shoulders and making her shiver. It wasn’t a cold night, but the chill in her spine was present nonetheless. She took a seat on the grated, metal bench, clutching her purse tightly, looking for  quiet place in her mind where she could enjoy her wait for the train. Red line, blue line. Now she didn’t have a choice.

Swift headlights appeared from the road across the way. She turned her head, surprised and pensive as the car came to a stop. She recognized the Escalade.

Stone rolled down the window. “Hey! Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”

Olivia smiled, stood up, and headed his way.

The inside of the car smelled weird. She couldn’t place the smell, but it through her off a little. “Hey, fancy seeing you here.”

“I was in the area, thought I may as well come get you. How was work?”

They attempted small talk as he made his way into the road.

“What were you doing in the area?” asked Olivia.

He frowned. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

She frowned. “Sorry, didn’t think it was that personal a question.” The smell started to get to her. It wasn’t a rotten smell, nothing like garbage, and yet it made her stomach turn.

“I mean what are you trying to do?” asked Stone. “Gather some more fucking intel? You in spy mode again, O? What, you think I’m pulling shit on Hero too? I ain’t Crash. Shit, O, is that what you think? I’m fuckin’ Crash now?”

Olivia stiffened tighter, feeling something cold and glass slide down to her feet. She looked down. A liquor bottle. She turned her face back to Stone.

“Answer the fucking question!” shouted Stone. “Is that what you think!?”

The smell was his breath.

“So when did he give it to you?” asked Stone.

“Give me what?”

“The combination, O! How long have you had it!?”

“What!?” Her spine spiked erect. “Hero and I barely know each other, why would he give it to me?”

“Good fucking question.” His hands were unsteady. The steering wheel wobbled. “Don’t bullshit, O, you ain’t the only one in the Grove that can sniff out a lie. I’m good with that shit too. That used to be my job.” His mouth twisted into a knot. “Why was it you? Huh!? What was wrong with me!? I’ve been there since we was kids, and then you come out of nowhere, and—”

Stone swerved into another lane, shoving a honking car aside. Olivia made a grab for the wheel, but Stone swatted her hand away.

“I’m driving, bitch, get the fuck off,” said Stone. “Do you love him?”

“Yes, I love him, now will you please pull over and let me drive? You can’t drive like this, it’s dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous as telling me a lie,” said Stone. “I know when people lie, you just need to see someone lie to you once, and then you know. They give signs. You can see it in their eyes.” He looked in her eyes.

“Don’t look in my eyes, Stone. Look at the road.”

“Tell me you the queen of France.”

“What!?”

“I want to hear you tell me a lie! Now tell me you the queen of France!”

“Stone! Watch the road!”

Stone’s face went aflame, his eyes bloodshot, his arms tight. He lifted his hands off the wheel, and slammed them back harder, jerked the wheel to the side, and flew against oncoming traffic.

“Stone!!”

He swerved left, he swerved right, he dodged headlights, all the while a conductor of a symphony of tire screeches and horns.

“Tell me you the queen of France!”

“This is ridiculous—you’re gonna kill us!”

Stone zoomed passed the side of a semi, inches away from fatal impact.

“This the way you wanna die!?” Stone cried. “’Cause you couldn’t tell an Asian thug some dumb shit like you the queen of France!?”

Three cars in a tight row. A truck and two sedans, dead ahead. Nowhere to go. The world went in slow motion.

“I’m the queen of France!” Olivia cried. “I’m the queen of France! I’m the queen of France! Now pull off the road! Now!”

Stone jerked the wheel aside, pushing them into a patch of grass. Every surface of Olivia’s skin felt numb, empty, like she was floating in her chair. She didn’t notice her hands were tensed until she finally tilted her head and saw them. Her fingers were bent at every joint, making her hands looked demented and evil, like a dead monkey paw from the famous story. Stone got out of the car, swung drunkenly to her side, opened her door. He grabbed Olivia by the shirt and pulled her onto the ground. Before she could unfurl her body from the knot she had fallen as, he got his gun out of the glove box and pointed it straight at her head.

“Do you love Hero?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“Do you have the safe combination?”

Her jaw trembled. This was it. She was going to die. This was over. Mom was right. Big mistake. Flashes of regrets. “No.” She closed her eyes tight, tears nestling in her lashes. “No, I don’t.” Goodbye, cruel world.

But she wasn’t dead. No pop, no gunfire, no finale. He put the gun down.

“I, uh…” He sniffled and wiped his nose. “I think you better drive, I’m a little drunk. I think.” He stepped around her to the passenger door. “Come on, let’s go.”

Olivia stayed on the ground for a second, eyes wet, heart pounding, mouth wide open, stealing breath. She’d made it out alive, but she was lucky. Stone knew. He had to know. She was the queen of France, and Stone knew what her words sounded like when they were lies.



Chapter 15

Olivia was suddenly restless. It was a warm, beep-free night in Hero’s arms and the soft blanket of sleep had long since washed over the cluttered household.  Hero was stroking Olivia’s hair. She wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep or how long he had been touching her hair, and she was even less sure how long she was supposed lie there pretending to be asleep before she made a move. She decided not long, and sat up.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry.” He spoke in a low, sleepy groan. “Did I wake you up?”

“Is this what you’re gonna do? I’m gonna lay here asleep and you’re just gonna stroke my hair?”

“Is that a problem for you?”

“Where are the smartass remarks? The hateful jabs? The spiteful sentiments?”

He looked aside. “Uhh… you’re a bitch?”

 “Christ, is that all you got?” She fell back into bed with a defeated sigh. “Why are you being so nice to me all the sudden?”

He shrugged. “I’m happy.” He started touching her again. “You look like a little bunny when you’re sleeping.”

“Okay, this is just getting weird now.”

He pulled his arm back. “Look, bitch, if you want a shitty relationship, pack up your shit and get the fuck out of here, I don’t need any drama queen bullshit in this house.”

She smiled. “That’s better.” She kissed his forehead. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he grunted, turning away. “And stop stealing the damn blanket. Sleeping next to your frigid ass is cold enough.”

She fell asleep with a smile on her face.

“Psst. Olivia.”

Olivia stirred, but Hero was fast asleep. She tried to shake off the moment of confusion, not sure where the whispering voice was coming from.

“Pssssst! Olivia!”

Olivia looked toward the blurry glow around the bedroom door until her sleepy eyes gave her clearance to recognize shape. It was Mixer. He didn’t speak further, he just gestured to her to get up. She did, and followed him down the hall and into the bathroom.

“Mixer, what’s going on?”

He looked in the mirror and tugged on his hair. His pupils were dilated.

“Mixer, are you high?” asked Olivia, stepping gingerly toward him. “You okay?”

He reached forward, took something into his hands, and turned around and faced her. He took her hand, and put the object into it. It was a pair of drug store sheers. She wrapped her fingers around the scissors and gently lifted her head, waiting for a cue from the emotional, drugged boy in front of her

“Olivia,” he said, sniffling slightly. His eyes were red. “Will you cut my hair?”

She laughed a little and tightened her grip around the handle. “Sure.” She ran her fingers through his hair with a comforting smile. “Sit down. Grab a towel and put it around your shoulders.”

Olivia sat with her legs crossed, her nearly bared ass heating Hero’s thigh. She gently sipped on her apple soju as Ace and Cojack were laughing and carrying on between drinks, the meat of their exchange barely hanging onto a hard bone of unintelligible, ghetto vernacular.

Wildcard, who had apparently enjoyed a generous serving of liquor along with Seneka’s last stage, fell into the VIP lounge with a grandiose thud, collapsing into a drunk pile right in the middle of Cojack’s personal space.

 “What it is, nigga.” Wildcard grabbed Cojack’s hand.

“Fuck you, you know I don’t like you callin’ me nigga.” Cojack pulled his hand back.

“Shit, nigga, don’t trip on what you is,” smirked Wildcard. “Where the soju at?”

Mixer started to pour him some, but Hero gently places his hand in Mixer’s way. Wildcard had clearly had enough tonight.

“Anyway,” said Cojack. “Like I was saying, Tyrone had a crowbar ready when Ray-Ray was comin’ down the stairs, so we was ready to take him out. Tyrone swung at his legs, so then that motherfucker hit the ground, and I went buck wild on that bitch ass nigga, and Tyrone told ‘im ‘fuck you nigga, leave Tashawnda alone!’”

“That dumb nigga’s beatin’ on Tashawnda?” Wildcard said. “Shit, man, that nigga’s fucked up.” He shook his head. “If he had a daddy, maybe he’d know how to be a man. Shit, sometimes I think I’m the only nigga from 8th Block who got a daddy! Maybe that’s why I’m good to my woman.”

Cojack stared at Wildcard, cutting a deep silence into VIP.

Wildcard looked up with baffled innocence. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what?’” asked Cojack. “Only nigga from 8th Block who what, bitch?”

“Bitch, you know I’m just playin’—”

“Bitch-ass chink-ass muh-fucker, shut the fuck up—You are Asian!” snapped Cojack. “Act like a goddamn Asian!”

“Well you a man, why don’t you act like that?”

A well-deserved ‘ooh’ reverberated through room.

“You disrespectin’ me now?” said Cojack. “I earned my keep with you and all y’all fuckin’ dog-eatin’ muh-fuckers, I didn’t come here to be called no nigga.”

“But that’s what you are,” bellowed Wildcard. “You a dumbass nigga.”

“Call me a nigga again, you fuckin’ chink!”

“Don’t call me a chink!”

“You are a chink. You a slanty-eyed rice-eatin’ chink.”

Olivia snickered.

“Did that bitch just laugh at me?” snapped Cojack, eyeing Hero.

Wildcard shoved Cojack. “Don’t call her a bitch, ya dumb nigga!”

Ace rolled his eyes. “Wildcard, stop being an asshole—”

“I’m the asshole?” asked Wildcard, his eyes begging. “He’s the asshole! He called Hero’s woman a bitch!”

Cojack pointed to himself. “Oh, so I’m an asshole now?”

“Come on…” Mixer stood up and opened his arms, palms forward. “Does it really matter who the asshole is?”

Cojack scoffed. “I didn’t ask you, sit yo’ chinky ass down.”

Mixer pointed at the redhead. “I thought Dub C was the chink.”

“Dub C is a fuckin’ chink and you a fuckin’ chink too.”

“Will you please refrain from calling my boys chinks?” Hero groaned, placing his brow in his hand.

“Fine,” snapped Cojack. “How about gooks? Rice niggas? Zipperheads?”

Olivia kept laughing.

“That bitch is still laughing,” hissed Cojack. “You find something funny, miss thang?”

“Sorry,” said Olivia, raising her hand to her mouth. “I just think I got lost. Who’s the asshole again?”

“Cojack’s the asshole,” said Wildcard. “And a dumb nigga.”

Ace stood up. “Enough!” He faced the table, pointing at them all one by one. “Cojack’s a nigga, Wildcard and Mixer are both chinks, Olivia’s a bitch, and we’re all assholes!” He sat back down. “Except Mixer. Mixer’s a pretty nice guy.”

Mixer smiled. “Thanks hy’ung!”

“No problem.”

Hero turned toward Ace. “Ace, don’t call my woman a bitch.”

Ace didn’t even turn his head. “Eat my ass. Olivia is a bitch.”

Olivia frowned.

“What?” asked Ace, eyes wide. “I love you to death, baby girl, but you are kind of a bitch.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Hero. “Nobody calls me woman a bitch but me.” He looked at Olivia. “Ain’t that right, bitch?”

Olivia nodded. “That’s right.”

Wildcard pouted. “Can I still call Cojack a dumb nigga?”

Hero leaned back weakly and sighed. “Cojack. Wildcard. Get the fuck out of here.”

“But hy’ung—”

“Get. Out.”

Grumpy and irritated, they did, bickering the whole way out.

“Yo, Mixer.” Hero nodded to the youngest. “What’s up with the hair?”

Mixer sparkled. “Olivia cut it last night.”

Hero looked back at Olivia. He smiled. “Good job.”

She smiled distantly with a slight blush to her cheeks. “Thanks.”

“What’s the matter with you?” He stroked her shoulder. “You alright?”

“I’m fine.”

She clearly wasn’t. Hero pouted. “You worried about something, chag’ya?”

“You mean besides the whole just-moved-out-of-my-parents-house-to-live-with-Asian-gangsters thing? Nothing, I’m peachy.”

“You ain’t gotta be scared of shit, you know we got you,” said Ace.

“You won’t ‘have me’ if you guys all get arrested,” said Olivia. “You’re still criminals.”

Hero laughed. “We own the cops.”

“Yeah, I know, you say that but—”

“Seriously. Chag’ya. We own the cops. I’ll prove it. Call 911.”

“What?”

“Here.” Hero handed her his phone. “Use my phone, even. Call 911 and tell them… tell them I’m raping you.”

Olivia looked to Ace and Mixer. They didn’t budge.

“Tell them what!?”

“Call them. Tell them Hero Vem is raping you at Club Lanka.”

She grasped the phone, giving the VIP room another look over. Still, no one flinched.

She shrugged. “Alright…” Olivia called.

With her best distressed voice, she whined and pleaded with the operator. She said Hero Vem had raped her, she had stolen his phone in the scuffle, and she was trapped in a room at Club Lanka. She was asked to calm down, as expected, and that someone would be there soon. The most reaction she got out of the Blades was a couple light snickers. She hung up the phone.

“Hero, this isn’t funny,” she said. “Cops are going to come. There are no cops on earth that won’t respond to a call like that.”

“I never said they wouldn’t respond,” said Hero.

Olivia’s eyes bugged out. “Hero, you—”

Hero lifted his finger. “Shh. Wait for it.”

Ace and Mixer sat silently in waiting. Five, four, three…

Ace’s phone buzzed. Hero indicated to everyone to stay quiet as he grabbed Ace’s phone and hit the speaker button.

“’Sup Officer Jensen? It’s Hero.”

A quiet voice emerged on the speaker. “…Hero?”

“Yessir?”

Mixer held in a sharp giggle. A long awkward pause took its toll on VIP.

“Hero…” said Officer Jensen, voice lowering into a grave hiss. “…what the fuck you doing, man!?”

Ace, Hero, and Mixer burst into hysterics.

“Oh, ha ha, very funny, you piece of shit!” cried Officer Jensen. “You scared the shit out of me! I’m sitting here thinking Hero Vem has lost is goddamn mind, raping women—what the fuck is wrong with you!?”

“Did your wife get her birthday present?” Hero smirked.

“Yes, my wife got her birthday present, asshole, and if you send her any more goddamn jewelry I’m gonna start asking some fucking questions.”

“Why? I taught her that thing you like.”

“If you taught my wife anything, you taught her not to listen to a goddamn thing I say. Fuck. You. You hear that!? Fuck. You.”

“Fuck you too. Have a good night.”

Click.

As Ace and Mixer laughed and laughed, Hero leaned over to Olivia. “See? I’m the law down here. Don’t worry.”

A little while after the giggles subsided, Hero got a call from Stone. Hero answered, and as Stone spoke, the joyous glow in Hero’s eyes fled the scene. His face read half confused, half worried. He hung up.

“Come on, O, we gotta go back to the office.”

“Why?”

“Seneka wants to have a word with us. Stone says it seems important.”

“Both of us?” Olivia asked. Now the confusion in his face made more sense.

Olivia followed Hero up the dark stairway. She could see Seneka waiting in the room down the hall, shoulders forward, arms crossed, and Stone nodded at Hero as he passed down the hall.

“Hold up, lemme talk to your girl for a minute,” said Stone. “She’ll be right in.”

Hero nodded and closed the door behind him when he got in the office.

“Why does everybody want to talk to me all of the sudden?” said Olivia.

Stone held out his hand. Olivia took it. Once he had her, he pulled her body close and gave her a big, tight, manly hug.

“Um,” gulped Olivia. “Right, uhh, okay—”

He pat her back. “Thank you.” She could feel his breath over her shoulder. “Thanks for bringing my boy back to life.”

She laughed. “Wow. You really are kind of a girl for a gangster.”

Stone let go and gave her a warm smile. “And you’re kind of a gangster for a girl.” He was still glowing, gold and shiny, as he made his way down the stairs.

Olivia walked through the office door and straight into a heated argument.

“Absolutely not, and that’s final!” Hero shouted. Olivia shut the door behind her.

Seneka rushed to Olivia, face flushed and desperate. “Tell him to give you the safe combination.”

“Whoa, what?”

“Tell him!” said Seneka. “If not for me, for Pansy and that little girl!”

“You’re talking like Death himself is waiting for me around the corner!” said Hero. “It’s fine. The streets are safe, safer than they ever been before, there ain’t no reason for all this shit.”

“It’s safe now, but who knows what could happen!?” said Seneka. “If something happens to you, what are we gonna do? Lug that safe around like them fools with the ATM in Barber Shop? Use your brain, Hero!”

“I am, and I ain’t gonna burden my girl with the safe combination, period!” said Hero. “Now will you get the fuck out of here and make some goddamn money?”

Seneka rolled her eyes and gave Olivia one more hopeful glance. “Talk to him. I know you know what he’s gotta do.” She left.

Hero didn’t look up. “Don’t even try it.”

“She’s right,” said Olivia. “It’s not safe for you to be the only one who can get to the money. You’re not as invincible as you think you are.”

“There ain’t no goddamn reason to think anything’s gonna happen to me!” insisted Hero.

“What the hell do I have to do to get you to trust me?”

“This has nothing to do with trust! I do trust you. I trust you with my life.”

She shook her head. “This is all about power and dominance. You won’t share any power with anyone will you?”

“This has nothing to do with power either!” he snapped. “That combination ain’t my power, chag’ya. It’s my burden, and I can’t share that burden with you. Having one person with that combination is for the protection of the crew. If the safe got opened and shit went missing, the boys know who to blame. If we all knew the combination and shit got stolen, shit would get fucking chaotic fast.”

“Nothing that you’re saying is of any consequence unless you think I might steal, but I won’t. Look at me.” He did. “If, God forbid, something were to happen to you, someone needs to be able to get into that safe. I know that having this responsibility alone is hard on you, but you don’t need to be alone with it. You need someone to carry it with you. You need to trust someone. I can be that person for you.”

Hero took a breath. “Sorry. My answer is no, and that’s that.”

Last call. Closing time. Cars were trickling out of the parking lot, and the crew and the flowers were congregating arond the front patio for their last round of cigarettes. Wildcard’s head lay against the grating of the table as a solid rod of ash crept to the butt of his cigarette.

“You fuckin’ drunk,” muttered Seneka. “Yo Ace, can I bum a square?”

Ace passed her one, but Pansy threw herself forward, knocking the cigarette onto the pavement.

“What the hell is the matter with you!?” cried Ace.

“Seneka can’t smoke!” Pansy cried.

Seneka gave Pansy a wicked glare, throwing Pansy’s eyes to the ground.

Ace raised an eyebrow. “And why’s that?”

“Because,” Pansy gulped. “It’s bad for your health.”

Ace eyed the glowing end of her lit cigarette. “That ain’t stopping you.”

“It’s okay,” Seneka said. “I can do without, no big deal.”

“Yeah, but now you got me all curious,” said Ace, looking at Pansy. “Why you trippin’ over it like that?”

“Yeah,” frowned Mixer. “Let the girl have a smoke. She’s had a long night of work, she earned it.”

“Seriously, boys,” said Seneka. “I don’t want it no more.”

Ace looked back at Pansy. “Still, I just wanna know why—”

Pansy looked up. “Because it’s bad for the baby!”

Wildcard’s head flew upright with the imprint of the table on his cheek, and the rest of the crew was motionless. He looked at all of their faces, waiting for the laughter to start. It didn’t come.

“Is…” a very drunk Wildcard choked. “Is this a joke?”

Everyone looked at each other, searching for a verbal rim shot. None. Pansy’s eyes were pointed straight toward the street.

“Is…” Wildcard whispered. He looked at Seneka. “Is it m…” He pointed at himself.

“Oh, please, Wildcard. Don’t insult me by asking if it’s yours.”

Hero jumped to his feet so quickly the chair fell backward. He forced his fingers through his hair and turned his back to the group, bowing his head as he approached the wall.

Every muscle in Seneka’s body was as tight and stiff as spooled wire, unable to bend from its position unless someone gave her a tough tug. They were all quiet as mice, watching Hero with eyes pinned open as if the choice to stare at him didn’t belong to them. Wildcard, meanwhile, stared at nothing. Just forward.

Seneka gulped. My brother… is going… to kill him.

Hero stood still for a good five seconds, silent and reaction free. His head tilted forward, his back becoming an arched lump as he formed a fist and tapped it against the wall. Tap. Tap. Not a punch, just a tap. The lump of his back expanded and contracted with each of his deep, heaving breaths. In, out. In, out. In… and out.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he straightened himself and they watched his elbows bend and his hands reach his mouth. His back was still as his hands did this, and none of them knew what to expect when he turned around, if he would turn around at all. After another few solid, still seconds, he turned swiftly to face them.

His hands may have covered his mouth, but they could see his eyes were smiling. His eyes were smiling slits, glistening with tears and what appeared to be overpowering rapture. His joy illuminated his entire stance and full demeanor. Finally, his hands lowered to reveal the intense grin beneath. And he spoke in a weak, joy-choked tone.

“Congratulations.”

And Wildcard threw up.

Seneka ran toward her brother and gave him a huge hug, tears in her eyes. “Thank you. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how I was gonna tell you, I just…”

Hero pat his sister’s back. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be a great mom.”

Seneka was weeping. “Thank you, Hi’luh. Thank you!”

Once the celebrating was done with, everyone began to make their way to their cars. Seneka looked back at her brother with a proud, tear soaked smile.

“You don’t need to be so scared of me,” said Hero. “I just want you to be happy. I love you.”

“I know,” she smiled with a sniffle. “I love you too.”

After the screech of oncoming tires and roaring pop of a close-range gunshot, Hero watched his sister’s head fall apart across the asphalt.



Chapter 14

As Seneka glanced over the box of her Early Result Pregnancy Test, she wondered how long Wildcard had to live. Perhaps, if her elder brother was in one of his more benevolent moods, he’d give Dub C a good fifteen minute head start before he hurled after him with guns blazing, but still, her boyfriend’s days were most definitely numbered. For now, she decided to focus her worries on the present. She looked at the tiny cardboard box. Here we go, you little fuckin’ thing. It’s me versus you now.

The world went into late night TV slow motion as she opened it, revealing folded paper instruction and the encased stick of doom. It was hard to believe that the decoder of the most life-changing mystery she had ever encountered was in that benign, protective foil pouch. She pulled out the instructions first.

Hold test stick by thumb grip. Okay, sure.

Point absorbent tip downward in urine stream for five seconds only. Five seconds. In bold and italics—they were serious about this. Five seconds, you dumb bitch. You couldn’t keep your legs closed, so it’s clear you don’t follow advice very well. We mean it. Five motherfucking seconds.

If you prefer, urinate into a clean, dry cup and dip the entire absorbent tip into the cup for twenty seconds. Seneka laughed. Are there girls who just can’t handle peeing on stuff?

Replace cap and lay on flat surface with result window facing up. This was instruction she needed. She didn’t want to put that thing down face up one bit—she wanted to avoid looking at that tiny white screen for as long as possible.

You can read your results after two minutes. Two minutes also in bold. A blue line in the Control Window and a blue line in the Result Window indicate a positive result. Noted. A blue line in the Control Window and no line in the Result Window indicate a negative result. Also noted.

Seneka wanted to slap all those girls in the commercials who complain that generic pregnancy tests weren’t clear. Come on. How dumb were those bitches?

Another instruction made her laugh. DO NOT read result after ten minutes. DO NOT in bold caps. She giggled and pictured someone in person warning her. Seriously. Don’t do it. Your brain will explode, mountains will crumble into the sea, and the space time continuum will reverse itself if you dare look at the Result Window after the ten minute mark.

She gulped, and she peed. She peed on the stick. Now for those five seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five seconds.

Okay, she followed instructions and now she could read the results in two minutes. Two minutes. She lifted up the stick and closed her eyes tight. Two minutes.

Two minutes? Fuck that, she was looking. Her eyes opened and her heart stopped. One line. No, two lines. Two clear solid lines. Positive.

“Oh, fuck.” She trembled. “Oh, fuck me.”

No point in waiting for two minutes now. It wasn’t like the line in the Result Window was going to go away.

She dropped the test and the box into the waste basket. She tried to get up, but she ended up collapsing into the tub, a hundred-pound pile of cute little Asian stripper, trying to figure out what the hell she was going to do. Seneka didn’t know much about raising kids, but she was pretty confident that her drug-dealing, gun-slinging brothers and the Blades crew didn’t exactly offer an optimal child-rearing environment. However, there was someone else who knew a hell of a lot more about raising a kid in this fucked up city than she did.

Beep.

Olivia woke with what felt like an adrenaline shot to the chest, drenched in sweat, clutching the sheets with a spiking uproar rushing through her torso. She felt the aftershock of what she believed to be a forgotten nightmare, twisting her senses and breaking her composure, but the nightmare was real. She was here, here at 912 Branden, and she was here to stay. Her suitcases still lay open on the floor, next to the panties that Hero had pulled off her the night before in a fit of victorious passion, and her inner thighs were still sore from the consummation of their redefined unity.

The morning sunlight flooded into the 912 kitchen, and Hero was cracking eggs. The sound of bacon sizzling on the pan sang in harmony with Hero’s joyous whistling, and his four roommates stood back, watching in silent horror.

“He’s so…” whispered Ace.

“…happy,” punctuated Stone.

Mixer clung onto Wildcard. “I’m scared!”

Wildcard shoved the kid off of him as Olivia joined the perplexed posse. Hero called her over and gave her a kiss, which she welcomed with a knot in her stomach.

Mixer’s head panned toward Olivia with sluggish speed. “What did you do to him!?”

Stone frowned. Perhaps Olivia’s presence should have somewhat alleviated the mystery behind Hero’s sudden reverie, but it didn’t at all. In fact, it compounded the confusion—they weren’t fighting.

“How do you like your eggs, chag’ya?” sparkled Hero.

“Scrambled, please.” She gave him three more nervous kisses.

Stoned wiped the sleepiness from his eye. “Okay, what the fuck is going on?”

Hero smiled at him. “Olivia’s living with us now.”

 “What!?” Stone was suddenly caffeinated by the news. “There’s already like a thousand people living here!”

“A thousand and one,” smiled Hero.

The boys took their seats around the table as Hero put their plates down. The next frown in the group cut itself into Wildcard’s brow.

“I’m glad you’re all happy and all, man, really, but don’t you think it’s a little soon for y’all to be—oh my God bacon!” Wildcard’s mouth was silenced by the insertion of greasy deliciousness.

Hero took his seat. “Where’s Seneka?”

“She took off,” said Wildcard, mouth full of bacon. “Doing girly shit with Pansy. I don’t know. Nails, hair, whatever the fuck bitches do.”

The boys braced themselves for Hero’s heavy hand of defiance to come crashing down on Wildcard’s stupid head, but Hero was busy smiling as Olivia scrunched her face into a little ball of a smile. He brushed a bit of food from the corner of her mouth.

“Hero,” said Wildcard. “Didn’t you hear me? I just called your sister a bitch.”

Hero looked over. “Huh?”

Ace put his hand over Wildcard’s mouth. “Uh… it’s just Tom is pissed at a snitch.”

Hero was blank.

 “Uhh—Disgusting to glitter a witch,” Mixer corrected

Stone looked up. “He just got the gist of his twitch?”

Wildcard pushed Ace’s hand out of the way. “There’s pus, cum, and piss and it itched!”

Hero’s face fell into an expressionless mask. “What the fuck are you guys on? Who the fuck is Tom—and I don’t want to hear shit about what’s itching, Dub C.” He stared. “Christ, y’all lost your damn minds?”

They said nothing, but Ace and Stone met each other with heavy, opinionated glances.

After breakfast, the boys dispersed and Hero started on the dishes, looking back at the porch with the sun glowing on his cheeks. He smiled at Olivia.

“O,” he said. “Let’s go outside.”

“Outside? Why?”

He leaned toward her. “Because it’s a beautiful day.” He took her hand. “Come on.”

He took her out through the back door, through the garden and toward the gazebo. Tiny shards of sunlight made their way to the surface of the hot tub, cutting slices of light across the gently drifting water. At first, Olivia looked down bashfully as he sat down next to Hero on the bench, but as she looked up at his face, she took a moment to absorb the image of it. His face was barely his at all. It was so flushed, so alive, so open. Just as the boys had said, he was just so happy. Olivia had no idea how to deal with a happy Hero.

“I see what you’re trying to do,” said Olivia. “It’s sweet, but it isn’t necessary.”

He put his arm around her. “I’m not trying to do anything but enjoy this beautiful sunny day with my chag’ya.”

“You’re trying to make a reference to the story I told you in your office that one time. Well played. It’s very romantic.”

He smiled. “You want romantic, I’ll show you romantic. Turn around.”

With a slight knot of fear in her belly, Olivia did. All she saw was a sea of lilies.

“Flowers are quite romantic, but I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Well maybe there’s something for you in those flowers.”

Olivia raised an eyebrow. “What, like a thousand bees?”

“Don’t be silly. Everything in this town is afraid of me and bees are no exception. Now go look. Remember what I said, sometimes something beautiful can come of nothing at all.”

Olivia gingerly made her way to flower bed and took a peek between the petals. There was a small, conspicuous white box. She looked back at Hero.

“You know, there are better ways to give me jewelry.”

“Jewelry my ass. I am way more inventive than that. Open the box.”

“Hero—”

“Will you just open the damn box so I can watch you squeal like a little girl?”

She took the box out of the flowers and opened it. It was a nine volt battery.

Hero stood behind her, put his arms around her waist, and kissed the side of her head. “Come on, let’s go put an end to that motherfucking beep. What do you say?”

She couldn’t move. She was stunned. She just watched him strut back to the door, looking back at her with that classic seductive smirk. “Come on.”

The smoke alarm was in the small entranceway that led into the garage. The most sinister and evil small, white, round, plastic mass on the planet Earth was about to be silenced. Silenced by that black and gold atomic bomb of victory that Olivia held in her grubby little hands. Hero set up the stepladder, and Olivia had a vice grip on her present.

He stepped onto the ladder. “Do you want to do it? Because I don’t want to take this moment away from you, I know you been waiting a good, long while.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” she said. “You do it.”

“You want to watch me do it?” He gave her another smirk and an eyebrow wiggle.

Olivia wanted to answer quickly, but she was overly conscious of the way she held her face. “Uhh… yes?”

“Okay, I’ll do it,” he smiled, stepping up the ladder. “All right smoke alarm, who’s your daddy?”

Beep. It was like the damn thing actually answered him.

“Fuckin’ Christ!” said Hero, jerking his face aside. “This fucker is loud when it’s in your face. Just for that, you gettin’ a spanking, smoke alarm!”

He tapped the side of it with a fake, angry face and pulled the battery tray open.

“Step one complete,” said Hero. “And now…” He held out his hand and Olivia handed him the new battery. He started to put it in its place, but stopped himself.

“Jesus, just do it!”

“I can’t just do it, chag’ya! Ain’t you ever heard of foreplay?” He suggestively pushed the battery in and out of the tray. “Yeah, you like that, don’t you smoke alarm?”

“Will you just put it in!?”

“Okay…” giggled Hero, twisting his face into a phony orgasm. “I’m putting it in… I’m putting it… you like that?” He made stupid moaning sounds as the battery slid into place. He closed the tray, stuck his tongue out, and hopped off the ladder with a joyous thump.

“There ya go, baby,” he said, sweeping her into his arms. “No more beep.” He kissed the side of her face. “That’s how much I love you, chag’ya. I even replace batteries for you!”

Olivia was ossified in his arms. She wondered how on Earth she slept through whatever Close Encounters shit had taken place last night. Certainly, an alien had taken over Hero’s body.

“Hold up.”

Olivia and Hero looked over to see a frowning, baffled Ace.

“As much as I hate to interrupt this cheesy-ass romance novel bullshit,” said Ace, “real fast, O, when time you gotta go to work?”

 “At one. Why?”

“’Cause I think it’s best, if you’re gonna be living here now, you should learn how to use that Sig. I’ll take you out somewhere, give you some gun training.”

Hero turned toward his brother, eyes piercing, holding up the bad battery. “You gonna what now?”

Ace looked at the battery. “You planning on hurting me with that?”

Hero put his hand down. “Why should Olivia go with you?”

Ace shrugged. “Because that’s what I do. I’m the gun guy. I always train people on guns. You hate teaching people shit. Kinda thought it was assumed I’d handle this.”

“But this is different,” said Hero.

“Why?”

“Fuck you! You know why.”

Olivia folded her arms. “What, you don’t trust me?” She had a joking tone, but she was a little genuinely offended.

Hero rolled his eyes. “Of course I trust you, it’s him I don’t trust.”

Ace stepped inward, launching a taunt. “I’ll show her how to work my pistol right, and then I’ll work your woman’s trigger ‘til she goes off.”

Olivia smirked. “Oh, Ace, you’re already turning me on.”

Ace threw his voice into a woman’s pitch. “Oh Ace, careful now, my safety’s off! Ooh!”

Hero pointed at both of them. “Fuck you, and fuck you, and don’t be gone long.”

Olivia and Ace drove a couple miles out of town to an abandoned field. It was funny, she had seen the spectrum from Sequoia Grove to Westcliff so many times, but she had never thought about what you see when you go sideways. Apparently nothing.

Ace set up their makeshift firing range. He set up one table near them for the gun and the rounds, and set up another table across the way. He lined the second table with jars and beer bottles.

Ace unloaded the case for Olivia’s new gun on the first table, giving her a clear view of the whole package. “Okay, this is a Sig Sauer Mosquito.” He turned the pistol so she could take a look at it. “You know what double action means?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, it’s like this,” he began, sucking in a deep breath. He pulled the clip out from the bottom. “This piece got a clip that holds twelve rounds. Pretty standard. Now when you load it, ya gotta make sure you hear the click, okay?” He popped it back into place.

“Okay,” she nodded

“Anyway, once you shoot, the slide will eject the round it’s already cocked and ready for the next shot. Here’s the safety.” He showed her. “Now when you got the safety off and this shit is loaded, don’t lose respect for what you got in your hand, all right?”

He held the gun out forward and explained what he was doing as he did it. “Now this ain’t a fuckin’ movie. Don’t turn the gun sideways and try to look all gangsta. And this shit too.” He bent his arm at the elbow, pointing the gun upward, a pose that reminded Olivia of just about every movie she had ever seen when the cop is creeping around a corner. “Don’t ever fucking hold a gun like this, it makes you vulnerable. You’re holding the gun but you ain’t firing yet? Point it to the ground. Like this.” He held his arms straight toward the ground.

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Now look at my hands,” he said, holding the gun forward with his left hand. “Grip at the knuckles, not at your fingertips. Now this should go without saying, but keep your finger away from the trigger until you ready to fire. It ain’t like you touch the thing ‘til you ready to pull, you don’t go near that shit ‘til it’s time, you feel me?”

She nodded again. “Okay.”

“Cup your palm under the grip like this with your left hand.”

She watched him do it and gulped.

“Okay, now you step back and watch what I’m doing.”

She watched him aim and fire and she nearly jumped out of her shoes. It was about ten times louder than she expected, but she still managed to observe the position of his body. She watched the rounds eject and disappear into the dried grass, and she watched his face tighten with every shot. His muscles stubbornly sustained their roles as the jerk of the gun challenged them. He took a breath as he slowly lowered the gun.

“Now this is real important. If you’re all panicked, you gonna miss your shot and you gotta make it count. Make sure you’re calm when you shooting, alright?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He handed her the gun. “You got strong arms?”

“I think so.” She took it from him and held it awkwardly.

“A’ight. It’s a pretty light gun, you shouldn’t have problems, but… you know. Just asking anyway.”

He pressed the gun firmly into her right hand and she got tingly as he forced her fingers around the grip. “Remember, grip with your knuckles, not your fingertips.”

As her finger unconsciously drifted toward the trigger, he pulled it away. “No, no, no. Remember? Not ‘til you ready to fire. For now, put it here.” He pulled her finger to a new position. He took her left palm and cupped it under the grip and gently urged her to hold her hands forward. She tried to keep the gun up and hold it still, but she was trembling.

“You’re okay,” he whispered. “You’re doing great.”

She tried to focus on steadying the gun and eyeing that pile of broken glass across the field, but all she could think about was the warmth of Ace’s body behind her. All she could think about was the way his fingers felt as they rested gently on her forearms.

“Take in a deep breath,” he said. “Get comfortable with the way it feels in your hand, okay? Your arms tired?”

“Not really, no. But they keep shaking anyway.”

He affectionately touched each of her shoulders and whispered, “Just breathe.”

She did.

“Fire.”

She pulled the trigger, jumped a little as the bang rattled her eardrums, and watched a jar explode upon impact. Warmth emerged in the pit of her stomach and she lost some feeling in her face.

“Fuck!” Ace gasped. “Nice shot!”

“Thanks.”

“How did that feel?”

“It felt good.”

“Okay, try again,” he said. “This time part your legs a little bit. It’ll help your balance.”

She fired again, her lips twitching with excitement as another bottle popped into pieces. She sucked on her lips waiting for her next command to pull that trigger.

“Olivia…” Ace said, his voiced pinched with concern.

“Yeah?” She was still holding the gun happily.

“Is this turning you on?”

She lowered it. “What? No! Of course not!”

“Chag’ya, I’m tryin’ to teach you how to use a lethal firearm and you grinding on me like I’m talking dirty to you.”

“I am not!”

He took the gun from her hand. “You get off on this shit?”

“No! You’re the one who’s got your body all pressed against me, whispering and touching me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, so it ain’t the gun, it’s me that’s getting you all worked up?”

“Whoa, I didn’t mean it like that—”

Ace shook his head with amused disapproval. “You should have just let me think it was the gun.” He looked back at the bottles, then back at her. “You don’t shoot like someone who’s never shot before.”

“Maybe I’m talented.”

“Maybe you’re full of shit.”

Olivia turned. “What?”

Ace looked her in the eyes hard. “Olivia.” He paused for a second, studying her expression. “Be real with me. Are you fucking around on Hero?”

“What!?”

“Do you have some other fucking boyfriend up in Westcliff?”

“No!”

“Because if you do, we will find out about it, you feel me?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you. You show up out of nowhere, you’ve got my brother wrapped around your finger, and it’s fucking suspicious, square business.”

“Square business? What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means square business, chag’ya, this ain’t circle business—what do you think the Blades are, your goddamn merry-go-round? You can’t ride us all.”

“Why do you still call me chag’ya?”

“Because I called you chag’ya first.”

“Oh, I see what this is all about,” smirked Olivia. “Someone a little jealous?”

Ace looked down at the gun. “I ain’t gonna say this but one time, Olivia. You in good with us now, but if you fucking with us, that shit will come back on you tenfold.” He looked in her eyes as he emptied the clip.

Seneka wasn’t a big fan of returning to 8th Block. Too many bad memories. She let the cops at the front gate conduct their half-assed frisking with a certain amount of doubtful complacency, standing aside as they did a brief search of the car. These guys were not good at their jobs. There were enough guns and drugs in that building to fuel a full-fledged black market operation, and in fact, that’s just what was going down.

Driving to 8th always felt a bit like falling asleep. It took forever, like she would never get there, but then all of the sudden, there she was. The parking area where she was standing was technically once a courtyard, but that word felt far too sweet to describe what it had become. She looked at the walls that encased the space, lined with dull bricks and dreary windows. The torn edges of detached, forgotten drapes looked like dried tears.

When Seneka entered the building, she avoided eye contact with the tattered men in rags sitting on their milk cartons and boxes. Trash crowded the corners through the hallway, and the scent of excrement and urine dominated the stairwell. This part of the building had really gone to shit.

Seneka got to Pansy’s floor, and the toilet odor was suddenly lifted and replaced with jasmine and incense. The tattered walls were covered with tapestries and wall scrolls, brightening the hall, the colors flickering by lanterns and candlelight. The power was out, and there were no windows here but the distant fraction of one at the far end.

Pansy’s door had opened just in time. She stood there, her pouting lips painted and sweet, like two cherries on her face. Her small smile was just present enough to brighten the corners of her eyes. She rushed to her friend, and gave her a big, full, hug.

“Oh, ahn’ni,” said Pansy. Her perfume scent danced around Seneka’s nostrils. “What are you gonna do?”

Pansy invited Seneka to have a seat in the worn brown arm chair of her tiny, broken apartment. The gas was still working, so Pansy cooked a bowl of noodles and broth on her tiny, rusting stove as Kang’ju sat happily in the corner, playing with her toys in innocent, self-imposed seclusion. Seneka stared at a patch of missing carpet as she sipped her soup from its plastic bowl.

 “Did you ever think about abortion?” Seneka asked, lowering her bowl.

“Shh!” said Pansy, rinsing her dishes. She tilted her head toward her daughter. “She can hear you!”

“She don’t know what an abortion is,” said Seneka.

“Abortions kill babies,” said Kang’ju. She hit a button on her computer toy. “Five bananas!”

“If you wanted an abortion, you wouldn’t be here,” said Pansy, taking a seat in a stolen lawn chair. “I mean, you know I won’t tell you abort.”

“Three bananas!”

“So does that make you, like, pro-life or something?” asked Seneka.

“Pro-life, pro-choice, pro-death, whatever, I don’t know any of what that means,” said Pansy. “All this politics, random words, no idea what any of it means. Like, what is this? ‘Green?’ I see it everywhere. Today? I saw a sticker that said, ‘green and vegetarian,’ so I said, what?” She laughed a little. “They say they love plants, then they eat them. What is that?  I love Kang’ju. Do I eat Kang’ju? No. I don’t think so.”

Seneka laughed. “Okay. But didn’t you worry about the life your kid was going to be living down here?”

“Of course, but Hero takes care of us. As long as Hero is okay, we will be okay.” She bounced her head with pride.

Seneka nodded back. “Alright, but what if Hero wasn’t okay? Shit happens down here.”

“Oh, don’t get me started.” Pansy shuddered. “I don’t like thinking about that. He’s the only one who can get to the money. If Hero was gone, what would we do? Nothing. Scary thought.”

Seneka paused with a furrowed brow. “He’s gotta give the safe combination to somebody else. Just in case.”

Pansy laughed. “Who is he going to give it to? You? Me? No way, if he was going to give it us, he would have done it by now.”

“Well maybe we could explain why to him.”

“He knows why. Still won’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re poor, that’s why. As much as we are close and good friends, if we are desperate enough, we could steal.”

Seneka sipped her soup, thought and thought some more, and with a burst of realization, her eyes went wide. “Olivia.”

“Olivia?”

“Olivia is rich!” cried Seneka. “Olivia has no reason to steal from Hero, and he trusts her! She’s the one—he could give her the combination!”

Pansy chuckled again. “Yeah, you tell Hero to give his combination to new girl. I dare you.”



Chapter 13

The living room was still cluttered with last night’s empties, the TV screen was starting to get a little cloudy from dusting neglect, and Ace was cleaning his Sig Sauer at the coffee table. It would have been a quiet, sleepy night at 912 if Tyrone, a veteran non-Asian Blade, hadn’t showed up at eleven o’clock to drop off gang dues. Stone was relaxing, lazily overseeing the operation at the kitchen table as Wildcard took care of business. Stone rocked his chair to and fro, his fingers interlaced with boredom as Ace was off in his own world in the living room. It was indeed a pretty calm night, but only by 912 standards.

“A’ight, here it is,” said Tyrone, sliding three stacks of cash across the kitchen table. “That covers Cojack, Bones, and Lil Jay.”

With a lit cigarette rested on his lips, Wildcard counted the cash and cross referenced it with Hero’s ledger. “It’s all good.” He tucked the money into a folder.

Thump. Stone tilted his head as the first sound came from upstairs.

“Hold up, nigga,” grumbled Tyrone, “I didn’t drive my happy ass up here to watch you tuck my money into no folder. I want to see that shit go into the safe, I wanna witness that shit.”

“Fuck you.” Wildcard’s eye squinted into a glare. “You know Hero’s the only one who got the combination.”

“Well where the fuck is Hero?”

Thump. Thump—crash. Tyrone looked up this time.

Wildcard looked at him questioningly. “What the fuck is the problem?”

Tyrone looked back at him. “My problem is Hero. We gettin’ real sick of that bitch-ass nigga, he never come down no more. He breeze on in actin’ all high and mighty and shit, but what – half the locks on the front doors down there is still broken, air conditioner don’t work in half the damn building, and it smells like shit.”

Thump. Stone sneered. Thump-thump-thump. Tyrone looked up again.

“Well, stay up on the hustle and we gonna get your shit fixed,” said Wildcard. “Your priority is gettin’ paid.”

“Gettin’ paid? Nigga, I am gettin’ paid, don’t—”

Thump.

“God dammit, what the fuck is all that muh-fuckin’ noise?”

“That…” sighed Stone, earning him all the attention in the room. “…is Hero handlin’ his business.”

Thump. Stone perked his head up. “Sounds like Olivia’s winning.”

The thumps suddenly ceased, and Olivia was dashing down the stairs, a shirtless Hero close behind her. All eyes in the kitchen were pointed toward the action.

“Where the fuck you going?” asked Hero.

“I’m going home,” snapped Olivia.

“Fuck no, what, you gonna walk to the motherfucking station?”

“I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”

Ace’s attention was no longer on his firearm.

“I know you’re stupid and crazy,” said Hero, “but can you just take the dumb bitch hat off for one night?”

She looked back at him. “Did you just call me a dumb bitch?”

“No, but you’re acting like a dumb bitch. It ain’t safe walking out there. It’s late—don’t forget what neighborhood you’re in.”

She reached for the door handle. “Then drive me.”

His shoulders slumped. “No.”

She leaned her head in. “Because…?”

Hero looked over his shoulder. “Because I said no, that’s why. You don’t need to be leaving.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why? It ain’t—”

Beep.

Hero tensed. “Christ, chag’ya, I’ll get you a battery—”

“Goodnight, Hero.”

Olivia opened the door, but Hero wasn’t done yet.

“Hey, what’s with the fucking rush? What, your mom can’t TiVo ‘The Hills’ for you?”

“Fuck you, you know, maybe I’d stay if you weren’t such a knuckle-dragging simian.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you, too. My regards to Paris and Nicky.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be late on Friday, or I’ll never let you forget it.” She kissed him. “I love you.”

He smirked. “I love you too. Dumb bitch.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.” And she left with another angry crash of the door.

Tyrone swung his chair toward Wildcard and Stone, shaking his head. “That pussy is gon’ be the end of him.”

Ace followed Hero with his eyes as he turned around and headed back up the stairs.

“What the fuck is going on Friday?” he asked.

Hero stopped and looked back down the stairs. “I’m going to dinner.”

“Just dinner? With O?” He frowned. “Where y’all going?”

Hero paused and looked down the stairs. “Her house.”

“Her house?” Ace couldn’t hide his puzzlement. “Why y’all having dinner at her house for? That shit is fucking far.”

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“What? I’m just asking.”

Hero continued to make his way up the stairs, only piquing Ace’s curiosity.

Ace raised an eyebrow. “Her momma gonna be there?”

Hero sighed. “Yes, alright? Her momma and her daddy.” He lowered his voice a bit. “And her grandparents.”

Ace stared at Hero. Hero stared back.

Hero raised his brow. “What?”

“So… O asked you to go to dinner with her folks?”

Hero turned and around and walked. “Yeah, so?”

Ace followed his curiosity right up the stairs behind his brother. “So… she actually asked you to do that?”

Hero kept walking. “Yeah.”

 Ace kept following. “Like, ‘Hey, Hero, since you gonna fit in so nicely at the country club, why don’t you—’”

“Why is your accepting of this simple fact malfunctioning so severely?” asked Hero, trying to make his way into his room alone. He failed. “Yes, Olivia asked me.”

“But, you see, I can’t seem to picture her doing that.” Ace cornered his brother in the doorframe. “In fact, the only mental picture I got is you passive aggressively tormenting her until she caved in and let you do this.”

 “Ace,” said Hero with an omniscient glare, “we gonna have a problem here?”

“Problem, what problem?”

“A ‘you-fucked-my-girlfriend-and-now-you-got-a-bug-up-your-ass’ problem, because I’ll be honest with you, I ain’t got time for this petty ass bullshit.”

“Fuck you. That shit is cold. Maybe I’m looking after you, ever think of that shit? This girl came out of nowhere and we treating her like she’s one of us – and I got plenty of reasons to think she ain’t.”

“Like what?” Hero smirked. “The fact that she chose me over you?”

Ace frowned.  “Which one of us is being petty?” He shook his head. “You know what? Good luck at dinner. I’m sure Olivia’s folks are gonna be real impressed with you.”

It was Friday night, a busy night in the city for the Blades, and the first sound to break the silence of the empty house was Seneka opening the door. Wildcard gently pointed her toward the stairs, his giggling breath tickling her neck before he shut the door behind them with his foot. His audible, boyish grin chased her up the stairs as he spanked her ass up to the landing.

“Come on, go on, get up there!”

“Wildcard!” she snapped. “This ain’t all that sexy, you rushin’ me like this.”

He grabbed her arm and yanked her into the bedroom, grasping her hips and pulling them into his as he slammed the door behind them.

“You make me crazy, girl.” He kissed her viciously, rushing her mouth with his tongue.

She pushed his chest away. “Hold on, there ain’t no romance in this, Dub C.”

“Bitch, there ain’t no time for no romance!” His eyes were far kinder than his words. “Shorty, come on, if I’m a tap that ass we gotta hit that shit now. My nigga’s gettin’ his grub on with his bitch’s people and the rest of them fools is at the club, now get yo shit wet and on my dick while we got some time!” He pressed his lips to her neck and pulled her straps from her shoulders. “Come on, you know I’m gonna make it real good for ya.”

She closed her eyes, let herself fall into it, let herself enjoy the passion in his strong arms as he peeled her clothes away, the sweet softness of his tongue on her skin…

Buzz.

“Shit, it’s my phone,” she said.

“Fuck your phone. You busy with your man now.”

“What if it’s important?”

“It ain’t important. Get your head straight.”

She stepped away from him, gave him a look that only Seneka could give Wildcard, and pulled her phone out of her pocket. She looked down and read the text message, and her shoulders sank.

“What?” frowned Wildcard. “What? Who is it?”

“…Hero.”

“What the fuck Hero want?”

She lifted her eyes, but said nothing.

“Fuck, let me see that shit.” Wildcard took the phone, and he read.

“You better not be doing what I think you’re doing.”

 “What the fuck is this shit?” Wildcard fumed. He dropped the phone on the floor. “You best ignore that shit. Come on, let’s get on with it.”

He pulled her shirt over her head. Just as his lips were on hers, once again, the phone buzzed.

“What the fuck does that bitch want now?” Wildcard couldn’t help himself. He read the phone.

“Make him wear two condoms. Idiocy may not be a sexually transmitted disease, but at least protect your uterus from his mentally-deficient seed.”

“What the fuck is this shit?” Wildcard fumed. “That dumb mother fucker—”

“He’s just worried about me, is all. He got good intentions.”

“Good intentions my ass, I’m calling this nigga, he needs to quit bein’ all up in my shit.”

“Wildcard—”

But the phone was already ringing. Seneka tried to get in a word of defiance, but Wildcard just raised his hand to silence her.

“Nigga, what the fuck is wrong with you?” With the phone to his ear, Wildcard’s hand remained lifted to Seneka’s face, testing her patience. “Get the fuck out of my biz, shit, I ain’t about to get your pussy, just sit over there at your snow bunny’s house and have a Coke and smile and shut the fuck up!”

Seneka folded her arms and pouted hard. Her boys would always be her boys.

Dinner had barely begun, only two plates had hit the table, and Hero had already dashed out to the back patio to take an ‘important phone call.’ Olivia went after him, only to find herself facing his back, the anger in his voice cracking over the threshold of a whisper.

“You better wrap that shit up, you dumb fuck, I ain’t even tryin’ to fuck with no more kids up in this clan—we had enough bullshit ass drama goin’ on wit—hello?” Hero jerked his head to the side, every muscle hardening with fury. “Fuck—you fuckin’ bitch!” He jerked the phone down and turned around. “That bitch hung up on me!”

Olivia’s mouth was well parted. “You’ve been at my house for ten minutes and you’ve already gone ghetto?”

He looked away and scoffed. “Olivia—”

She raised an authoritative finger at him. “Don’t even start.” Her mouth went tight as spooled wire. “Just once, Hero, just this one time, I need you to leave Sequoia Grove in Sequoia Grove, okay? I’ve never asked you for anything, but just this once, you better fucking cool your gangsta heels, do you understand?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah—”

“I mean it.”

“But that dumb redheaded fuck is violating my sister—”

“I don’t give a shit! All I care about is getting through tonight without having a fucking heart attack, okay? You’re the one who wanted to come here so bad.”

Hero raised his finger right back at her, looking through the window to check the commotion around the dinner table before lowering his voice.

“Correction. I never said I wanted to be here. I just said I didn’t want Ace to be here. Don’t get shit twisted.”

“That’s a fucking technicality and you know it.”

“Well, maybe I’d be a little nicer if you weren’t such a—”

“—stop being such a baby and admit that—”

“—my life south of the freeway ain’t gonna go on hold just ‘cause—”

Olivia’s father opened the sliding glass door. “Hey!”

Hero and Olivia both pointed their faces toward the interruption.

“Dinner’s ready,” said Dan. “Olivia, you mind making drinks?”

She managed a tight smile. “Sure.” She flashed Hero one hard glare of warning before they went back inside.

Olivia’s grandmother, Elizabeth, was in her late seventies, but she made damn sure no one could tell. She kept her white hair colored platinum blond, she always kept herself in moderately priced modern fashion, and she always wore stylish shoes. Her husband Larry was equally well-kept, but he in no way could compete with his wife’s ostentatious nature.

Elizabeth loved to criticize all of her daughter’s decisions, but to Margaret’s advantage, that all went out the window if they could team up together and gang up on Olivia instead. These dinners with Grannie and Grandpa were always a nightmare, but now that Dan forced Hero into the mix, it was guaranteed to send Olivia straight into an even deeper downward spiral of shame and frustration.

So there they were. Mashed Potatoes. Chicken. Wine. Placemats. Crystal glasses. Margaret. Dan. Olivia. Elizabeth. Larry. And Hero. Let the games begin.

“So tell me, Hero,” said Elizabeth, bringing her hands together, “what do you do?”

“I own a night club.” Hero took a sip of his wine, and Olivia could see his eyes hardening with focus as he calculated his next move.

“A nightclub?” Elizabeth smiled and looked at her husband, who sat stoic and out of focus. “How glamorous. And you own it. That’s lovely, to own your own business.”

Hero smiled behind his glass. “Thank you.”

“So where do you live?”

He put his glass down. “Sequoia Grove.”

“Sequoia Grove? Wow. What a place! How can you stand it? Such animals down there.”

Hero shrugged. “It’s home.”

“It’s those housing projects that really killed the area,” added Elizabeth, looking at the others at the table. “It used to be a nice place, lots of shopping and things like that. Until they put all that Section 8 housing down there, attracting all those squatters.”

Hero twisted his mouth. “We get by. They mind their own business.”

Olivia heard a silently implied ‘as should you’ after he closed his sentence.

“I’m sure that while Olivia is down there visiting you, you keep her away from the more dangerous areas,” said Dan sternly, before chomping on a chicken leg.

“Hero doesn’t tell me where to go,” said Olivia. “It’s not—”

“I can’t control where she is at all times,” Hero interrupted. “All I can do is guarantee that she is perfectly safe if she’s with me.”

“I can guarantee the same thing,” grumbled Dan.

Just as Olivia could hear Hero’s silence, she also heard her father’s. His eyes were asking, ‘Where were you when she got those bruises?’

Elizabeth laughed. She tried to hide that it was a nervous laugh, but she failed miserably. “Oh, Dan, you always make me laugh. Already trying to see who the alpha male is, I love it.”

“Oh, I have no intention to challenge Olivia’s father,” insisted Hero.

“But he has every intention to challenge you,” said Elizabeth. “So tell me about your night club, Hero.”

Olivia sat up straighter. “It’s really nice. It’s spacious, it has a great patio, and—”

“She didn’t ask you,” interrupted Margaret. “She asked Hero.”

Elizabeth looked at her daughter. “It’s fine, no need to cut her off.”

“Olivia is just trying to make me look good,” said Hero. “I appreciate that.” He smiled at Olivia.

Olivia poured another full dose of wine into her glass.

Margaret twisted her shoulders forward. “You must be doing very well for yourself at your club, Hero. I saw some of the things you’ve bought for my daughter.”

“Margaret!” Elizabeth snapped. “That’s none of your business, is it?”

“It’s fine, Olivia and I don’t intend to keep any secrets,” said Hero. “Yes, Mrs. Cunnington, I’m doing very well at the club. Business is good.”

“Where is the club?” asked Margaret.

“Mom!”

“What? That’s not a personal question at all.”

Hero shot Olivia a confident, stern look. He looked back toward Margaret. “It’s not the wealthiest area, but I supplement my income.” He sipped his wine.

“How, might I ask, do you do that?” Margaret was in full interrogation mode.

Hero stayed behind his glass. “I run an import export business on the side.”

“See?” said Elizabeth. “He runs another business. He’s ambitious. Asians are such industrious people.”

Hero swallowed a laugh and Olivia felt like dying.

“Maybe…” started Elizabeth, as her husband continued to say nothing, “maybe you could rub off on our little Olivia a little bit.”

Olivia suppressed a sneer.

“She’s so smart and so talented,” said Elizabeth. “She should be doing something more with her life than pushing buttons on a cash register.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Margaret with a sharp grin. “I keep saying she should get project management certification. She doesn’t need a degree for that, and lots of people are making lots of money in that industry. Every company needs a project manager.”

“I’m not saying she should quit Barrington’s,” said Elizabeth. “I’m saying she should move to a different department, or at least look into moving up to a management position. If she starts at the bottom of the company, she should at least consider looking forward to higher paying jobs. She could be a buyer at the corporate office.”

“I don’t see Olivia as a buyer,” said Dan. “She’s not the corporate office type.”

“I don’t either,” said Margaret. “She’s not a desk jockey. She’s headstrong and stubborn. She needs to be in a position of leadership.”

“What’s a better way to be a leader than to start from the bottom of an established company like Barrington’s?” said Elizabeth. “She’s much safer staying in—”

Olivia raised her hand like a middle school student. “Well, I—”

“Quiet, sweetheart,” snapped Margaret. “Your grandmother was talking. You weren’t raised in a barn.”

Hero’s back was pressed into his chair and he had one eyebrow lifted.

“It’s fine,” said Elizabeth. “If she has something to say, let her say it.”

Olivia glanced at Hero, then back at her table. “Well, I was just going to say that… um…” She looked back up. “Never mind. Isn’t tonight supposed to be about you guys meeting Hero?” She looked at each of her parents, begging a little. “We don’t need to talk about all this right now, do we? I mean, it’s boring.”

“I don’t think it’s boring at all,” said Hero. “It’s your future, there’s nothing less boring than that.”

Margaret leaned into the table. “So what do you think, Hero? What do you think is best for Olivia? I’m honestly curious.”

Hero shrugged. “I don’t know. You ever asked her?”

Margaret scowled. Hard.

Dan chuckled. “Of course we’ve asked her.”

“Have you?” Hero asked. He looked at Olivia. “What do you want to do with your life, chag’ya?”

Olivia prayed he wouldn’t ask her that, but her prayers were apparently unanswered. She looked down, and with a slump of her shoulders, she sighed. “I don’t know.”

“See?” said Margaret. “She doesn’t know.”

Elizabeth snickered and took a sip of her wine. “Well, she better figure it out, that’s all I’m saying.”

Hero looked her in the eye. “But that’s not all your saying. You’re saying a lot more. A lot more commands that you pretend are just suggestions.”

Elizabeth’s cool veneer went red-hot. “Excuse me?”

Hero glanced at Olivia, his eyes reading an advanced apology. Then he looked back at Elizabeth. “I do believe you heard me, ma’am.”

“Ah, now I see where Olivia’s recent attitude suddenly came from,” said Margaret. She relaxed into her chair.

“And now I see where Olivia’s old attitude came from,” said Hero. He looked at Olivia. “Chag’ya, have these folks ever let you make a single damn one of your own decisions your whole life?”

Dan sat up. “Hey, we have always—”

“I didn’t ask you,” snapped Hero. “I asked her.”

Larry finally chimed in. “You know, things are getting a little heated. I think we all need to step back—”

“No, what we need to do is step forward,” corrected Hero. He kept his eyes on Olivia. “Olivia, your life is yours, not theirs. You understand that?”

Olivia’s eyes were burning.

Hero turned back toward the table, rested his elbows, and gently pressed his fingertips together. “Alright, now that things are good and unfriendly at this table, let’s cut through the bullshit, shall we?”

Dan put wiped his hands and put his napkin back down on the table. “Actually, I think it’s time we call it a night.”

“I disagree,” said Hero, “and I don’t think you’re about to dismiss me, because it wouldn’t be very advantageous for you. If you kick me out right now, you create a forbidden love situation between me and your daughter, and I don’t think you want that, do you? It’ll be us against y’all, and you know it.”

Dan relaxed. “I’m listening.”

Hero smirked. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

“I do.”

Olivia gulped.

“Then let’s get one thing straight right,” said Hero. “I have never, nor will I ever, hurt your daughter. You feel me?”

Dan nodded. The rest of the table was completely ossified.

“Secondly,” said Hero. “I understand that you were the one who encouraged tonight’s gathering to take place. The six of us here together, yes?”

Dan nodded. “What’s your point?”

Hero slowly moved his head toward Margaret.

Margaret shifted in her seat. “What?”

Hero nodded toward Dan. “You talk him into this?”

“What?” Margaret repeated. “What are you talking about? Of course not.”

“Here’s what I think,” said Hero. “I think that Dan wanted me here with the honest intentions of meeting the man his daughter is involved with, naturally he had concerns. ‘Cause he got no further ambitions for her than to marry her off to some rich dude who can take on Cunnington.” He looked at Margaret. “And I think you got your folks involved with tonight’s dinner because you wanted to sabotage any chance of Olivia growing up to be a just a little wifey.” He pointed at Olivia’s parents. “Both of y’all got totally different plans for your little girl, but both of you agree that she can’t make her own choices for herself. You best work that shit out among you.”

Elizabeth scoffed. “Listen to him. He sounds just like one of those Sequoia Grove niggers.”

“Hey,” snapped Hero. “Don’t say nigger around Olivia. She doesn’t like it.”

Olivia smirked. Dan didn’t.

“How dare you,” hissed Dan. “How dare you come into my house and preach to me about how to raise my daughter. You’re right, Hero, I do know who you are. And I know about you and your little crew in Sequoia Grove. You are in no position to tell anyone how to live their lives. You’re a criminal.”

“I think crime is in the eye of the beholder—”

“I don’t give a shit what you think,” growled Olivia’s father. “All I care about is my daughter, and she deserves more than a life as a thug’s arm candy.”

“You’re right. She’s an adult and she deserves to live her own goddamn life, and the real crime here is making her believe that she can’t!” Hero scooted his chair back. “I came here tonight with the intention of putting on whatever face I needed to in order to impress y’all and make Olivia happy. But I guess I’m just 8th Block trash, and that’s just not something I’m capable of doing. I’m sorry.”

Hero stood up, leaned over, and kissed Olivia’s forehead. “I’m sorry, chag’ya. Do what you want to do. I’ll show myself out.” He made his way to the door, and with heavy feet, walked through it.

For a while, the five of them ate together in silence. Olivia took a gulp of her wine, and lazily sat it back down close to the edge of the table. Too close, it would seem, because once again, Margaret took her daughter’s glass, and in a swift, jerking, passionate motion, moved it inland. Her hard, maternal grasp maintained long after her angry repositioning.

Olivia stared at her mother, eyes wet and hard, piercing her mother’s flesh. Margaret didn’t return the glance, but she felt it. Everyone at the table felt it.

Olivia took the glass back, and though it was still full with wine, Olivia lifted it a good foot above her head, and dropped it. The pieces shattered with skull-splitting audibility, leaving a chaotic muddle of glass and wine all over the kitchen floor. Her family jumped, but Olivia was still.

Without a word, she ran out the door and into the night. Hero was still there, sitting in his car. He jumped a bit when he saw her approach. She tapped on the glass, and he rolled down the window.

“I’m sorry,” he said without thinking, “I just couldn’t, I wanted to—”

“Hero,” she said. “If I go back inside, run upstairs, grab a suitcase, fill it with everything I own, and then come back down… will you still be here when I get back?”

He took a few long, deep breaths. He looked at her, then away, and then back. Then away once again. He gripped the wheel. “Go. Before I change my mind.”

With a skip in her step and a smile on her face, she ran back into the house.

Margaret stood up. “Olivia, what are you—”

But Olivia paid her mother no heed before dashing up the stairs, pulling her suitcase out of her closet and jerking all her clothes from their hangers. When Margaret got there, she saw a closet full of nothing but hangers, swinging from inertia.

“What are you doing?” she cried, watching Olivia fold her dresses. “Get your ass downstairs and clean the mess you made!”

“You mean the mess you made?”

Margaret launched toward Olivia, pinched both cheeks tightly against her teeth, and brought her red face inches from hers, spit flying, veins popping.

“You will ruin your life, do you understand me!?” She jerked Olivia’s head with every hard hiss. “Don’t be such a fucking moron. I did not raise you to be some gangster’s white trophy wife!”

Olivia laughed, tears dribbling down her face. “Are you kidding?” A tear rolled across her mother’s hand. “That’s exactly what you raised me to be!”

Margaret pulled her hand back and slapped her daughter across the face. “You little fucking bitch!” She watched her daughter collapse onto the ground. “You can take this new shitty attitude of yours and shove it up your ass! If you think you’re coming back, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Olivia curled up into a ball, spitting out furious weeps with every word. “Why would I come back? Down there, I mean something to those people. Down there, the things I say matter. A girl was being abused and I saved her. In this house, I’m meaningless.” She shook her head. “I feel useless here, Mom.”

“Well excuse me if everything we did for you wasn’t enough,” spat Margaret.

Dan entered the scene, and Margaret turned to her husband.

“She’s leaving with that—that fucking racketeer!” Margaret cried. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her, I give up.”

Dan looked at his daughter, who had now straightened herself up, and though still weeping, continued to pack. “…I can’t.”

Margaret’s face fell, and that warping anger had twisted into unprecedented sadness. “Yes you can!” The pitch of her voice was pitched tightly by the tension of her weeping. “You have to stop her!”

“She’s an adult,” said Dan, low and stern.

Margaret punched her husband in the chest. “You’re fucking retarded too. This is your fault.”

As she stormed off, Dan muttered under his breath, “…maybe it is.”

Olivia didn’t offer her father the slightest glance of regret before she pushed past him and made her way down the stairs. She made heavy, lazy stomps, one foot in front of the other, letting her suitcase and shoulder bag bounce behind her. She could hear mutters from the kitchen.

“Just let her go,” said Elizabeth. “She’ll come back, once she realizes this was a mistake, it’ll be fine.”

“She better not come back…”

Olivia blocked out the rest as Dan chased her to the door.

“Olivia, stop for a second,” he said. He put his hand on the door. “I want you to think about what you’re doing. This family will never recover from this. I know you’re young, and I know you’re angry, but even if you try to come home after this, this is still a decision that will affect the rest of your life. Do you understand that?”

She didn’t move his hand, she just patiently waited. She didn’t look at him.

“Olivia,” said her father, letting emotion strangle his words for the first time that night. “If you do this, I will feel like a failure as a parent.”

Olivia’s bottom lip began to twitch. “I’m running away with an Asian mob boss. You are a failure as a parent.” She twisted her mouth up, letting the whimpers settle in, and she looked at her father. His eyes were almost as wet at hers, though she could barely peek over her own tears enough to see it. “I would have been really happy as a fighter pilot, Daddy.”

And that was the closest thing to a goodbye that Dan Cunnington got before he lost his little girl.

Hero was standing by his car with the trunk open, ready to take Olivia’s things. She tossed in her bags as Margaret, still sweaty and reddened by anger and defeat, pushed her husband out of the way to offer one last cry of protest.

“Hero, don’t you dare take that girl from this house, do you hear me?”

Hero said nothing.

“If you really loved her you would stop her from doing this!” Margaret cried.

Dan reached for his wife’s shoulder, but she just jerked his arm away from her.

“Do you really want her to give up what she has here to spend her life in a goddamn ghetto?” Margaret pleaded, tears trailing her face. “It’ll kill her! You’ll kill her!” She went forward, but Dan held her back. She tried to fight him off as she looked at the broken girl in the passenger’s seat. “Do you hear me, you stupid, stubborn little bitch!? He’ll kill you!”

Hero shook his head. “Mrs. Cunnington, please don’t call my girlfriend a bitch.”

“You fucking—”

Dan pulled his wife inside. It was over. The Cunningtons lost and Hero won, so Dan held his wife with one arm and closed the door with the other before he could watch his daughter disappear into the black oblivion of night with Hero Vem. The smell of spilled wine lingered in the air as Grannie and Grandpa swept up a thousand shards of broken glass.



Chapter 12

WARNING: This chapter includes content of a sexually explicit nature, so it may be inappropriate for readers under the age of 18 (or readers who are in my immediate family *blush*). You have been warned. Journey onward at your own risk. With a change of undies.

Olivia pushed her spaghetti around her plate feeling a little uneasy. After the other night, she wished her mother had prepared a meal that didn’t involve any red sauces. Luckily, she managed to wipe the disgust off her face before anyone had a chance to catch notice of it. The mood at the table had been quiet and strange all week, but something was different this time. Brighter. Sharper.

“We want to meet this boy,” said Dan. “Your grandparents are coming Friday. Tell him to come by at seven.”

A spike of adrenaline harpooned Olivia from backside to cranium. “Um, what?”

“Grandparents. Friday. Your boyfriend. Invite him. Please.”

Olivia voice was lost in a maze of panic, like blood trapped in clogged arteries, giving her an emotional stroke. “But I don’t have a boyfriend, it’s not—”

“Then you have thirty days to pack your stuff and move out of this house,” said Dan.

Olivia shook, quite literally and physically, trying to center herself in this sudden reality. “But I thought we had an understanding about my privacy.”

“We do. And you’ll have all the privacy you want in your own apartment. You can come home at any hour you want with as many bandages on your face as you please, and no one will be worried about you. If that’s what you want.”

Something about that statement, the cold, brutal honesty of it, struck a chord in Olivia. In fact, she had never had more respect for her father in her life. That said, her hands were tied.

“What if I’m telling the truth? What if I really have no boyfriend?”

“Then start packing.”

Somehow, Margaret must have talked Dan into this. It was a bold, vicious move—not Dan’s style. It had Mommy written all over it. Margaret was trying to hide the smirk on her face, but she was failing miserably.

Olivia looked at the red sauce smeared on the edge of her plate. A clump of parmesan reminded her of a broken tooth, and with a queasy stomach, she had no idea what to do.

As Olivia made her journey down 2nd street, she tried to think of how in the world she was going to ask Hero to do this. Not only was he going to suffer through a police interrogation from each of her parents, but with her mother’s parents there as well? The initial scrutiny would be enough to make Hero head for the hills, but asking him to chase that down with the aftershock of Grannie and Pap-pap’s follow-up questioning would be a downright fruitless effort.

Olivia cut through her familiar alley on the way to Club Lanka, once again taking a moment to admire the assorted graffiti. She ran her fingers across the faded word, Dragons, and warmly reflected on the naiveté she harbored the first time she saw it. Maybe she was better off before she knew the truth.

The sound of a high heel slamming against a window tugged at Olivia’s perception, forcing her head toward the souped-up Caddy a few yards away. The girl inside kicked again, hard and desperate, and shrieked with weak, feminine defiance. Olivia could see two ruby red heels fighting and fidgeting in the low lighting. There was another figure in the car, thick and male, obscuring most of the scene with his gray-shirted mass.

Olivia, without fear or thought, Olivia went for the car and jerked the door open, pulling the heavy man away from his captive. The girl’s panties were torn after having been ripped from her hips, and her red lipstick had been smeared from when the man had been gripping her mouth.

“What are you doing?” cried the girl. As soon as she spoke, Olivia recognized her. Orchid.

The man, a bit nervous and flustered, went for the front seat.

“Wait!” Orchid jumped out and went for the door. “Don’t worry about her, she don’t know what she doing. Come on back, baby, please. We do it just like you like it.”

He threw some cash out the window and drove away, leaving Orchid to fall to her knees, picking up the scattered cash and cursing.

“Sorry,” said Olivia. “It looked like he was raping you.”

“He was raping me,” said Orchid. “It’s his thing, it’s what he like. He slaps me around a little and fucks me.”

“Does Hero know that?”

“No.” She put tucked her money into her tiny handbag. “Fuck… fuck, now what am I gonna do? Fuck…”

“Did you have a quota you were supposed to meet or something?”

“Yeah.” She started to turn away. “Don’t help me no more.”

“Wait!” Olivia followed her. “Just tell Hero it was my fault, he’ll understand.”

“It don’t matter if it was my fault, his fault, your fault. I still don’t have enough money.”

“Doesn’t Hero take all your money? If he isn’t gonna hit you or anything, why does it matter?”

Orchid looked at Olivia with grave seriousness and unmitigated sincerity. “Because it’s my life.”

Olivia wasn’t bashful about the fact that she didn’t understand. “Will Hero hurt you if you don’t pay up?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“I have my life because of Hero,” she said. “Hero gave me my life.” She started to make her way through the alley, back to the front of Second Circle. “Don’t follow me. I’m fine.”

She disappeared as thunder started to roll through the sky, leaving Olivia to continue her journey under a series of black, ominous clouds. She knocked on the backdoor of Club Lanka just as a few rain drops were beginning to fall.

Hero was on the phone when she got to his office, and he nodded at her politely as he was wrapping up his conversation.

He hung up. “Hey, chag’ya.”

This was an awkward moment for Olivia. She wasn’t his employee, so she couldn’t ask about her responsibilities, but she was in no position to run up and kiss him either.

“Look. I need your help.”

“What do you need?”

She released a short, sharp sigh. “I feel really awkward asking you this, but…” She supposed she needed to establish first things first. “I mean, about you and me… what… are we? Exactly?”

Hero frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Homo sapiens? Dark-haired? Carbon-based? There are a fuckton of ways to answer that question, chag’ya.”

“I know, but I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” He looked at the monitors, quickly losing interest.

“But I really do need your help.”

“Then be clear.”

“Fine. My parents are a little less than thrilled with my constant nightly escapades, especially since I keep showing up damaged.”

“Understandable.”

“So they’re pretty much convinced that I have a secret life and, naturally, a secret boyfriend that I’m going off to see, and they won’t let it go, so…”

Hero nodded.

“…so, my grandparents are coming for dinner on Friday, and they’re sort of insisting that I invite my secret boyfriend over, and if I don’t, they’re forcing me to move out in thirty days, so…”

Hero nodded.

“…so…”

Hero leaned in a bit.

“…so do you think that Ace would be willing to pretend to be my boyfriend? Just for one night? So I don’t get kicked out of my house?”

Every muscle in Hero’s neck seemed to tense, pushing his face ever so slightly forward. His mouth melted into a baffled O shape, and his right eye twitched a little, twisting him from a passive arrogance to a creepy, seething, angry version of confusion.

“I don’t give a fuck. Go ask him.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s at the bar across the street. The Corner Bar.”

“Okay. Thanks.” She started to turn around.

“Hold on, I’m going with you.” He hit his intercom and ordered Stone to man the control center.

“Why?”

“I’m just going with you.”

“Yeah, but w—”

“Ace is playing pool with some guys I used to know and I want to—why are you all up in my business? Stop being a damn nag, then maybe you’ll get a real boyfriend someday.”

“Oh my God. You’re jealous.”

“Jealous!? What the fuck would I be jealous for?”

“Hero…” Olivia smirked, locking her hands behind her back and twisting her foot playfully into the floor. “You want to come over for dinner, don’t you?” She bit her lip.

“Fuck no. I can’t imagine more of a twisted carnival nightmare than meeting your blue-blooded parents at your million dollar Westcliff estate. Count me out.”

She laughed, because all she heard was, ‘no, why would I want to go to stupid Westcliff and eat stupid dinner with your stupid family, they’re probably all stupid anyway.’

“Don’t be an asshole,” said Olivia, half irritated and half amused. “If you ever came down from your tower and stopped sending me mixed signals all the time then maybe I would have thought I could ask you, but—”

“I ain’t the one sending mixed signals. You fucked my brother, you fucked Dub C—”

“—hey, almost fucked Dub C—”

“—and now you want to take my brother to meet your family—I don’t understand what the fuck you want from me.”

Once Stone got to the room, Hero and Olivia bickered down the hallway. Once the hallway had been properly bickered through, they bickered down the stairs, they bickered out the door, and they bickered right into a rainstorm.

“Oh yeah?” Olivia snapped. “Well maybe if you—”

“Fuck. It’s raining.”

“Holy shit, no way.”

He smirked. “Last one to the Corner Bar is a spoiled trust-fund brat.”

Before another word was spoken, he was already pounding gravel, crossing with a series of splashes to the other side of the street. Olivia just stood there, watching a wall of water form between them as the rain spilled from the roof of Club Lanka.

Hero jerked around with confusion as soon as he realized Olivia wasn’t by his side, but when he looked back and saw her standing there, awkward and timid under Club Lanka’s dripping awning, he relaxed into cynicism. “Olivia, get the fuck over here.”

The steady noise of the rain slapping against the street was rolling into a deafening hum.

Olivia shouted, “What!?”

“I said get the fuck over here!”

She stammered, wringing her hands, looking down at her Michael Kors dress. “But it’s raining!”

He looked around with baffled glare. “I’m aware of that, chag’ya!”

Her hands tightened into the impatient fists of a toddler. “Do you have any idea how much this dress costs!?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Well, you should,” said Olivia, “because you paid for it!”

“I’ll buy you another one!”

“Well that’s not going to help me right now, is it?”

“Christ, will you just cross the damn street?”

She just stood there, whining to herself, stepping in place. “Hero, I don’t want to.”

“Would you stop bitching? Just run, you’ll be fine.”

“But my shoes will get—”

“Dammit, woman, get your ass over here right now!”

Olivia shuffled her feet in a mad dash across the slick asphalt, her heels dropping a beat to the melody of raindrops. She made it to Hero, gasping for breath, water trailing down her collarbone and gluing the fabric of her dress to her skin. A drop trailed her nose and dripped to her bottom lip.

She shoved Hero in the chest. “You don’t know jack shit about chivalry, do y—”

He put his hands on her waist, pulled her tightly to his body, and kissed her mouth, tasting the rain on her lips. He fingered her wet hair, gripping the matted clumps as he pressed her face deeper into his, tasting her fevered, hungry tongue. He kissed her from sharp, rigid anger to euphoric dizziness.

He parted from her, leaving her bottom lip burning for more. “I wanted you to get all wet for me.”

The disorienting warmth she was feeling left her breathless. “Um, what?”

He kept his hands on her hips, and looked into her face. He glanced over each of her shoulders to make sure no one was around before he spoke.

“Olivia, please don’t ask Ace to do this,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m asking you not to.”

“Asking me? Or commanding me?”

He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away from him, toward the bar to push the door open. Hero pulled her back by the stomach, took her hand, pulled her deeply down the side of the building near obscuring shadow, and pressed her against the wet brick wall. She could feel the fabric of her dress getting annihilated against the rough surface, scratching and scraping.

He pressed his mouth to hers, letting her feel his breath on her top lip, tickling her. He kissed her deep, washing over her more and more, pushing his desire onto her, entangling his fingers into hers, not taking no for an answer, but naturally, that’s the only answer Olivia was going to give. As his hand began to move up her thigh, Olivia swatted it away.

“Come on, chag’ya.” He took her hand and gently placed it under his shirt, letting her fingers trace the contours of his abs. “Don’t you think about my body when I’m not with you?”

Her face went beet red. “No. Well, maybe, but—”

“What do you think of it?”

“I’m not buying this,” said Olivia, jerking her hand back. “You’re not doing this because you want me, you’re doing this because you want me to want you, and I’m not falling for it.”

“You don’t want me?” he asked, trailing his finger down the side of her body with a pathetic pout.

Her heart was enslaved by the conflicting heats of rage and arousal.  “At least Ace puts out. You’re a tease.” She put cupped her hand over his groin, massaging the growing bulge. “If you’re going to fuck me, do it. Now.”

He laughed. “Sure, right now, against this wall.”

“You think I’m joking. I’m not. I’m horny, and I want it right now.”

He looked at her with condescending amusement. “I’ll take care of you tonight, after the club closes, okay? If you don’t ask Ace. Deal?”

“No. No deal. You fuck me right now, or I’m going into that bar. Ace has fucked me, you haven’t, that makes him the closest thing I’ve got to a boyfriend in Sequoia Grove.”

He grabbed her active hand and pushed it against the wall. “Hey. You told me you loved me.”

“You never told me you loved me back.”

“Why the fuck would I tell you that when you treat me like this?”

“Treat you like what? A carbon-based brunette homo sapien who won’t fuck me?”

He shut her up with a furious kiss, slamming her head against the wall as he pushed his hand under her soaking dress. His fingers wrapped around the crotch of her thong and pulled it aside so he could get to her center. His fingers went to work, gently probing her opening, but just barely. Just enough for her to get the point.

“Tell me you love me,” he said, the rain sparkling through his hair like diamonds. “And I’ll fuck you.”

“Fuck me and I’ll tell you anything you want.”

He grabbed her drenched hair and pushed furious breaths through his teeth. “Westcliff brat gotta have her way, huh?”

She rolled her eyes. “Why are you stalling? Because you’re Asian? Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m a huge believer in the motion of the ocean.”

He grasped her cheeks with his left hand, hard and vicious, while his right hand continued sliding between her thighs. “Do I have to shove my dick in your mouth to shut you up?”

The aggression in his fingertips was making her lightheaded, and the relentless rain pelting her skin only made her feel weaker. She spoke confidently despite the obstacles. “Sure. I’m sure all three inches of it will fit nicely.”

He took her hand, and rested her fingers on the rim of his pants. His eyes locked into hers, challenging her. “If you want it,” he smirked, raising an eyebrow, “come and get it.”

“Maybe I will.”

He held her as she affixed her mouth to his, unbuttoned him, unzipped him, and freed him, forcing his exposed hips against hers and hoisting her legs up and around him.  Hero’s arm worked on her dress and battled the barrier of her bra until he could open her body to his greedy hands and the ruthless rain, turning her Michael Kors dress into nothing more than a useless wrinkled tube of wet fabric hanging around her hips. The flurry of action, saturated with precipitation, lust, and anger, calmed down once their bare skin was joined, and the satin rush of soothing calm stunned them both to silence.

Olivia’s face was over Hero’s shoulder, so he repositioned himself so his forehead leaned gently against hers, their faces now directly across from each other. He followed a raindrop with his finger down the side of her cheek, and then tilted her chin toward his. “Look at me.” She did, and he looked into her eyes as he slid inside.

As he moved her and the rain trailed tingling stripes of sensation down her bared torso, electric aftershocks of candy pleasure followed close behind. She felt enslaved by the power of the phenomenon, her skin saturated by rain and reverie, enclosing her body and completely redefining her perception of touch. She couldn’t stop moaning, she couldn’t stop shaking, she couldn’t hold Hero’s body tight enough, and she couldn’t look away from his almond-shaped eyes. She was starving for him, and swallowing him whole.

“I love you,” he whispered, eyes courageous and hips hard at work.

“I love you, too.”

She clung to him like a child, kissing him desperately, clumping his shirt into her grasping hands. Her tongue explored his mouth in a feverish, sloppy kiss, tasting lust and rain. The drops on her cheeks felt like tears.

“Come for me, chag’ya.”

With his fingers entangled in her head, she leaned her head back, eyes closed, mouth opened. Every time she exhaled, she let out a wild, animal sound, declaring her orgasmic delight. Her thighs went tight as a vice around him, engulfing him, begging him with her body.

“Come for me,” he repeated, kissing the rain sparkling down her neck. “I love you, chag’ya. Come for me.”

She tightened and tightened until she broke her passionate fever and fell over the edge, an avalanche of ecstasy spreading to every corner of her body, making her scream in rapturous agony. She pumped her hips harder into him, stealing every possible morsel of orgasm she could.

“I’m coming,” she moaned.

He kissed her, joined her in euphoric explosion, and guided her through her descent from earth. They didn’t stop kissing until they landed.

Beep.

As Olivia sat at Hero’s windowsill and watched the rain fall, she was beginning to wish each beep were closer together, forming some semblance of a rhythm. Instead, they arrived sporadically, so distant from one another she had nearly forgotten about them by the time they came around again. Once she drifted onto the shore of sleep, the tide of the beep pushed her deeper into the waves of panic.

Hero stirred, groaning with disappointment when he realized half his bed was empty. He got up and glided across the moonlit haze to sit opposite Olivia, tilting his head in concerned observation.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“Of course not. Your house still beeps.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot that bothers you. You alright? You look real pale.”

Her eyes were dreamy and distant. “Where are you from?”

“8th Block. You know that.”

“No I mean, where are you from? Like, what country?”

He frowned. “America.”

She scoffed. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean. And you know better than to ask me that by now. If you’ve still got questions about me, don’t fill in the blanks with my ethnicity. Just ask.”

Her jaw jerked to the side, as if she were trying to bite off his snarky tone. “I saw Orchid getting raped in the back of a car tonight.”

His face tightened. “You saw what?”

“She had a client with a rape fantasy,” Olivia explained. “I tried to help her because I didn’t understand, so he just threw some cash at her and drove away.”

Hero leaned back. “She ain’t supposed to service guys like that. She knows better.”

Olivia’s train of thought had already passed his station. “How can you take all their money? How can you let those girls do that every night? Who are you?”

Beep.

“You know who I am.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know your real name.”

He smiled. “Hero. Nice to meet you.”

“Your real name is not Hero.”

“Is too.”

She sighed, now even less inspired to join him in the bed. “Try to level with me for once, please, okay? I’m having a lot of trouble with this.” She gulped and tightened her toes. “I feel really drawn to you. To the Blades, Club Lanka, this place. It’s like I feel compelled to be here, like I can’t help but come back, but I know what you are. You’re a criminal, and I know that I should stay away from you.” She tugged at her own hair and scratched a non-existent itch on the back of her neck. “Sometimes I hear it when I’m not even here, and the fact that you can’t hear it at all makes it worse.”

Hero leaned his head against the glass and released a slow, careful breath through pressed lips.

“I need to make a choice,” said Olivia. “I’m either a soulless aristocratic harpy from Westcliff or a mob boss’s arm candy. I can’t be both. And I need your help to decide.”

He closed his eyes, tightened them for a second, and released them to gaze into Olivia’s distraught face. “You wanna know why I like flowers so much? Why I name my girls after flowers?”

She waited for him to answer himself.

“Because I like the idea of something beautiful growing out of nothing,” he said. “That’s what we were in 8th Block, we were less than nothing. My father had a degree, but it didn’t carry to the States, so we had to start from scratch in the projects. My parents were so busy trying to stack their paper and get out of that place that me and Ace and Seneka had to make our own way. Eventually, I started noticing the tenant leaders were negotiating with gangs, not the social workers or the five-oh, so if I wanted to get anything done down there, I knew who I needed to get involved with.

“Orchid, Rose, and Pansy didn’t come to this country the way I did. They were put up in nice hotels and shit, their traffickers had decent investors. It’s a big business—the recruiters told them they were going to get married when they got here and become legitimate US citizens. Didn’t happen that way. The second they got here, they were cycled through the Grove—brothels, massage parlors, that kind of thing. Mostly seedy shit hiding behind legit businesses. A couple pimps ran their business out of 8th Block, and when the girls came through, that’s how I met them.

“Pansy’s pimp didn’t have cash to buy drugs, so he tried to pay with Pansy’s pussy. I remember, I was scared shitless. I had product I needed to deliver, and if I didn’t come back paid, I was gonna get my ass beat, and there was this girl with her face between my legs. If I didn’t take the blow job for the drugs, she was the one who was gonna get beat down, so I lied to her pimp for her and paid for the crack out of pocket.”

Hero shook his head at the memory. “A few years later, the Dragon Blades were taking off, and I bought this house. I never forgot about those girls, and I saw them from time to time.” He smiled to himself. “Stone always says you can’t take Hero to the pound, or you’ll end up with a house full of mangy dogs.” He looked at Olivia. “So I borrowed against this house and took the girls home.

“It was real hard, trying to figure out what to do at first. I mean, what was I gonna do? They couldn’t speak English, they couldn’t do shit but dance and suck dick. I looked into getting them in school, but they weren’t legit and I didn’t have the protectors or the informers that the traffickers did to forge them paperwork. It was a fucking mess, and if I didn’t figure out a way to get that money back, we were all going back to Thomas Chaucer.” He sighed. “So I started pimping them.”

Olivia nodded slowly, but still held a frown. “But it’s been so many years now. They still haven’t paid their debt?”

Hero shook his head. “It hasn’t been a smooth ride. Money goes here, money goes there,  Kang’ju was born, a lot of shit goes down south of the Interstate. And they like working for me. All their needs get taken care of and they don’t have to be responsible for their own lives. The allegory of the cave, I guess.” He shrugged. “This is what they know.” He relaxed. “My real name is Hi’luh. Seneka started to spell it H-E-R-O after I brought the flowers home.”

He stood up, walked over to Olivia, brushed her bangs out of the way, and kissed her forehead. He ran his fingers through her hair, put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her, holding her against his belly. He kissed her head again.

“I can’t tell you who you are, that’s up to you,” he said. “But I can tell you that I love you, and that I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

Beep.



Chapter 11

It was a bustling night in Second Circle. Pedestrians passed with their knock-off handbags, hobos were tucking themselves into their cardboard beds, a couple of street hustlers were trying to make their day’s pay, and cheap yellow light exposed the interior of the aged Shooting Star Diner. Olivia was there waiting, her arms folded, sipping a glass of water.

“Will you move!?” said Wildcard, shoving Ace out of the way of the window. “I can’t see.”

Ace shoved him back. “Fuck you, bitch, now I can’t see.”

“Is he there yet?” asked Seneka, looking around Ace’s shoulder.

“No,” said Stone. “He’ll show up, he’s only a couple minutes late.”

Seneka and the boys perched on top of the closed dumpster, peeping inside. Stone looked at his roommates as they crowded around his shoulders.

“Uh, guys?”

They looked at him.

“What are y’all doing here?”

Seneka smiled. “What, you honestly thought I wasn’t gonna tell them about this?”

The ‘this’ to which Seneka was referring was Stone’s childish attempt to bring Olivia and Hero together. After Stone had asked Olivia what she wanted to do, she had told him she needed time to think, so they agreed to meet at the Shooting Star Diner a few days later. Meanwhile, cunningly, he had told Hero that a new supplier insisted on meeting the boss before doing business with the Blades. Stone didn’t think every resident of 912 Branden would be so interested in his matchmaking scheme, but apparently they were.

“This was a dumb fuckin’ idea,” said Wildcard, trying to keep his feet stable on the dented dumpster lid. “Hero gonna take one look in that restaurant, see O, and fuckin’ bolt.”

“No, he won’t,” said Ace. “Hero got class—he’ll at least go in there and tell her we was playing games.”

“Exactly,” said Stone. “Which means he gotta—oh shit, there he is—be quiet!”

Hero parked on the street right in front of the restaurant, and the crew went dead quiet. He slammed the door shot, clicked it to lock, and casually made his way to the steps leading toward the entrance. Once he had reached toward the door, he froze, cut a crease between his brows, and took a long minute to stare inside. His expression transcended from utter bafflement to cold, dirty realization.

Wildcard started to snicker, so Seneka hit him in the chest.

Mixer looked at Ace. “You think he gonna run?”

Ace raised his hand. “Nah, he’ll go in. Give him a second.”

“He gonna fix up his hair,” giggled Wildcard. “He gonna fuss with his hair, and I’m gonna laugh when he does it.”

Seneka gave him a warning look. “You better not.”

Hero turned away from the window and put his palms on his lower back. He looked down, exhaled through pursed lips, and right on cue, he brushed his hair back and arranged it neatly over each side of his face.

Wildcard snickered and Seneka elbowed him.

Hero looked up, took another breath, and straightened his posture. For a moment, he looked like he was going to turn around, but he didn’t. He tightened his jaw, returned his hands to his back, and looked down again. He glanced backward for a second, but then returned to his pensive stance.

Mixer looked to Stone. “Wait, is he—”

“Fuck,” said Ace. “Look.”

Two guys, tattooed and a bit scraggly for their 20-something years, were in Olivia’s face. They didn’t look friendly and Olivia didn’t look responsive. She sat straight up, her hands far from her water, and she looked down at the table. The boys were trying to talk to her, but she didn’t offer the slightest fragment of a reply.

“Fuck, who are those guys?” whispered Seneka. “They ain’t Blades, is they?”

“Nah, I don’t know them,” said Stone. “Just a couple drunk fools, looks like. Probably trying to get a date.”

One of the guys reached for her arm. She jerked it away.

“Should we go in?” asked Mixer.

“No,” said Stone. “We go in, we ruin my plan. Stay down.”

Hero was still standing there, his back to the restaurant, tapping his finger on his lips.

“She might get hurt, Stone,” stressed Seneka. “We gotta go in there.”

One of the guys, a bleach-blond with a pierced eyebrow, was standing behind Olivia, running his hands through her hair. She jerked her head out of his grasp.

“Come on, Hero,” mumbled Stone. “Turn around.”

But he didn’t turn around. His face was haggard with worry, and for a good, long, second, it looked like he was about to turn back for his car.

Ace turned toward Stone. “Oh, fuck, you don’t think he’s gonna leave, do you?”

Mixer elbowed him. “You was the one who was sayin’—”

Eyebrow had a firm grip on Olivia’s arm. He was pulling her out of her booth, and the harder she pulled away, the more his raven-haired companion sitting at the end of her table laughed.

Stone’s fists clenched. “Come on…”

“They gonna hurt her,” pleaded Mixer. “And Hero ain’t turning round, Stone.”

Black-hair was pushing his hand down Olivia’s body, heading between her legs. The few others in the restaurant, one couple and a few scattered patrons, were starting to pay attention.

Mixer’s voice lifted in pitch. “Stone, she—”

“Wildcard,” said Stone. “You armed?”

“Yessir,” affirmed Wildcard.

“Alright,” sighed Stone. “That fuck makes one more move, you go in. Me and Ace will back you up. Mixer, stay with Seneka, okay?”

Mixer nodded.  “Sure, but what about He—”

Olivia stood up and moved for the door, but Eyebrow pulled her back by the straps of her dress. And punched her across the face.

“Dub C—move!”

Wildcard pulled out his Glock, hopped off the dumpster, and went for the entrance, Hero turned around, and Eyebrow had slammed Olivia’s face onto the table. Wildcard made it inside, Ace and Stone were his jet trails, but they were too late. Too late to be of much use, anyway.

Hero came in just in time to see Olivia twist out of Eyebrow’s grasp, dodging a second punch from Dark-hair. She bent forward, impacted Eyebrow with her elbow, and in the second of confusion, managed a firm kick to the leg of Dark-hair’s chair. The leg snapped, forcing his face into the table with enough velocity to tease out blood.

She grasped the dismembered leg, and with a smooth swing of her arm, she staked Eyebrow in the chest like a vampire. As he sloppily fell backward, weeping with the unendurable fury of his agony, she lifted the leg high in the air, and shoved it deep into the shoulder of her dark-haired opponent. He screamed in pain. He twitched in pain. And a puddle of blood collected on the floor.

“Fuck you!” shouted Olivia, twisting the wooden stake.

Wildcard pistol-whipped Eyebrow across the face, letting the gun-point pin him still, and after these few brief seconds of fury, there was a long moment of calm.

Olivia looked up. Hero. Seneka. Mixer. Ace. Wildcard. And Stone. All there. Standing. Staring.

Olivia looked at Stone. “If I’m going to hang out with you guys,” she said, tossing him the bloody wooden stump, “I need a gun.” She caught her breath, looked at Hero, and wriggled a little to straighten her dress.

There were six pairs of eyes pointed straight at her, their brains clearly still trying to process the obscene display of Olivia’s vicious temper. When she saw the blood on her arms, she tucked them into her body, embarrassed. She shrugged a little, giving a bashful half of a smile.

Hero’s mouth was open, and his eyes were as wide as he could hold them. His body had hardened into a poised, upright rock, every muscle too petrified to respond to any command his brain had to give. His anger was so downright visual that Stone could have sworn he saw cartoon fury lines emanating from his body. He didn’t know who his boss was going to lash out at first—the douche bags on the ground or his own crew.

Hero ran across the floor, kicking Dark-hair out of the way before he took either side of Olivia’s face into his hands. He ran his thumb across her right brow.

“Chag’ya,” he whispered. “You’re bleeding.”

“Um, what? I’m fine, I—”

“No, you’re not fine,” he said. “Look at you. Look what they did to you.” He took a pile of money out of his wallet and put it on the table, a foot shy of the blood puddle. “Stone, see if you can call somebody to clean the trash out of this nice man’s restaurant. I gotta take care of my chag’ya.”

“Sure, hy’ung.”

Hero turned around and gave Eyebrow a hard stomp to the nuts. He was crying, still gripping his bleeding chest.

“You dumb motherfucker,” said Hero, kneeling in front of him. “Do you not know where you are? Do you not know who she is?”

The boy bared his teeth, releasing a long, low, desperate cry.

Hero shoved his fingers into Eyebrow’s wound, twisting at the exposed muscle tissue. “Apologize.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Say, ‘I’m sorry, Miss Olivia.’”

The boy twitched. “I—I—”

Hero twisted harder. “I ain’t playin’ with you—I could stand here all night long, now you better say it.”

“I’m sorry Miss Olivia!” he wept. “I’m-sorry-Miss-Olivia-please-stop-hurting-me!”

“And your friend…” Hero stood up and turned around. He wiped his bloody hand off on Dark-hair’s shirt. “Eh… I think your friend has lost too much blood to talk right now, but I’m sure he’s very sorry.”

Wildcard tilted his gun slightly. “Yeah, uh… I think he needs, like, a doctor.”

Hero put his arm around Olivia and walked her outside. “Come on.” He kissed her forehead. “Let’s get you back to the house.”

After Olivia took a shower to wash off all the blood, Hero gave her a T-shirt and boxers to wear. She felt oddly aroused in his clothes, enjoying the sensation of the soft cotton fabric against her skin. It was the softest thing she had ever worn, warm and cuddly, giving her a hug as it dangled against body.

Hero pulled out a chair from the kitchen table. “Have a seat.”

She did, and he pulled up next to her with a cotton swab, wiping some excess blood from her wounded forehead.

“So, what?” She turned her face toward him. “You aren’t gonna give me some speech about staying out of the Grove?”

“No. I give up. Hold still.”

She looked away. “Um…” She tried to look at him with her eyes without turning her head. “Stone told me the whole truth about Kai’lah. That must have been really horrible for you. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

He feigned a peaceable smile. “Don’t listen to him. He probably made me sound like some kind of saint.”

“Don’t worry. I still think you’re an asshole.” She watched the focus in his eyes as he treated her wound. “But that’s okay. I like a good movie where I can root for the bad guy.”

Hero chuckled. “What if I’m not the bad guy? What if I’m the hero?”

Olivia’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God, Hero, was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?” She laughed. “A Twilight reference and a pun? Ladies and gentlemen, mark your calendars, it’s officially Hero-made-a-joke-day, we may never see such a thing again, this is truly a moment in history—echh—ow!”

“Will you hold still?” He was dabbing disinfectant onto her cut. “I’m going to put a small band-aid on this and you gonna look like a boxer. Good luck explaining this to your parents. They probably going to think I beat you.”

“It’s okay, I’ll tell them you only do it because you love me.”

Hero pressed the bandage onto her face. “There. Good as new. Kinda.”

Beep.

They shared awkward giggle, and for no reason in particular, she looked down at the floor. It was like the track of their interaction had ended, but there was no station at which to exit. The train just stopped, and she wasn’t sure whether or not to wait for it to move on its own or if she was supposed to ask someone for help. So she just sat there and waited for him to do something.

He took her hand and lightly ran his thumb across the back of it. He looked at her hand carefully, almost as if studying it, but it was more likely that he was studying whatever was going on in his mind.

“Why did you break the chair leg?” he asked, zapping from la-la land to the moment. “Why didn’t you just wait for us to come get you? You saw we were coming in.”

“Do I look like the damsel in distress type to you?”

He laughed. “No, not really.”

He slowly lifted her hand, and brought the back of it to his cheek. As his skin met hers, he gave a long sigh, as if relieved. As if letting go.

“I don’t apologize about things,” he said. “It’s not that I’m a dick, it’s just I don’t see the point—everything I’ve ever done, no matter how fucked up it was, I had a reason. Looking back is a waste of energy, and every good commander has gotta make sacrifices.” He looked up at her in vicious, sudden way, pushing his intentions deep into her eyes, pinning her into the moment with him. “But I don’t ever want to have to make a choice like that again. I don’t have it in me. I don’t think I can do it again. I think it might break me.”

His voice went lower, dropping itself into graveness. “I would rather die, or spend the rest of my life alone, than ever have to make a choice like that again. Do you understand?”

Beep.

She took control of the hand he had taken from her, running her thumb across his cheek below his eye, following the almond shape. “You won’t have to. I promise.”

She stood up to move closer, lowered her face to his, and kissed plush lips, tasting the warmth and sadness. His desire was budding from woe, projecting a fiery yet miserable invitation.

He kissed her right back, hard, pulling her closer to his body by her hips and hungering all the more for the sensation of his hands on her skin.  Placing his knees on either side of her bared legs, he moved his hands up the bottom of the cotton tee he had given her, enveloped between heavenly soft fabric and delicious feminine flesh.

When she parted from his mouth, it took him some time to open his eyes again. The look on his face made Olivia’s heart ache, like a sad movie. You know it will depress you epically, but it’s so well done you have to watch it the whole way through.

She touched his cheek. “Are you okay?”

Beep.

He kissed her again, grunting a bit before putting pressure to her mouth, and with his instincts getting the best of him, he was tugging onto her shirt. She parted from his mouth briefly to suck in a breath, only to latch back on immediately after, running her hands through his hair. She pulled on it, and she pulled on it hard enough to hurt him. He moaned.

He gently pushed her away from him, and as he looked upon her lust-bitten face, he ran his thumb across her bottom lip. She kissed it as it passed.

He gulped. “I’m gonna go put your dress in the dryer.” He tapped her butt to signal that it was time to get off his lap. She backed off, and he stood up to walk away.

Before he left the room, he looked back at her. “Come back Monday night, and we can go get you a gun.” He made his exit.

Olivia sat in his chair, arms folded, wondering if it was possible for a female to get blue balls.

Olivia didn’t ask where Hero was taking her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t curious, more that there was no point in asking. She was going wherever he wanted, like she always had, and she didn’t have a choice.

 “Stick by me,” he said. “This is gonna be a rowdy place.”

“What, you don’t buy guns at like, a gun store?”

“Nope,” said Hero. “No sense in buying guns the legit way, considering what we use them for. We go through a freelancer, when she gets supplies she holds these gatherings where we can all come to buy.”

“Like… a Mary Kay party?”

“A very hardcore Mary Kay party, yeah.”

Olivia snickered. “I wonder how many .22s you have to sell to get your Perfect Start pin.”

Hero laughed.

“It’s funny to me that your weapons dealer is a girl.”

“I don’t know if I would call Falynn a girl. She’s more like… you’ll see.”

It was a long walk from the garage to their actual destination. They came to a strip mall a little south of Second Circle, and based on the level of degradation, it was tricky to say whether or not it was abandoned. She followed Hero down a set of stairs to an underground hallway, and as they approached a loading door, muffled music increased in volume.

A black guy with tight cornrows and stylish color-coordinated athletic wear met the couple at the door.

“What the fuck, Hero?” he said, slapping hands and man-hugging him. “I was supposed to meet your upstairs, fool. You know you got protection down here, a’ight?”

“Olivia, this is Wildcard’s brother, Antwan. Antwan, this is Olivia.”

Wildcard was a skinny five-foot Asian dude. Antwan was a brawny six-foot black guy. Olivia had questions.

“Remember when I was telling you the difference between black guys and niggers?” said Hero. “This man is no nigger—a true gentleman.”

“Fuck you, I’m a nigga,” laughed Antwan. “Don’t front. Yo, I heard my boy’s fucking your sister. That nigga’s got balls—after what happened to Cyclops.”

Olivia looked at Hero. “What happened to Cyclops?”

Antwan chuckled. “Bitch, we call the man Cyclops—what you think happened to ‘im?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he called me a bitch.”

Antwan raised his fist to his mouth. “Oh snap, Hero, she got a mouth on her, too. Where you find her at?”

Hero looked Olivia. “Cyclops was a weird dude. His eyes didn’t focus right. And one day they were looking where they shouldn’t, so I had a freelancer deal with it.” He looked back at Antwan, a little apologetically. “I kinda had temper problems back then.”

Antwan put his arm around Hero as if presenting him to Olivia. “Nah, he just real protective of his sister, is all. This man gonna take good care of you, snow bunny, you better believe that. Now y’all go down to that side entrance, it’ll keep you away from the common folk, a’ight? I told Falynn you was comin’ and she’s pretty excited.”

Hero nodded and said his thanks, and led Olivia to the other door.

“Wildcard’s real parents abandoned him at a grocery store when he was three,” Hero explained. “Antwan’s family took him in, so that’s how he ended up at 8th Block. He doesn’t even remember his real name.”

He reached for the door handle.

“We’re gonna do business after the rush,” he said. “Alright?”

“The rush?”

He turned the handle and lifted the door.

Olivia was smothered by an ambush of noise, popping and rattling, shaking the crowd. There was a white spotlight on a center stage, a crowd hooting and hollering around it. A girl with long, blood red braids, baggy pants, and a black top that could barely be called a bra, stood there holding a machine gun up in the air.

“Y’all ready to buy some motherfucking guns!?”

The crowd cheered as she rattled off a few shots into the wall.

Two guys came up behind Hero, shook his hand, and closed the door behind him. With his hand on the small of her back, he guided Olivia through the space until he positioned them by conveyor belt near the mouth of the loading dock. They were just outside the excitement with a clear view.

The girl on the stage, whom Olivia had to assume was Falynn, was a fucking auctioneer. She spat out the specs on the gun as everybody on the floor called out bids. Pistols, shotguns, even knives were handed out from prices ranging from fifty bucks to a couple grand. A man at a desk was selling bullets and cartridges like a glow stick vendor at a concert.

“Um, Hero? Isn’t it a little dangerous to sell weapons this way?”

Hero just shrugged.

And, naturally, shots were fired.

“Shit!” Hero put his arm around her and they got under the conveyor belt. “I’m sorry, this never happens.”

She put her hands over her ears as more shots were fired. “How on Earth could this never happen!?”

A bunch of people hollered and ducked, but they didn’t rush to the door as one would expect. Falynn hopped off the stage with her knees bent back and her braids flying through hair as if in slow motion before she slapped the floor with a vicious thud. It was as if she could smell the shooter—she went right for him, shoving him onto his back, his gun going for a long slide.

One of her boys found the pistol, pulled the clip out, and handed her the empty piece. As the crowd gave her room to work, she proceeded to annihilate the asshole, shattering his face with every hard throw of his gun, cracking across his cheeks. She leaned over him, and at first, Olivia thought Falynn was kissing the minced meat that was once a face. After a few seconds, she looked up, her face to the ceiling, and spit a series of tiny objects into the air. One after the other, like a fountain.

Olivia felt sick. They were the guy’s teeth.

Hero guided Olivia back onto her feet. “That’s how.”

When the madness died down, Hero and Olivia were guided up a set of metal stairs up to a series of abandoned offices. They were told to wait in a plain, white room with a cheap folding table a few chairs. The fluorescent lights were flickering.

Eventually, Falynn and an assistant came in with a couple suitcases. Falynn plopped her case down on the table with cheerful bounce.

“Hero!” She jumped onto his body like a baby koala and licked the side of his face. “Mmm! You still taste like vanilla ice cream.”

“Ugh, Fal,” said Hero, pushing her back. “You still got blood on your mouth.”

She jumped off him with a giggle and wiped his face. “You know you like it, you sick fuck.” She looked at Olivia. “So does he still make those squeaky noises when he comes? Oh… don’t stop… don’t… ugh!”

“Falynn!”

“What? I’m only trying to make your girlfriend terribly, horribly uncomfortable.” She looked at Olivia. “He likes it rough. Make him bleed, he can’t get enough.”

Olivia showed no signs of distress. She wasn’t going to let this girl win this.

“Can we just buy our guns and get the fuck out of here?” asked Hero.

“No, we can’t. We gotta talk.”

“About what?”

“About you being a total asshole. What the fuck is wrong with you? First you set fire to Benny on 3rd—”

“He deserved it. He was stealing from us.”

“—then Dub C kicks a B&T boy’s ass outside the club for feeling up Senny, now you get this white tuna on your arm, and I heard you slammed Crash into your counter in front of Om’bai. What the fuck are you thinking?”

“I’m taking care of business. Why the fuck do you care?”

“I’m worried about you. It seems like you care more about proving a point than taking care of your business or your family.”

“What, are the Dragons talking shit?”

“You know I can’t go into that. I stay on top of my business by staying out of gang wars, you know that. I’m a business woman, and I am gonna get you what you need, but ever since that Kai’lah drama went down and you took care of those white boys, your shit is on the news. The five-oh north of the freeway know when you act up now, and I’m not gonna let you fuck with me just because you can’t keep your gangster-dick in your pants.”

“I got it under control.”

“Apparently you don’t, because Crash is out there somewhere and you don’t know where—he’s missing a toe, and he’s pissed off.”

“You know where he is?”

Falynn crossed her arms. “You know I can’t tell you that. But if you go after Crash, please, just hire the Shank, alright? Quick, simple, easy.”

Falynn went to the other side of her table and opened her suitcase. “I got Dub C’s clip—will you tell him to stop dropping his shit everywhere? Honestly? This isn’t a goddamn action movie, clips cost money. And I got you this.” She laid a Desert Eagle onto the table. “You want it?” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“Ooh, I do,” said Hero, picking up the gun.

Falynn smirked. “If it’ll make your dick feel big, there ya go. It’s all yours. Fifty caliber, holds seven rounds.”

“What’ll it set me back?”

“Free of charge. Consider it an early birthday present.”

“You sure?”

“What can I say? I’m a giving person. I also got that crossbow for you.”

Olivia looked at Hero. “Why do you need a crossbow?”

Hero didn’t miss a beat. “Because it’s quiet.”

Olivia was having trouble trying to figure this girl out. Falynn wasn’t Asian, not really, anyway. In fact, Olivia couldn’t figure out what her ethnicity was. He tan was so dark and pronounced, she could have passed for half-black, but the shape of her eyes definitely had a far-east flavor to it. That said, her nose and mouth were totally Anglo. Racially speaking, she was impossible to categorize.

Hero snapped his clip into place. “I’m gonna take this baby for a test drive.”

He headed toward the door and Olivia started to follow.

“No, you stay here,” he said. “I don’t want you around open fire again.”

“Hero! Come on.”

“No, you stay here with Falynn.”

Falynn winced. “You want to leave me alone with her? You sure about that?”

“Yes, get her fitted with something nice, please,” he said. He looked at Falynn with grave seriousness. “Be nice.” He gave Olivia a look that repeated the message and left the room.

Falynn plopped a tiny black gun out onto the table.

“Sig Sauer Mosquito. Small grip, tiny bullets. You’ll like it. Go nuts.”

“What, you don’t think I can handle something bigger?”

“No.”

Falynn picked up another automatic, something silver and heavy, and started to strip it down. She was cleaning it, most likely getting it ready for another customer.

“You don’t like me,” observed Olivia.

“No,” said Falynn, beginning to reassemble the piece. “I don’t.”

“But you don’t know me.”

“I know all about you.” She loaded bullets into her magazine. “And your little escapades at Club Lanka—Hero’s desk, Ace’s bed and otherwise. You’re bridge-and-tunnel trash, trying to make it in the hood. There were plenty before you and there will be plenty after.” She snapped a clip into the gun. “And the story doesn’t have a happy ending, my dear.”

“Hey,” Olivia snapped. “You can’t talk to me that way.”

Falynn snickered, peeking through the sights. “I can talk to you any way I want, snow bunny.”

Olivia twisted her mouth. “God, what do I have to do, pimp trafficked whores or kill people to get taken seriously down here?”

Falynn, still armed, picked up the gun and fired four rounds above Olivia’s head. Pow, pow, Olivia fell forward, crouching as bullets spat deafening noise and plugged the wall, pow, pow. Olivia crunched her body into a trembling ball on the ground, hearing nothing but the murky aftershock of the ear-splitting blasts.

“You dumb little girl. You clearly know not with whom you are fucking.” Falynn put the gun down. “You better listen really carefully, because I’m only going to invest this much energy into talking to your stupid ass once.”

Olivia, her panic-stricken shaking now on decline, slowly lifted her body back upright.

“Contrary to the deluded impression you seem to be under,” explained Falynn, “your attitude is not cute. I have no idea what Hero likes about you, your bloomer pudding must taste like cookies and cream, I have no fucking idea. You think you’re better than he is because you were born north of the freeway, and once you’re done taking a spin on the Blades rollercoaster you think you can just get on your train, cross the Mason-Dixon line, and it’ll all go away. But the action you take down here will follow you home, wherever you go, you better believe it. Daniel is dead because of you, my pigment-challenged princess. How many skeletons do you think you’re gonna have in your closet before this is over?”

Falynn looked straight at Olivia, giving her a full clear view of her heartless grin. “You want to be taken seriously down here? Then have some respect. Hero went from hustling crack in the projects to running a million dollar operation and employing hundreds of immigrants with nothing but the rags on their backs and the desire to succeed. He gave people the chance to survive out of thin fucking air.” Falynn smirked and tilted her head. “What have you done with your life, snow bunny?”

Olivia sized up her opposition for a second, and then looked down at the Sig Sauer Mosquito.

“I would say that I’ll kill you if you hurt him,” said Falynn, watching the way Olivia eyed the pistol. “But I won’t have to.”

Olivia picked up the Mosquito. “I would say that I’m going to prove you wrong.” She felt the weight of the pistol in her hand. “But I don’t have to.”



Chapter 10

Ace didn’t like pimping. He only had one ho, and that was all he needed—he had no idea how Hero managed three. Bambi was half black, half Asian, but all sexy. She had a seductive stare that she didn’t fully intend on giving a lot of the time, but it was there, and when she danced she knew how to look at a potential trick to get his blood flowing to his southern head. She was a little on the flat-chested side, but most of her black genes went straight to her ass. She brought in good money.

However, Ace preferred drug money. You didn’t have to worry about bliss mouthing off. You didn’t have to worry about bliss getting hurt. You didn’t have to feed or clothe bliss, and you didn’t worry about bliss when it didn’t come home on time. You didn’t have to feel guilty for the future you may be stealing from bliss, and you didn’t need to give bliss respect. There was a reason drugs were referred to as a controlled substance. You can’t control a human being.

Ace and Bambi were waiting for Roy at A’pa Sei’s market on 13th. Some bridge-and-tunnel tricks didn’t like to get their girls at the club or on the block, but it was no problem—they had various shops in their pocket all over their turf where their girls could be picked up. Roy was new, but Ace looked forward to doing business with him. 30-something white guys were very good to their ladies. And this one, like the others, was on time.

Roy was nervous. There was a table set up in the back with a few folding chairs, secluded from the front business area where they could discuss the rules. Roy sat quietly and dodged eye contact, folding his fingers together, awaiting instruction.

“Here’s how this works,” said Ace. “We run a good, clean business—all our women are top notch quality and provide a variety of services. She’ll let you know her rates, and I’ll let the two of you discuss what you need—but there are things that she will do and there are things she will not do. We want to keep our customers happy, but Blades women are our family. That means that if she comes back damaged in any way—I’m talking bruises, cuts, or if there are impurities on your part—that shit will come back on you tenfold, you got me?”

Roy nodded.

In the shop, Ace met the gaze of a 20-something white boy looking through the beer selection. He was there with a couple friends, goofing off and talking shit, but this one kid—a blond with dark eyebrows, was giving Ace one heavy look. Ace shrugged it off.

“Alright,” said Ace. “Now I’m going to need the exact address of where you’re taking her. If you change your mind, that’s fine, but I expect a text message with the new location. Bring her back here at ten AM tomorrow morning—at the latest. Got it?”

Roy nodded again.

“Great,” said Ace. “You two have a good night.”

As Ace watched the two of them leave, the blond kid’s eyes only got darker. Meaner. His friends seemed to be trying to talk him down, but the kid kept jerking his arm away and looking back at Ace, mad dogging him like nobody’s business.

This kid, whoever he was, had something to say.

Hero depended on his own brain. Granted, everyone does, but not like Hero did. There were talents he had developed and instincts he had honed that were vital to his business; his arm was as precise as a scale when holding a bag of packed product, and he had internalized the patterns on his spreadsheets so precisely he could catch it immediately if the slightest thing was amiss. But not tonight. Tonight he was counting, recounting, rechecking—his brain automatically reset after every small effort. For the first time in years, business was not his top priority.

Seneka walked down the stairs and into the lab. “Hey, Hero? O?” She surveyed the room. “Where’s O? I want her opinion of my new top—”

“She’s not here.”

“Oh. When she gonna get here?”

Hero was barely done sucking in a breath to speak when Mixer popped into the room. “Hey, where’s O? Eddie brought Madden.”

Seneka looked at Mixer, relieving Hero of the obligation to repeat himself. “She ain’t here.”

Mixer frowned and looked at Hero. “Well, when she gonna get here?”

Hero looked down at his books. “She’s not coming.”

“Oh,” said Mixer, a little baffled. “She coming tomorrow?”

Just as the rooms annoying code went from yellow to orange, Wildcard came down the stairs with his regular swagger. “Yo! Where’s O at? I just saw her mom online!”

Hero sighed. “Olivia is not here, and she’s not coming.”

A perky Mixer looked at Wildcard. “You saw O’s momma online?”

“No,” Wildcard snickered. “It’s some chick fucking a donkey.”

Seneka hit him in the chest.

“What!?” said Wildcard, raising his arms in defense. “Some chick fuckin’ a donkey! I say, ‘hey O, look, it’s your mom!’ That’s funny shit!”

Mixer was puzzled. “Would that make… Olivia… half… donkey?”

Ace was next, trampling down the steps. Code red. “Hey, have you guys seen—”

Hero held up his pen. “If you ask me where Olivia is, I am going to shank you with this ballpoint.”

Ace twisted his lip. “I don’t think you could get enough power out of that pen to pull that off.”

Hero lifted an eyebrow. “You wanna find out?”

“Not really, but I do need to talk to O. There was this guy—”

Hero threw himself back into his chair. “Why do all of you want to see Olivia so badly all of the sudden? Jesus Christ.”

Mixer’s face perked up. “Did she break up with you?”

Hero’s eyes narrowed. “Olivia and I were not together, remember?”

Mixer nodded. “She broke up with you. Did you piss her off? Call her and apologize so she’ll come over and play Madden.”

“She didn’t dump me,” Hero said, looking down. “I fired her.”

The boys and Seneka stopped in their verbal tracks. That was, until the eruption of complaint began.

“—fired her!? Why!?”

“—but she was off the clock and—”

“—wasn’t her fault, I was the one—”

“—you should have thrown the—”

Hero stood up. “Enough!” He stared at all their faces. “She was fucked up on bliss in front of family and associates. I made up my mind.”

Seneka shook her head and turned to leave.

Wildcard followed. “Whatever, dude, ask me if I give a fuck.”

Mixer stood for a while, submerged in sadness. “She was gonna cut my hair.” And he followed the others up the stairs.

Hero stayed firm, failing as he attempted to trudge through more of his work.

“Hero,” said Ace. “I seriously do need to talk to Olivia. There was this guy—”

“Can you not see that I’m busy!?” cried Hero. “I don’t want to hear her name the rest of the night, alright? Christ.”

Ace folded his arms, his eyes piercingly direct. His mug twisted into sharp disgust. “You know what? Fuck you.”

“Not listening. Counting.”

Ace turned around. “I miss when you were a human being, you know that?” And under his breath, “You deserve whatever you get.”

Hero was calming down. He’d put his supplies into the safe, but just as he was about to slam the door shut, there was yet another interruption. It was a matter of time before Stone stomped down the stairs, irate.

“You fired Olivia!?” Stone sat down at the table. “How could you do that without discussing it with us first?”

Hero put his hand down. “I thought at least you would be in my corner about this.”

“You thought wrong.” Stone took his pen away. “After everything she’s done for us—what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me.”

“You used to smile sometimes. You used to be a pretty nice person. Every day you’re getting worse, it’s like you’re slipping away, everybody’s worried about you—”

Hero put his hand up. Once Stone had been silenced, Hero lowered his hand slowly, and let both sets of fingers grip the edge of the table. His eyes were shifting, deep in some sort of shadowed ping-pong game in his head. Left, right. Left, right. A couple of bulges on each side of his jaw showed that he was clenching and unclenching his teeth, taking in audible breaths through his nostrils. “Stone… I need you to leave this room.” He looked up. “Please.”

Stone fell back, and looking away in defeat, stood up. “I won’t let you use me for this.” He shook his head. “Not this.” He left with a thousand words in his head left unsaid.

It was the first time in a few days that Olivia appeared to be in a decent mood at the dinner table. The nearly-psychotic rage that had been roaring in her eyes that week seemed to have died down, and her demeanor had been rendered unthreatening. She sat up straighter in her chair, her table manners returned to normal, and she had actually eaten more than a mouse’s portion of her meal. Her parents may have thought she was making peace with her house arrest, but that was not even close to the case.

Margaret moved Olivia’s glass from the edge of the table. “Come on, Olivia. You’re going to knock it over.”

Olivia wiped her mouth with her napkin, grabbed the glass, and moved it right back to where it was. “No I won’t. I’m not five years old.”

Margaret sighed. “I know that.”

Olivia looked up. “Do you?”

Her parents didn’t respond, they just quietly continued eating.

“After dinner,” began Olivia. “I’m going out.”

Margaret chuckled. “Oh no, you’re not.”

“Oh, yes, I am.”

Margaret stared at her. “Where exactly do you think you’re going?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I don’t want you to follow me.”

Dan put his glass down with a sharp, angry thud. “Jesus Christ, Olivia. You aren’t going anywhere without telling us where you’re going. Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t,” said Olivia. “And I am going. So you’re better off accepting it.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “Fine. But if you’re going, you may as well pack up your suitcase because you’re not coming back.”

“Really?” said Olivia, still and calm. “You really feel that way?” Olivia put her napkin on the table. “I’ll tell you what. If I can present a valid argument as to why you should let me go, could you reconsider your position?”

Margaret’s mouth twitched. “You better take that attitude and—”

Dan lightly touched his wife’s arm. “Let her say what she has to say.”

Olivia smiled. “Okay. Dad. Would you agree that it’s the responsibility of a parent to prepare their child for adulthood?”

Dan nodded. “Sure.”

“Would you also agree that the purpose of punishing your child for wrong behavior is to teach them not to behave wrongly? And in doing so, instilling values?”

“Yes, I would.”

“This implies that one becomes an independent adult when their values are solidified, during which time punishment for wrongdoing is no longer necessary. Right?”

Dan frowned. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that if you punish me for leaving tonight, you are implying that I’m not an adult,” said Olivia. “You’re implying that you still have control over my values, which you don’t. I am an adult, and even if you use force or threats to keep me here, you can’t change what I believe or, more to the point, what I want to do. There is no point in not letting me go.” Her eye contact with her father was solid and courageous. “It’s the choices you make when you aren’t being forced that define you.”

Margaret’s face was begging Dan to fight Olivia on this, but Dan didn’t even meet her gaze.

“So this is what you want?” asked Dan. “This is really the kind of behavior you want to defend? Is that really the person you want to be?”

“I want to be the person who is leaving this house tonight after she’s done doing the dishes, and whatever you think that implies.”

Dan finally looked at Margaret, and then turned back to his daughter.

“Dan,” pleaded Margaret. “You can’t let her do this. We don’t know who this guy is, where he lives—you have to be kidding me.”

“Olivia’s right,” said Dan. “She’s an adult. We can’t stop her.”

Margaret jaw dropped. “Yes, we can. This is our house—”

“What are we going to do, throw her out on the street?” snapped Dan. He looked at Olivia. “If you can’t respect us as your parents, at least respect us as roommates. Be quiet when you let yourself in, and if you’re spending the night, please call.”

Olivia smiled. “Thank you.”

Hero’s chair rocked back and forth as he stared blankly into the monitors. He found himself doing stupid, meaningless things, like counting the amount of girls he saw in halter tops or seeing how many times the same person went in and out of VIP. Anything to keep his mind busy. It didn’t work. He still felt like an asshole.

His intercom beeped.

“Hero,” said his doorman. “Olivia’s here. Says she needs to talk to you.”

Hero tapped his chin. “Ask her what she wants to talk to me about.”

He waited a moment for an answer, his adrenaline beginning to surge.

“Roger Williams,” replied the doorman.

Hero frowned. “Send her up.”

Olivia was at the door within a couple minutes.

“What do I have to do to make you go away?” he said.

Olivia closed the door behind her and shrugged. “I don’t know… set a baby on fire in front of me? Be inventive.” She took a seat.

“What do you want to talk to me about?”

She put an envelope on his desk. A big, thick, full envelope. He reached forward, opened it, and pulled out the contents. A fat stack of hundreds and piece of notebook paper.

“It’s all the money you ever paid me,” said Olivia. “Plus the winnings from my poker game with Stone.”

Hero looked at the piece of paper.

“It’s not about the money,” Hero read with a smirk. “It’s about the respect.” He put it down. “I still don’t think I understand what you want, chag’ya.”

“I don’t want to be paid for the time I spent with you,” said Olivia. “Because I think I’m in love with you. And I think you’re in love with me too.”

Hero paused, tried to hide his involuntary gulp, and chuckled. “Why, because I kissed you? I’ve done a hell of a lot more than that with girls I don’t even like.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t change the fact that you love me.”

Hero scratched his forehead, feeling a tremble he hoped was slight enough that she couldn’t see it. “Christ, look, I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.”

“Listen, I can back this up. When Mixer showed me his photo album he said something about somebody named Roger Williams, and at the time it just sounded like drug induced rambling or something. He said something about the choices you make without fear of punishment, and how they’re the only ones that really count.

“So when I went home, I looked up Roger Williams, and I read about how he was a Puritan minister, and he established the separation of church and state based on the idea that a person can’t prove they are righteous or one of the ‘Elect’ unless they choose the path for themselves. He knew if a religion was mandated by the state, you could never believe in someone’s faith, and he was right.

“And then it dawned on me, why you are the way you are. You drown yourself in this Machiavellian belief structure, that whole idea that the force that pushes people away from what they fear is stronger than the force that pushes them toward what they love. But I think, in your heart, what you want and need more than anything is to trust people. To trust people without the threat of violence, and without the promise of cash. Just pure trust.” She shrugged. “So here I am. I don’t want your money, I don’t want your power—well, maybe a little bit of your power—but more than anything, I just want you.”

Hero tucked the paper back into the envelope. “Olivia, the last girl who told me she loved me is dead.” He looked her square in the eyes. “And I killed her.”

Olivia froze. “I’m sure you had your reasons. Maybe she deserved it.”

“I don’t think she deserved the extent of what happened to her, no.”

Olivia cowered into her ignorance. “What happened to her?”

Hero laced his fingers together. “She took a few dicks and then she took a few bullets.”

Olivia retreated. “No. There’s no way. You aren’t capable of something like that.”

“Oh yes, I am,” he said.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I’ll prove it.” He pressed his intercom. “I need Mixer up in here.”

Within the minute, Mixer came through the door. “What’s up, hy’ung?”

“Mixer, who killed your sister?”

Mixer’s alert demeanor melted into defensive frailty. “What?”

“Olivia wants to know the truth,” said Hero, inviting Olivia into the exchange with eye contact. “Tell her. Who called the shots when Kai’lah was murdered?”

Mixer looked at Olivia and Hero, back and forth, looking for any escape route from this conversation. “Hero, why are you—”

“Tell her,” Hero snapped. “Tell her whose fault it is that your sister is dead. Who gave the order?”

Mixer’s lip gave a tiny, meek tremble, his arms stiffly affixed to his sides. “You did.” He looked at Olivia, and then the floor. “You did, hy’ung.”

“Very good,” said Hero. “You may leave.”

He did, leaving Olivia and Hero in the coldest, emptiest office in the world.

“What did she do to deserve that?” Olivia gasped. “Why did you kill her?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

Hero shrugged. “She did the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme of a desperate chick in the hood. Get with a shot-caller and poke a hole in the condom. She was pregnant when she died.”

Olivia went nauseous. Her voice was quieter than a whisper. “She was pregnant with your child?”

“She was.”

The reveal was dizzying. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes as if it would block out the information.

“Why do you think the Dragon Blades split?” he asked. “Kai’lah died, everyone took a side, and Sequoia Grove has been divided ever since.”

Olivia stood up. “That’s not the whole story. It can’t be.”

“It is the whole story,” said Hero. “Go home. Go back to your family.”

Olivia adjusted her purse and pressed her lips together. She envisioned herself making a snarky remark before her exit, but she resisted the temptation to speak. She just bowed her head, averted her eyes, and made her exit. She wobbled out the door and made it out the exit on the brutal edge of tears, looking at no one. She tightened her teeth as her feet pounded the sidewalk on the way to the station.

She sat down on the bench, staring into the city lights and listening to the buzz of Second Circle activity. She huddled into her own body, thankful that no one was giving her unwanted attention. A fat, black prostitute stood at the corner, batting eyes at the male pedestrians. Her harsh voice was cutting through the air, but Olivia didn’t acknowledge the meaning of her words. She smelled the remnants of drifting cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. She sniffled.

Someone took a seat next to her, slow and steady, like she might run if he moved too quickly.

“Hey,” said Stone. “You alright?”

She looked up at him, and as if his very presence was warm enough to invite her emotion, her eyes began to sting. She challenged the emotion with a sarcastic smirk. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “Trying to talk you out of going home, I guess.”

She stared out into nothing. “Hero told me about what happened to Kai’lah.”

“Figured he might.”

She looked at him. “And you’re going to talk me into staying after that?”

“Yeah.”

She lowered her head and shook it slowly, like it had the weight of a pendulum. “I’m tired. I just want to go home. I can’t go back and forth with him forever. My parents are… Stone, I’m just tired.”

“But you keep coming back anyway,” said Stone. “Like… you ever heard of eternal return?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know, Hero’s all into philosophy, and I remember him talking about this thing, eternal return,” he said. “Like, okay, the universe is eternal right? So if the past is infinite, and the future is infinite, then, don’t it stand to reason that history repeats itself? Forever?”

She looked up at him, waiting for his point.

“So that’s why somebody you never met before in your life, I don’t know,” shrugged Stone. “Why they can still feel like home.” He looked at her. “And I think that’s why you can’t let Hero go. And why he can’t let you go neither. Maybe it really is fate.”

She laughed. “Wow, Stone. You’re kind of a girl for a gangster.”

He frowned. “Well, you’re kind of a gangster for a girl.”

“I’m not that gangsta,” smiled Olivia. She looked at the prostitute on the corner. “One of yours?”

Stone looked. “Nah, that’s Baby, she’s Big Poppa’s. Some 8th Block nigga, she’s probably gotta stack her paper tonight so she don’t get her ass beat. He’ll get himself paid, then he’ll fuck her, and then history will repeat itself tomorrow night. Typical story around here.”

“Good thing there are honest pimps like Hero out there, right?” snickered Olivia. “He’s above that shit, isn’t he? He doesn’t hurt women. You know, unless he’s killing and raping the mother of his child.”

“He didn’t kill or rape Kai’lah,” snapped Stone, tensing with offended anger. “White people did.” He pointed an accusatory finger. “White fucking psychotic wannabes from Monarch Hills trying to slum it in the hood—people like you.”

His tone disarmed her. She shifted her bag and pushed out heavy breaths, waiting for his explanation. He was more than willing to oblige her—he spoke with aggression.

“It all went down about five years ago,” said Stone. “She was gone for three days before anyone knew where she was. They said they wanted ten thousand dollars or they were gonna put a bullet in her head, and at time, Hero was the only one of us that had even close to that amount of money, so he sat in the lab for hours, and when he came upstairs he told us his mind was made up. That he was going to let them kill her.”

She frowned. “But why? If he had the money—”

“If Hero had paid up, then every poser in the Grove would see Blades women as cash crops,” explained Stone. “Seneka—Orchid—Pansy—none of them would ever be safe again, and keep in mind, Pansy was pregnant at that time, too. He sacrificed Kai’lah and his child for the rest of our girls, wrote the code, and hurting women has been punishable by death ever since.”

Olivia pressed her fingers against her forehead, scratching into herself with frustration. “Then why didn’t he just tell me that?”

“Why do you think? The last woman who loved him is dead, and it was his call.”

She sighed. “Why don’t you respect his wishes and let me leave? What’s in it for you if I stay?”

Stone tugged at the back of his head, and set adrift on a wave of frustration, he looked up into the sky. “Fuck, woman… Hero… he’s…”  He stopped to shift his thoughts. “Haze, she… fuck, you should have seen what Daniel was doing to her. Not just knives, I mean… just anything around the house, he would use it… If you hadn’t seen what you saw, who knows what could have happened to her. How long it would have gone on.” He straightened himself up, affirming his confidence. “We need you down here. The Blades need you. Hero needs you.”

Olivia looked down, her heels scratching against the sidewalk. She had never been needed before.

“Listen,” said Stone. “Crash is gone. No one can get a hold of him, no one knows where he is, and I got a bad feeling he’s up to something. I got a feeling that something is coming, and Hero, he’s… look, he’s different. Every day that’s passed since Kai’lah been gone, he’s changed. It’s like he’s dying, and I don’t know what it is, but I think you’re the only person who can bring him back to life.”

Olivia gripped the edge of the bench.

“And…” began Stone. “And… somebody’s gotta cut Mixer’s hair, ‘cause it looks like shit.”

She laughed with a small sniffle.

“I trust you,” said Stone. “I believe you when you say you won’t tell nobody about what you saw on the hill that night.”

She looked back at him, grinning upon his efforts to inspire her confidence.

“So come on, O,” said Stone. “What do you say?”



Chapter 09

Olivia fell to Hero’s feet, gasping for breath, bundling into a knot of tightened muscle.

“Chag’ya.” He knelt down to her. “What’s going on?”

“I think I’m having a heart attack.” She clutched onto him, her eyes wide open, staring past him. Her fingers pulled his shirt into tight clumps. She put her hand over her mouth.

He helped her up. “Come on.”

He kept his arm around her and guided her to the bathroom. She wriggled for freedom as soon as she saw a toilet and threw her torso forward as the first wave of muck erupted from her throat.

Ace came in. “Fuck, is she alright?”

“What did you give her?” Hero said with a low and grinding tone, still holding his face steadily toward Olivia. He held her hair back with one hand and gently stroked her head with the other.

“It’s just bliss, man, she must have taken something else.”

“Whose bliss?” He was calm. For now. That calm was dangling pretty weakly from Ace’s silence.

“Wildcard got it from the table in the lab,” said Ace. “The shit you hadn’t locked up yet.”

Hero sucked his breath though his teeth, a strained attempt to retain composure. “Ace, that was the shit Stone confiscated from Crash. Who the fuck knows what it was mixed with.” He looked back at Olivia, still petting her through her every gut-wrenching push. “Piperazine, from the looks of it.”

Ace looked down. “Fuck, Hero—why didn’t you just throw it away!?”

“Too late now. Get me some water.”

Olivia grabbed Hero’s hand. “Hero… will you turn that off?”

Ace stayed in place to hear what she was talking about.

“Turn off what, chag’ya?” asked Hero.

“That sound… God… please… just make it stop…”

“What sound? What are you talking about?”

She squeezed him harder. “Can’t you hear it?” She cried, spitting tears and puke. “Why can’t anyone hear it but me!?” She hurled again. “I feel like I’m dying.”

Hero got some toilet paper and wiped her face. “Look at me. Okay? You’re fine. You’re not dying.” He tossed the used tissue into the toilet and got a fresh one to wipe her tears, calming her with a warm smile. “I’ve seen people OD before, alright? You’re just having a bad roll, but you are going to be fine. Do you believe me when I tell you that?”

She nodded, her face still twisted by the drug-induced agony. She pressed his hand hard against her face. “I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. You have to get me out of here.”

“Alright, you want me to take you home?”

“No—no… My parents can’t see me like this, nobody can see me like this—I just have to get out of here—take me anywhere, please—” Her voice increased in volume and speed.“—just somewhere else—somewhere without that sound—I have to get away from these people, I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t know—I don’t know—please, can you get me out of here?”

Hero looked back at Ace. “Come back with a bottle of water and Stone’s keys.”

They took Stone’s Escalade out of the neighborhood and Hero held Olivia’s hand the whole time they drove. She kept her eyes closed, taking in deep heavy breaths between forced gulps from a water bottle as the warm breeze from the open window washed over her face. Hero kept his eye on the road, but looked back at her on occasion to make sure she was okay.

“Just think happy thoughts,” said Hero, stroking her hand with his thumb. “Think about all that money you won off Stone, huh? You can buy yourself something real nice with it.”

She didn’t say anything, she just focused on her breathing as if the ability to do so could end at any moment.

He parked the car on a nice, big grassy meadow with a hill that overlooked the city. It was a lovely view, and perfect to calm her down. Not his home, not her home—just somewhere beautiful, relaxing, and secluded.

Her chest grew and shrank in big dramatic waves. “Do you really not hear it?”

“Hear what, chag’ya?”

“The beep.”

He looked at her. “What, you mean the smoke alarm? Is that what you were talking about?”

She nodded.

“I keep meaning to change the battery, been putting it off, I guess.”

“It’s not safe to ignore an alarm.”

He was a little thrown off by her fixation on something so trivial. “Sorry, I guess it’s just been low on my list of priorities.” He stroked her hair. “How are you feeling?”

She touched her face, tracking her own skin as if it were foreign terrain. “My eyes and nose are still all wet.”

“Hold up, maybe he’s got a tissue in here.” He looked around, and then reached to open the glove box.

Something small, silver, and sinister caught the moonlight and Olivia’s attention. It was Stone’s pistol, surely loaded and ready, and Olivia looked at with the fear of a child facing a wasp nest for the first time. She didn’t speak, she just made a tiny wheezing noise of fear, repeating a shrill, panicked cry with every contraction of her chest.

Hero could see her fear on the rise, and all his efforts to calm her were swiftly slipping into futility. “Olivia, hang on to me.” He clutched her arm. “It’s okay, alright?”

“No, it’s not okay—it’s not okay—it’s not okay…” The act of speaking opened the floodgates for tears. “I don’t know why I ignored it before—oh my God, what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? What was I thinking—”

“Olivia, listen to me very carefully. I’m going to reach forward, I am going to take that gun from the glove box, and I am going to remove the magazine, okay? I am not going to hurt you. Do you understand?”

“You’re what!?”

“I said I’m going to reach forward, I am going to pick up that gun, and I am going to remove the magazine. And I am not going to hurt you. Do you understand?”

She paused, stilted and horrified, but gave him the nod he needed anyway.

“Okay.” He moved very slowly, gripped the handle of the weapon, and pulled it toward him at an even slower pace. As promised, he removed the magazine, checked to make sure the chamber was clear, and tossed the magazine in the back seat. “See that? It’s totally safe now, nothing but a hunk of metal, alright? Now look at me.”

With the back of her head still pressed firmly to the seat, she did. He reached for her hand.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want you to be afraid.”

He put the gun into her palm and pressed her fingers tightly around the grip.

“Keep your finger away from the trigger and don’t drop it.”

She nodded, and looked down as if taking a firm mental picture of what a gun looked like in her possession. It seemed to calm her down.

“Okay, the feeling of that thing in your hand?” he began. “That’s power. That’s safety. And you shouldn’t be afraid.” He nodded slowly. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now put it back.”

She put the gun back into the glove box as if touching any wrong surface would make the thing go off.

“Now give me your hand.”

She held out her hand, watching it tremble, and Hero took it, securing it still. He held it with both hands, pressing it into a warm, heartfelt embrace, and pulled it to his body.

“You feel that?” he asked. “Me holding you?”

She nodded.

“That’s power,” he repeated. “That’s safety. And you shouldn’t be afraid.”

She nodded again, exhaling a long, slow breath. Her heart rate was easing into a healthy, steady pace. He felt that, and it made him smile.

“Um… Hero?”

“Yes?”

She smacked her lips together a few times. “Um…”

He hung onto her silence with patience, leaning into her to invite her words.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she sounded normal. “…do you have any gum?”

He laughed. “Sure, I think I got something.”

Once Olivia had achieved minty freshness, Hero got a bunch of blankets and pillows from out of Stone’s car and set up a bed in front of an old, picturesque oak tree. It was the biggest, wildest tree there, its sprawling branches forming a striking silhouette against the navy blue night. He sat down, and with outstretched arms, invited her to sit with him. She took off her boots and curled up into him, letting him tighten the warm blanket against her.

“See?” said Hero. “Look at the moon. Isn’t it beautiful?”

She shrugged. “It’s just a cold, dead rock. It’s only beautiful because of the sun.”

“What? What’s wrong with you, talking about the moon that way? The moon moves the tide. The most abundant and important natural resource on the planet is totally whipped by the moon—it ain’t just a cold, dead rock.”

“But the moon needs the sun. The sun doesn’t need the moon.”

“How do you know? You ever asked the sun? Maybe it does need the moon.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe it needs the moon very much.”

She wiggled a little bit deeper into his embrace. “Well maybe the sun is a big grumpy mcgrump pants and never tells the moon he needs her.”

He laughed a little. “Maybe.”

They lay together a while longer, which guided her deeper into a state of relaxation.

“Chag’ya… you know how you never spend the night with me?”

“Yeah?”

His voice came out as muted grumble. “It really pisses me off.”

She laughed. “Wow, Hero, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I think it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever said to anybody.”

“That’s pretty sad.”

“I know it.”

She turned her head his direction. “You know, you never told me why you like me. I think now would be a good time.”

He shrugged and let her win this round. “I guess… when I first met you, I didn’t think you had any morals. But when you stood up for Seneka, I don’t know, you didn’t have anything to gain from that. You just did it because you thought it was the right thing to do. So I think you do have morals, they’re just… a little different from everybody else’s.” He looked at her. “I think you and I are alike in that way.”

She fell into a small smile and let his words soothe her drug-choked nerves. His mouth was a mere few inches from hers, and her breath was sweet, with a scent of mint and femininity. His hand glided across her cheek and made its way through her hair, and now, it was his heart that was racing. Before his thoughts could catch up with his actions, his lips was on hers, taking them steadily from a harmless peck into a deep, lingering kiss.

The moisture of her mouth on his was spellbinding, and the gentle pressure of her tongue against his pulled him into a trancelike state unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was as if every movement of her mouth was pulling him into a warm, dark prison of pleasure—but he was still imprisoned, and that feeling of capture was just as alien as it was wonderful. Never before had anything so foreign felt so much like home.

Once they parted, a long time passed before she opened her eyes and looked at him again. “Uh oh.” She grinned. “We’re in real trouble now, aren’t we?”

He didn’t smile, but he wasn’t unhappy. “Yeah, I think so.”

She closed her eyes and nuzzled into his shoulder. He held her until she fell asleep.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!!”

Hero woke up to the sound of Olivia cursing, sitting in the driver’s seat of Stone’s car with the keys in the ignition. She was looking at the clock on the dash.

“Whoa, what’s going on?” He stood up and walked toward the car, trying to shake off the remaining remnants of his sleepiness.

“My phone ran out of batteries last night, so I couldn’t see what time it is – it’s 9:30!”

“So?”

“So—I’m late for work! I’m so going to get fired… Shit—shit—shit—” She looked at him with puppy dog eyes. “I, uh… I need your help.”

He took her to a Wal-Mart to purchase and utilize a collection of toiletries and clothing so that she might throw together a somewhat presentable version of herself for work. At first, she didn’t want to let him pay, but he insisted, and he drove her to Barrington’s in good spirits.

She looked at him breathlessly before she got out of the truck. “Do I look okay?”

“You look great.”

“I’m so sorry about this. Thank you. Really, thank you so much. I don’t even know what to say.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” He smiled. “Besides, we can’t have you get fired from two jobs today, now can we?”

She stared at him. “What?”

“Olivia…” He looked in her eyes. “You’re fired.”

Her heart stopped. “What? Why? Just because of last night? But—”

“I said you’re fired,” he said, looking out the windshield. “Now get the fuck out of my car.”

Whatever shock she felt was quickly replaced to wise, jaded cynicism. “You sure?”

“I don’t say things I’m not sure about, chag’ya.”

She shook her head, feigning amusement. “Wow. For a second there I thought there was a human being under that cold, badass exterior. How stupid of me.” She opened the door with a tiny hint of a shrug. “Tell Seneka and the boys I said bye.”

She closed the door behind her and didn’t look back when he drove away. She focused on suppressing the strange, burning sensation under her eyes. She refused to acknowledge it as a precursor to tears.

As she took her scolding for tardiness from the store manager, her brain was a million miles away. She looked passed him and counted the hangers on the on the rolling rack in the children’s section. When she was done she started making up random numbers in her head and figuring out their square roots—anything to keep her mind busy.

“Hey, Olivia,” said Erin in customer service. “You know one of your earrings is missing, right?”

Shit. “Shit!” She tugged at her ear. She must have left it on that hill—if she came home after a twenty-four-plus hour absence and was missing half of that John Hardy set, her dad was sure to feed her to the wolves.

She tried with all her might to remember where that hill was, starting from remembering the view. The weight of yesterday’s clothes was hanging over her shoulder in a Barrington’s bag, making her quest through the city barely manageable. Where was it? It had to be here—a tiny pocket of green near the freeway without the glamour of Monarch Hills, nor the urban degradation of Sequoia Grove. It wasn’t a park, nor was it vast untouched land. It was like a tiny island, forgotten by city developers—an oasis between heaven and hell. And Stone’s Escalade was there.

Her first thoughts were wildly psychotic, like maybe the past day was some drug induced dream and she and Hero had never left. When sanity returned, she wondered if Hero had come back to retrieve the earring, but how could he have noticed she left it if she herself hadn’t?

Then a piece of the puzzle came to her brain—it wasn’t Hero’s car. It was Stone’s. Maybe Stone was there.

She turned her head, and there under that same oak tree, the familiar blankets were laid out. And they were very much peopled. Her curiosity rendered her unable to turn away, and her most acute focus narrowed in on the participants of an evening romp on the grass, two people passionately coupled there, in a blissful pre-copulate state. But who?

Someone looked up. Asian, handsome, and unfamiliar. He made eye contact with Olivia, and hopped to his feet, running top speed to his car, a beat up orange truck across the way.

“Wait!” His partner—male—got up to follow, but it was too late—the stranger flew to his truck, and was driving away and his partner—his partner—

His partner was Stone.

Stone.

Olivia froze with certain terror, dropping her bag to the ground. Stone was standing a few feet away, breathless, watching the man leave, and turning to Olivia with wide, desperate eyes. Neither one of them had any idea what to say.

“Who was…” Olivia just stood there, pointing in the direction where the truck had gone.

Stone said nothing.

“But…” She could only say the first words that popped into her head. “But… you’re so scary.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“No, you know what? I think I understand you more now.” As Olivia’s brain went to work, she nearly smiled upon the sheer thrill of realization. “No wonder you’re so good at hiding your emotions—you’ve had plenty of practice, haven’t you?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you saw, but you best forget about it.” Stone looked down, his shoulders sagging, his eyes glazing. He didn’t move.

“This is big, isn’t it?” As she spoke, fear was there, but it was a lazy fear. A hopeless fear. “Seeing what I just saw. This could get me killed, couldn’t it?”

She waited for an answer, but she didn’t get one.

“Stone, listen to me,” she said, raising her hands as a gesture of peace. “If you want to get rid of me, I understand. Really, I do. I understand the gravity of this. I can only guess what those macho Blades dickheads would do if they knew scary-ass Stone was gay. I’m just trying to say I get it. So I’m not going to tell anyone.”

He looked at her with a tight scowl.

“I’m serious,” she said. “I understand if you don’t trust me, but… I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He looked at her long and hard, but still remained as silent as death. He walked back over to the tree and bundled the sheets up into his arms without a word, like she hadn’t said a thing. Like she wasn’t even there. As still as a statue, she watched as he packed his truck.

He didn’t speak until he put his key in the driver’s side door. “Olivia?”

She looked at him.

“Daniel’s dead.” He pulled the door open. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

She watched him get in the car and drive away, trying to find the emptiness in her stomach that she knew was supposed to be there. It wasn’t.

When Olivia got home, she was prepared for a verbal beating. She tried to form some semblance of a story in her brain, but it was all a hopeless stupid-TV-teenager-cliché mess. She crashed at Penny’s? Okay, then why didn’t she call? The phone ran out of batteries. But why couldn’t she charge it at Penny’s? She left her charger at home. But doesn’t Penny have the same kind of charger? Maybe Penny needed the charger for herself—wait—why didn’t she just call with Penny’s phone?

She opened the door and got slapped in the face with an unusual image of her living room. There was a pile of clothes on the coffee table. Her clothes. Clothes that Hero had bought for her.

She felt a tight, hard squeeze around her upper arm and a vicious pulling. There was a sudden, sharp grip to her hair, forcing her head to look over the clothes, and her heart was suddenly forced back into its hyper-pumping, adrenaline infused state.

“Where did this shit come from?!” shouted her mother, gripping her arm even harder. “Where did it come from!? And you better tell me the truth!!”

“What!? Barrington’s!!” She heard her purse and bag fall to the ground beside her feet. “I got it at Barrington’s—what are you doing!?”

“From who?” Margaret cried, shaking her arm. “Who bought this shit for you!?”

Another presence joined the action. Penny. Her cheeks were flush as if she’d been crying. She and Olivia made eye contact, but Penny quickly looked away in shame.

“I bought it,” Olivia lied. “I bought it with the AMEX—”

“No, you didn’t,” bellowed her mother. “I looked over the charges. You’ve made one purchase since you started working there, that’s it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Penny, beginning to cry again. “No one knew where you were—they called me, and—Olivia, I didn’t know what to say, and we were so worried about you—”

“You better start talking,” said Margaret. “Whoever this piece of shit guy is you’re running around with, it’s over. Do you understand? It’s over.”

“I know it’s over,” snapped Olivia, breaking free of her mother’s grasp. She glanced at Penny with eyes aflame with disgust. She carried the animosity with her when she looked back at her mother. “On his terms, not yours.”

“You live in my house, so you live on my terms. You want to make your own rules? Get a real job and get the fuck out. Things are going to change around here, and if you think you can sneak around and lie to us, you better think again.”

“Well maybe if you and Dad weren’t such overprotective nut jobs, I wouldn’t have to lie to have a life.”

Her mother folded her arms. “Well maybe if you hadn’t fucked up my body so goddamn much when you were born, I could have had the son your father wanted.” She pushed out a snotty, tight-lipped grin. “Guess we can’t always get what we want.” She looked back at Penny. “Come on, I’ll take you home.” She glared at Olivia, her eyes burning with the kind of fury only a mother can possess. “If you’re not here when I get back, don’t bother coming home.”



Chapter 08

912 was quiet, covered in its usual light haze of disorder. The synth rhythms from Mixer’s video game swam through the dead air, interrupted by occasional action blips. Ace opened the door for Olivia, his face a bit tired and worn, and his hair, which was normally tight and combed, was tousled and neglected. This wasn’t going to be a party night.

“One,” said a fuzzy cartoon voice. “One, two.”

“One, two bananas!” said a child.

Olivia looked on the floor and saw a four year old in pigtails sitting next to Mixer. She had some sort of kid’s computer toy on her lap with a series of numbered buttons.

“Kang’ju!” snapped Mixer. “Will you stop that?”

Kang’ju pressed another button, and the cartoon voice said, “Five.” She pressed it again.  “Five.”

“Five bananas!” shouted Kang’ju.

“No bananas!” growled Mixer, and he took the toy away from her.

With great fervor and indignation, Kang’ju pulled back a tight fist and slammed Mixer right in the arm.

Mixer clutched his bruised bicep. “Ow!”

The racket summoned Seneka and Hero from the kitchen.

Seneka was the first to intervene. “What’s goin’ on over there?”

Kang’ju pointed at Mixer accusingly. “Mixer took my computer!”

Hero folded his arms. “Kang’ju.” He pointed very paternal eyes at her. “What did I tell you, huh? What did I tell you about slappin’ folks??”

She lowered her head and said a well-rehearsed line. “You gotta warn them first.”

“That’s right,” nodded Hero. “Now let’s try this again.”

Kang’ju perked back up. “Mixer, if you don’t give me my computer back, I’m gonna pop you!”

“Hero,” sighed Seneka, heading toward the child. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Hero asked. “He took her damn toy. She was protecting her property.” He gave Kang’ju an encouraging nod.

Seneka lifted Kang’ju up and into her arms. “She ain’t your child!” She looked at Kang’ju, bouncing her butt on her arm. “I think somebody’s just a little tired and grumpy. Let’s get you to bed.”

“No, no, no,” said Hero, hurrying over. “I’m putting her to bed. You don’t do it right.”

“What do you mean, I don’t do it right? I can put her pajamas on and help her brush her teeth—”

“You never read her a damn story.”

“I can read her a story.”

“Give me the little girl, goddammit!”

As Kang’ju was transferred from a reluctant sister to her stubborn brother, her eyes were stuck on Olivia. Olivia attempted a semi-honest smile.

“Oh, sorry, Kang’ju, this is Olivia.” Hero tried to turn her toward Olivia, but the little girl just buried her face into his shoulder. “Come on, say hi to Olivia.”

Kang’ju leaned her face toward Hero’s ear. “Why is she so pretty?”

Hero laughed. “Uhh…” He smirked and looked at Kang’ju. “Because she’s an angel.”

Kang’ju looked straight at Olivia’s face, her gaping mouth and two enormous eyes forming wide, stunned circles.

“Come on,” Hero laughed. “Let’s go to bed.”

As they marched up the stairs, Kang’ju’s eyes never left Olivia. Seneka went after them.

“I’m gonna make sure you ain’t teaching her any more stupid stuff…”

They bickered the whole way up.

Olivia looked back toward Mixer and Ace. “There’s a child in this house? Something about that doesn’t seem right.”

“The flowers are working the block tonight,” explained Ace, who was now comfortable on the couch watching Mixer’s game. “She’s Pansy’s.”

Beep.

Olivia’s stomach lurched over the idea—that little girl’s mom was a prostitute. Her mommy was a prostitute, living in a housing project. On that note, Olivia couldn’t figure out why those girls still lived in the projects. All these guys managed to get out, and from what she’d seen and heard so far, those girls worked a hell of a lot harder than they did.

“The girls make good money, don’t they?”

“Well…” Ace chuckled. “Hero makes good money, yeah.”

Olivia looked at them blankly. “What, the girls don’t keep much of what they make?”

Mixer looked right back at her. “The girls don’t keep any of what they make.”

Ace glanced at Mixer and they coupled in amusement. Olivia searched their faces for any indication that they were joking, and though they were clearly in good spirits, it seemed like they were just tickled by Olivia’s naiveté.

“Yeah,” said Ace, “does the mop get paid for cleaning the floor for you?”

Olivia’s chest tightened into a red-hot knot. “But they aren’t mops, Ace, they’re human beings.”

“Yeah,” agreed Ace. “Human beings that Hero paid for. In cash. ” There it was, like it was the most obvious concept since putting one foot in front of the other.

Trafficked in from my country. He’d said something about it before, but it didn’t feel real then. She sat on the couch in a thoughtful daze as she waited for Hero to return, berate her for something stupid, and probably take her on a trivial errand for no apparent reason.

She ended up sitting at his table in the basement, watching him rubber band stacks of money. Counting. Rubber banding. Taking notes. Counting. Rubber banding. Taking notes. Over and over again. Counting. Rubber banding…

“Uh… Hero?”

“Hm?”

“Why am I down here?”

He looked up at her with honest puzzlement. “What, you don’t want to be down here?”

“Well, it’s not like that, I just, I don’t know. I’m just sitting here. There’s no party, no one to see me with you. I don’t get why you invited me over.”

“Well, fine, you can go,” he grumbled. “You never stay anyway.”

“Hero! I’m just asking why I’m here, it’s a totally legitimate question, given the circumstances.”

A series of loud thumps and scurrying feet came from upstairs. He looked up with the sharp shock of alarm, but rose to his feet with nothing but the sting of a routine irritation.

“Shit, what the fuck now?”

Olivia followed Hero upstairs, just in time to see Mixer, Ace, and a couple more of Hero’s boys putting an Asian kid, mid-twenties, into a chair in the kitchen. He was wounded, and it was bad. His arm was gushing blood—literally gushing—like a park fountain, quickly forming a puddle on the floor.

“What happened to you man!?” cried Mixer as he got the kid seated.

A gust of Hero flew into the room. “Mixer, later. Let’s get him over the sink.” Hero’s boys helped him position the boy’s wound over the drain. He looked at Ace. “You hold him up.” He moved to a drawer and pulled out a knife. “Chag’ya, get me a pair of socks.”

Olivia froze. The spectator was forced into participation.

“Chag’ya!” Hero repeated. “Get me some goddamn socks!”

She dashed upstairs and returned with a pair from Ace’s drawer. Hero unfolded the socks and tossed one aside.

“Say ‘ah,’” said Hero, putting a rolled sock into the kid’s mouth. “Now this is gonna hurt like a motherfucker, try not to scream.”

Hero shoved the knife into the bullet wound and the kid’s face went fire engine red, his skull trembling like an overworked engine, a shrill scream of torment pressing through the makeshift gag.

“Mixer, get me some liquor,” said Hero.

“I got you.” Mixer grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the pantry.

“Alright, Diamond,” said Hero. “You best be thinkin’ real happy thoughts right about now.”

Hero poured the bottle onto Diamond’s arm – inspiring an animal-like roar. Olivia tried not to look, but it was a useless effort. The sheer brutal, visceral reality of that moment demanded every bit of her attention.

“Will you keep it the fuck down?” Hero scoffed. “I got Pansy’s little girl here—” He looked past Olivia, toward the stairs. He wasn’t enthused by what he saw, but he also wasn’t surprised. “No, go on baby, go back to bed.”

Olivia turned around and saw Kang’ju, standing as still as a statue, clutching her ballerina doll below her chin.

“I got her.” Olivia went for the stairs and took Kang’ju’s hand. “Come on, where’s your room?”

Kang’ju guided her down the hall to the door at the very end. She pushed it open, and led Olivia into the master bedroom. It was wide and spacious, with shiny hardwood floors and a set of perfectly polished, mahogany furniture around a catalogue-ready four-post bed. It was pretty much a no-brainer that this was Hero’s room.

A tiny pink air mattress lay ready on the floor and Kang’ju climbed into it by herself, but she waited for Olivia to pull up the blanket for her.

“You uh… you just stay up here, okay?” Olivia was nervous. She had as much skill with children as she did in a kitchen. “The guys down stairs are dealing with something pretty heavy, so… just stay here and you’ll be safe, okay?”

“Olivia?”

“Hm?”

Kang’ju pulled the blanket to just below her chin. “Are you really an angel from heaven?”

Olivia nodded, unsure of what else to do. “Sure.”

Even with such an innocent face, she twisted her mouth into a suspicious expression. “Why you come down here then?”

Olivia responded with barely more than a defeated sigh. “I, uh…” She could still hear Diamond, wrestling with his pain. “I don’t know.”

Stone could see the entire city from the top of his hill, moving and breathing, a sea of light and energy. If he wanted to, he could sit and count every lit window of every skyscraper of Monarch Hills, or follow a car with his eyes across the Interstate, left with a dream of where the car might be going. Or a dream of where he might end up if he followed it. But all he could follow was Hero.

Stone sat alone. No guests tonight, just alone.

He picked a dandelion, but he didn’t blow on it. Kids blow on dandelions to make wishes, but Stone wasn’t a kid anymore. A dandelion was a weed, an infection, and all that blowing on it accomplishes is spreading that infection. Maybe people would be better off not making wishes.

Stone put the dandelion down and dreaded going home.

Ding, dong. Another night, another party, and another commanding text from Hero informing Olivia that she was expected to make an appearance. She forced a happy bounce into her heels, thinking happy thoughts. What crazy shenanigans would those crazy Blades be up this time? The adventure never ended. There was always something new to see, something new to learn… but for reasons she was trying not to think about, the excitement she once felt was turned into a nagging, sometimes beeping worry.

Stone opened up for her. “Oh. It’s you.”

“You could at least pretend to be happy to see me,” said Olivia. She held up a grocery bag. “I brought Hennessy!”

Wildcard happily took the bottle off her hands as Stone returned to the kitchen table. The criminal quartet was in the middle of a poker game.

“Why do you hate me so much when I show you nothing but love?” Olivia asked Stone, leaning on the counter and opening a beer.

“I don’t hate you,” murmured Stone.

“Yes you do,” said Olivia. “And it’s a shame, because I really like you.”

“That’s real precious, O.”

“It is, so why don’t you give the attitude a rest every once and a while?”

“Look, woman, we’re trying to play a game here, so why don’t you run along?”

Run along? Honestly? Perhaps this was the moment when Olivia was officially through with Stone’s sour pickle bullshit.

She jerked out a chair and planted her butt in it. “I want to play.”

Stone smirked. “What, you play poker now?”

“I do,” said Olivia. “Deal me in.”

The collective look from the four boys called for an awkward pause, but Olivia didn’t miss a beat.

“I don’t have any cash on me, but I do have my jewelry,” she said, beginning to remove her necklace. “This is John Hardy, and I would say it runs for about eight hundred dollars. I would guess my earrings cost my dad about a hundred fifty. You may not get that much on the street, but I’m letting you know what I’m putting on the table.”

Confusion and tension were battling for control of the room.

“You ain’t even seen your hand yet,” Stone pointed out.

“That’s why they call it gambling,” she said.

Stone gave a permitting ‘whatev’ of a shrug, and the poker procedure commenced. Everyone got their hands and Stone laid out the flop. Four of clubs. Eight of hearts. Three of diamonds.

Olivia looked carefully at her hand, and she was in business. She had a three of clubs, five of clubs, and the subsequent six. If the turn was a seven, she had it. That said, she was sitting with four other players, so the cards were spread out pretty thin. The kings and queens were out there somewhere, and she certainly didn’t have them.

They placed their bets, and Stone placed the turn next to the flop. Seven of clubs, glory hallelujah. Olivia silently rejoiced.

Until Stone went all-in. Everything he had, right there on the table, a good few hundred bucks. He was cold. Expressionless. So very Stone.

“Fuck this shit,” said Wildcard. “I fold.”

“Me too,” said Mixer.

“I’m out,” added Ace.

Olivia put her shoes on the table. “Manolo Blahnik leather ankle boots. Nine hundred dollars.”

The boys stared at Stone like basketball fanatics, waiting to see the free throw that would call the game.

Stone first tapped his chin, and then tilted his head. “So it’s like that then?”

Olivia just smiled. She knew what he meant; she had called his bluff this time, and next time, it wouldn’t be a poker game.

His sternness melted. He put his cards on the table. He had an eight of diamonds and an eight of spades. Three of a kind.

Olivia slapped her straight on the table, and the tension-tangled trio finally exhaled.

“Thank God.” She collected her winnings with a straight face. “My Dad would have killed me if I had gambled off that necklace.”

Once the game ended, Olivia had her shoes on and her purse was stuffed full of money. The regular crowd was floating around the house and Hero made his classic fashionably late entry.

He stood behind her chair. “Uh, chag’ya?”

Olivia turned to him and smiled. “Yes, o eternally unsmiling one?”

“Why is your handbag stuffed full of money?”

“I whored myself,” she said matter-of-factly. “But technically speaking, you aren’t my pimp, so it’s all mine.”

“Shit, Hero, you shoulda seen it!” cried Mixer. “She fucking owned Stone, that shit was epic!”

“What do you mean, she owned Stone?” interrogated Hero.

“Texas hold ‘em,” said Stone. He looked at Olivia. “She won, fair and square.”

Hero looked at Olivia, lowering his voice so no one else in the kitchen could hear. “I didn’t hire you to play games. The last thing we need is people seeing you put one over on Stone.”

Ace rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Christ, Hero will you lighten the fuck up? You need to get laid. You and Stone both.” He spoke to the guests. “Will somebody get this man a cookie?”

“Yeah, Hero!” said Mixer, standing up and getting in his hy’ung’s face. “Turn that frown upside down!” He pressed his fingers into the corners of Hero’s mouth, forcing them upward.

Hero jerked the kid’s hands away and looked at Olivia. “Whatever, look, just take your money go home.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, you’re off early tonight.”

She looked to the boys for some sort of backup, but such backup didn’t come. They did, however, look just as confused as she was.

With a small huff and a puff, she pulled her purse up her shoulder and stood up. “Asshole.”

“Whoa, hold up.” Ace rushed to put his hand on Olivia’s shoulder, stopping her mid-stride. “If Olivia’s off, she’s on her own time now, right?”

Hero frowned.

Ace put on a cartoon grin. “Hey, O! You’re off for the night, ain’t you?”

She caught on quick. “Why, yes, Ace, it seems I am!”

“Well I’m having a sweet party at my house tonight, wanna come?”

Olivia smiled and looked at Hero. “I’d love to!”

Ace took a pause for effect, and then exploded into a bigger, dumber smile, arms outstretched. “Yay! You made it!”

“I did! Yay!”

Ace put his arm around here. “Come on, let’s go get into some trouble.”

Hero grabbed his brother’s shoulder. “Ace, what the fuck are you doing? I have to go 8th to—”

“Well, she’s off tonight, so she’s not going with you,” said Ace with a schoolyard bounce to his words.

Hero’s mouth trembled with boyish rage. “She better not have a black eye when I get back.”

Ace was still grinning.

Olivia got caught up in an epic racing game battle with Mixer and Ace. Eventually, after a record-breaking streak of ass-kicking, Olivia got stuck with a controller in her hand as the two boys took turns in trying to take her down. It was proving more and more to be a useless endeavor.

Wildcard came in. “Hey guys! Look what I got.”  He pulled out a plastic bag full of white powder out of his pocket.

“Shit, you still got product?” said Ace.

“There’s plenty to go around,” said Wildcard, shaking the bag in Olivia’s face. “Want a taste? Huh? Huh?”

Olivia pursed her lips and looked at Ace. “I don’t know. Hero would be pretty pissed.”

“What the fuck ever,” said Ace. “Hero’s always gonna be pissed. In fact, you should do it just to piss him off.”

Wildcard started cutting lines on the coffee table. “Me… Ace… Wildcard…Olivia…”

Olivia’s tummy did flip-flops. “Is it dangerous?”

“Fuck no,” said Ace. “We ain’t in the business of killing people.” He jutted his jaw to the side and looked back at Wildcard. “Usually.”

“What does it do to you?” Olivia asked.

“It makes you fall in love, chemically speaking,” said Ace. “It’s like it takes your brain and squeezes out all the good shit all at once, like a sponge.”

Mixer chuckled. “Yeah, like a happy sponge.”

“I don’t know…” Olivia was moving dangerously close to the lines. “I’ve never done drugs before.”

“Olivia,” said Ace, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Can you imagine what Hero would do to me if I fucked you up?”

She didn’t need to answer that.

Blue line. Red line. Blue line… red line… Beep.

She snorted the line.

Black…white…black…white…white…white…

A wash… the air was singing through her ears, captivating her in its warm embrace. She grasped the carpet, and it tickled her skin, inviting her weak grasp and pulling her down toward it. The music was more than audible, more than a feint background stimulator—it was inside of her, it was gnawing at her belly with candy teeth. She didn’t notice she was smiling until her cheeks hurt, and she didn’t remember where she was until she looked up. Mixer, Wildcard, and Ace were all sitting on the floor around her.

“O…livia-are…you…ou…o…kay…?”

She looked up at Mixer. His face was so perfectly arranged—his eyes, nose, and mouth so perfectly placed around his apple cheekbones and pointed chin. She reached out and trailed her fingers down his jaw line. “Mixer!” She leaned in close to his face. “Look into my eyes.”

“Okay, she’s back. She’s back.” He laughed and gave her a big hug. They swayed together for what felt like a welcomed eternity.

“What’s happening to me…” Her mouth was buried into his shoulder. The cotton of his shirt was her friend. The warmth from his skin soaked through the thread to greet her face.

Ace sat down behind Mixer and looked into her face. “Don’t worry. I know it’s weird at first, but bliss doesn’t make shit foggy like most drugs. It makes things really clear.”

She heard words, but the meaning she interpreted didn’t come from them. She was too hypnotized by the water deep in his eyes, washing and crashing, a giver of life turning destructive. His eyes couldn’t make up their mind—they harbored peace but were aflame with violence.

Voices were speaking, but they didn’t start or end. They just flowed and fluctuated. She didn’t feel like she was speaking, but still she said, “Are you guys my friends?”

Every movement was a dance, every motion fit with a rhythm—like everything intangible was a puzzle piece. A skinny girl in a pink shirt wandered across the floor, her arms covering her stomach…

 “You don’t take shit from nobody, for real—you’re totally cool for a chick, yo!” Wildcard’s voice moved up and down on such a beautiful rhythmic track, it was like everything he said was a song.

Eyes were giveaways, true windows to the soul, any flashing glimpse was enough. Two boys talk, the boy with the shaved head in the green jacket keeps looking away… he’s thinking about something else…

“Yeah. You’re weird, but you’re cool weird! And you listen, a lot of people don’t do that.” Mixer’s face was so close to her body, she could feel his words reverberating in her chest.

Time forgot about Olivia, and she found herself within a group embrace. A series of warm, soft arms participated in a drug-induced group hug, never beginning and never ending. Olivia was washed onto a shore of emotion, of appreciation, loving every grain of sand in her toes.

“No matter what happens, let’s be best friends with Olivia forever, okay?” said Mixer. “Okay!?”

The girl in the shimmering purple shirt is following her boyfriend everywhere… she doesn’t stand up straight… she keeps tugging on her shirt…

“I’ve been chasing that girl around for a minute…” Wildcard was talking about Seneka. “…and if she hadn’t seen me all up on you like that and got—gotten-got jealous like she done—did, I woulda never had that—you know what I’m saying? Like… you made it happen. You made that shit possible. Like fate or some shit…”

Olivia broke out of the hug. “I want to see Stone.”

“No, don’t,” said Ace. “He will kill your high.”

“No he won’t,” said Olivia. “I’m going.”

She swam through the kitchen crowds, unable to stop grinning. She smiled at everybody and everybody smiled back. She enjoyed the sound of the sliding glass door, a subtle, sharp whoosh, as she greeted the great outdoors. She looked at every social circle, soaked up the humanity. So many eyes, so many stories. So many oceans, and fires, and landscapes, and worries.

Trance music was playing, and with every synth sting, she was buried deeper by her pleasure, willingly crushed by it. She had to stop, close her eyes and give it her full attention. Those sounds…

“Hey.” Stone turned her around. “Are you okay?”

“Stone! I was looking for you.”

Didn’t take him long to see what was up. “Oh, Christ.”

“I wanted to find you—”

“Who fucked you up? Was it Wildcard? Goddammit, what am I gonna do with you…”

“Stop it,” said Olivia, managing a fragment of anger. “I am not fucked up. I see things pretty clearly right now. I’ll prove it.”

She turned him toward the guy with a shaved head and a jacket. “That guy just lost something really important to him and he can’t wait to get out of here and deal with it. I’m guessing it was money.”

She turned Stone to his three o’clock. “That girl in the pink shirt hasn’t eaten in days. Maybe her boyfriend said she was fat, maybe she wants to be a model, I don’t know, but she’s hungry. When she’s done with her drink, she’s gonna throw it up. Watch for it.”

She turned him to six o’clock to a girl in the shimmering purple shirt and her boyfriend with the gelled hair and an Ed Hardy shirt. “He’s abusive. I’m pretty sure he beats her.”

“Whoa, stop right there,” said Stone, grasping her shoulders. “You’re just making shit up. You’re on drugs, and bliss doesn’t make people psychic.”

“I’m not psychic,” said Olivia. “Look—she has not left his side since she got here. She hasn’t talked to anyone…”

“Daniel does not beat Haze. I would know about it. I’ve never seen her with a black eye or nothing like that.”

“He doesn’t hurt her where you can see, he’s smarter than that,” said Olivia. “Look, she keeps tugging on her shirt. Whenever he looks her direction, she pulls the right side of her shirt down, I’m guessing to hide whatever he did to her.”

It was around this time that pink shirt girl put her hand over mouth and made an attempt for the door.

“Oh, there ya go,” said Olivia. “She’s gonna puke.”

The girl upchucked right into one of Hero’s flower beds.

“Echh,” Olivia said. “At least she didn’t do it on the carpets.”

Stone looked at the vomiting girl for a second, but quickly moved his eyes to Haze. She pulled the side of her shirt down again.

He looked at Olivia but tilted his head toward Haze. “You sure about this?”

“Absolutely,” said Olivia.

Stone moved toward the couple.

“Hey, Stone!” said Daniel. “How’s it—”

Without a word of warning, Stone lifted the side of Haze’s shirt. There was a long, tightly pressed gauze bandage there. Stone looked at Daniel disapprovingly before giving it a sharp tug.

“Jesus.” Stone winced.

He was looking at a shocking burn wound, scaling the side of Haze’s body. White, yellow, red, and puss ridden, a once blistered burn had sizzled and popped. The burned-in beauty logo gave away the story – a curling iron had been pressed and held firmly against her skin for a good, long while.

“Daniel, what the fuck is this?” asked Stone.

“It ain’t what it—Stone I—”

Stone looked at Haze. “How long has this been going on?”

“Don’t hurt him,” said Haze. “Please—he didn’t—he didn’t…”

Olivia watched with a satin smile as Stone calmly and politely informed Daniel it was time to leave. Daniel didn’t put up a fight, he just lowered his head as he was quietly escorted, and Olivia, crumbling deeper into the euphoria of accomplishment, wondered what his punishment would be.  A couple Blades boys guided a weeping Haze into the house after Stone said something about ‘providing accommodations for her as soon as possible.’

She could see Hero come out of the house, looking back in confusion as Haze and Daniel were moved through. Stone took his arm and pulled him aside, bringing his face in close to give him the quiet news. Hero nodded, and looked back… But Stone wasn’t done speaking. He wasn’t done at all, but once he was, Hero looked straight at Olivia.

“Oh, shit.” He nearly fell into a run when he went to her. He grabbed her chin. “Fuck, what’s he done to you now?”

“I don’t have a black eye,” she said in sing-songy way.

“Fuck, I gotta get you out of here.” He grabbed her arm. “You’re fucked up. Come on, we’re going!”

He pulled her through the kitchen and toward the living room.

“Fuck you!” she cried. “I may have just saved a girl’s life—I am not fucked up!”

“I won’t have you around my associates in this condition, chag’ya.”

She jerked her arm out of his grasp and pushed him onto his armchair, all his weight thrown helplessly backward. She pushed him with not only viciousness, but what was unmistakably desire. She got on top of him.

“Stop this right now. I’m serious—”

“You’re blinking a lot,” she smirked. “Do you realize that?”

His pulse quickened. “I’m not joking around with you.”

She grasped his wrists and pressed them into the arms of his chair. “I’m not joking either. Stop trying to control me all the time. I’m off duty.”

He wiggled his arms, but he was as locked into his seat just as his eyes were locked into hers.

She leaned into his ear. “You know what I’ve wanted to do… ever since I met you?”

He frowned, half curious and half apprehensive. “What?”

She gripped his arms until her knuckles went white. “Hit you in the face.”

He snickered. “Then do it.”

Big mistake. She wound her arm back and released, her hard knuckles side-swiping his jaw so hard his head went sideways. He let out a throaty roar, rich with both pain and anger, lifting his now free hand to epicenter of the damage.

Now fully fueled by a certain boundless fury, he pushed her off him, grabbing her arm tightly, and marching her up the stairs. She didn’t resist, she just laughed and laughed all the way to his bedroom.

He pulled her inside, slammed the door shut, and pinned her against it, grabbing her by the wrists and holding her arms above her head.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do about you? You’re completely out of control.”

“Oh my God…” she said softly. “You liked it.”

“What?”

“When I hit you… you liked it. You want to be punished.” Deep in the chasm of his pupils, she saw the pleasure swirling. In and out, fluctuating, breeding, flourishing.

“Oh, Hero, what did you do?” Her voice floated like feathers off the tip of her tongue. “What have you done that makes you hate yourself so much… that you feel you have to punish yourself this way?”

“Stop, you’re just rolling.” She could taste his frustration. It tasted like strawberries and whipped cream, a slightly sour sweet engulfed in a friendly, scrumptious cloud. The swirl in his eyes cracked, like tiny shards of glass, biting into her gaze and clawing at her attempt to break him.

“I think you hurt someone,” said Olivia. “I think you hurt a woman.” The shards of glass erupted into tiny fireballs, brewing hotter and reaching across his amber irises. “Now you want a woman to hurt you back.”

The fire in his eyes recoiled, engulfed in a milk of sadness. “Why do you think that?”

“I can see it,” she whispered. “I can see you.” His burning soul danced for her, a brilliant ballet in his blazing eyes. “Tell me the truth. Did you hurt a woman?”

He exhaled sharply. “I did.”

He put his hand on her cheek and stroked her jaw with his thumb, the lightning shock of sensation tumbling across her skin, and he tilted her chin up toward his. She closed her eyes, a coo of a moan floating from her mouth as her skin soaked up the warm tickle of his breath like afternoon sunrays.

“I can’t give into this,” he whispered.

“Kiss me,” she begged. “Please kiss me.”

“I don’t want the first time I kiss you to be while you’re fucked up.”

She put her hand on his faultless, statuesque chin, pressing her thumb onto his plush, pink bottom lip. He closed his eyes as she gently pulled down and looked at his tightened teeth. The warm, quickening breath from his nostrils grazed her fingers.

“You’re more of a drug than bliss ever could be,” she said. “You’re poison, and I’m fucked up on you.”

He cupped his hand over hers and looked into her eyes. His primal heat was alive there, sparkling in a beautiful array of reds and oranges with shimmering highlights and mystifying shadows. She internalized every varying shade of his humanity, his passion, his brilliant complexity, and in that optical embrace, he invited her inside and held her there, almost against her will.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “The girl, she…”

Beep.

Swirling… crashing… dying… dead. Her heart… it wouldn’t stop beating. Pounding. Faster… faster… and faster… to the point of pain. She clutched her chest as a demon tried to claw its way out. Her heart, it was breaking. Literally breaking.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Hero…” Her voice was barely a whisper—if she spoke, the energy it would have taken might have made her heart explode. “Something… is wrong.”



Chapter 07

The crew was sitting around the table in pensive silence. Mixer chewed the inside of his mouth. Ace and Wildcard glanced at each other, trading quiet jokes with their eyes. Stone leaned into his elbows, resting his jaw on his hands with his fingers pressed together. Seneka sat on Wildcard’s lap, holding in giggles.

“So…” said Hero, standing over his family. “…what do y’all think?”

Seneka popped with chuckles. “I think it’s sweet.” She smirked at Wildcard. “Hero’s too shy to be himself, so he’s using his street cred to hook the female. He’s one smitten kitten.”

“Hey,” growled Hero. “It ain’t like that.”

“Yeah, sure it ain’t,” smirked Wildcard.

“Why don’t you just tell her what a useless, pathetic hood rat she is until she leaps into bed with you?” asked Ace. “Like you normally do?”

Wildcard nodded in agreement. “Yeah, none of this bullshit is necessary.”

“Hey!” Hero was a second away from de-evolving into a child, a five-year old impatiently stomping the ground for a cookie. “Our numbers are dropping, we gotta step up our game, and this is a great way to bring in some white business.”

“But we’ve never needed or wanted white business,” said Stone. “You’re just making excuses.”

“Making excuses,” snickered Seneka. “It’s so cute.”

Hero shot her a heavy look. “You’re not helping me.”

“Mixer,” Stone attempted, “please tell Hero this is a stupid idea.”

Mixer shrugged. “But Hero always know best. He wouldn’t be doin’ this just to get with some chick.” He looked at Hero for affirmation.

“That’s right,” affirmed Hero. “I’m doing this for the good of the family, and need you all behind me—keep Olivia safe, okay?”

“I got you.” Wildcard tapped Seneka’s thigh. “I gotta go make a few runs.” He was the first to leave the table.

“Me too,” said Mixer. “Whatever you think is best, hy’ung.” He left.

“I think I’m with Stone on this,” said Ace, rising to his feet. “But you never let us down before, so I’m gonna trust you know what you’re doing.” He gave his brother a grave look. “But you better not get Olivia in too deep, alright?”

Hero nodded as Ace left the room.

Seneka headed for the stairs, shaking her head with a small smile. “King Tut—that’s what I’m gonna call you, baby King Tut. The teenage king, that’s you.” She went upstairs to get ready for work. “So cute.”

Stone stayed seated. He didn’t look at Hero until the room was otherwise empty.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Hero. “But I swear it ain’t like that.”

“Sure it ain’t.”

His sentence was punctuated by the irritating screech of the smoke alarm, but they both ignored it.

And just like that, Olivia’s monotonous routine was replaced by a shiny new thrill-ridden one. Lie to Mom and Dad, secure Penny as an alibi, and go where Hero needed her to be.

She went from being an outcast at the club to being an all-out focal point, all according to Hero’s plan. He knew exactly what he was doing—a sea of laser-shooting eyes suddenly became an ambush of ass-kissing lips. Complete strangers hugged her as if they were old high school friends.

Hero let her dance as long as she didn’t grind on any strange men; she had to remain available, but unattainable. He had a cheery disposition showing her off at the club, holding her hand, and taking extended breaks from the control center to pose with her on the floor. And the king’s subjects were more than curious.

Guys with V neck shirts, showing off their pecs. “Hey O, what’s up?”

Guys with threaded eyebrows and too much hair gel. “Pleasure to meet ya, snow bunny.”

Girls with coal-lined eyes and layers of lip gloss. “Oh my God, I love your dress!”

And Cheeks, her pupils wall to wall. “Having to pee tastes like pickle juice and having sex tastes like chocolate. Do you know what I mean?” Olivia did, which disturbed her.

She was permanently invited to join Hero in his office, unlike any of his other girls. Sometimes they made fun of the thrusting automatons on the floor, but for the most part he just judged her.

“We need to do something about your hair,” said Hero, lifting up a small section of her chocolate tresses. “I know somebody who can do some shaping kind of thing.”

“As long as it’s not Kai’lah,” muttered Olivia.

Hero looked at her as if she said a space ship landed on the patio. “Who told you about Kai’lah?”

She told Hero about Mixer’s photo album.

“It definitely won’t be Kai’lah,” he said. “I’ll call and make you an appointment.” He called. “Make yourself available Thursday at six.”

“I have work.”

“I said make yourself available. How you do that is your problem.”

Olivia knew what was next on the schedule once the club closed. Hero would offer to let her spend the night at his house, an offer she always declined. He didn’t expect her to perform any sort of intimate services—in fact she had no idea what he expected—but that had little to do with her apprehension. The second she heard that annoying smoke alarm sound shrieking through 912, all she wanted to do was go home. Then he would call her back to the club and the process would start all over again.

One night, Hero took Olivia’s hand and led her up the stairs to the star balcony after a brief encounter with an obnoxious hipster in glasses. Barely a minute after the guy was gone, Hero was already laughing at him.

“That guy’s glasses have no lenses in them.” He chuckled. “I fucking hate him.” He nodded toward the VIP area. “You know, for what these subhumans pay for bottle service, they could buy one of those DVDs and learn a whole new language, open their minds up to entire culture’s worth of intellectual thought. Instead they unload their wallets here and accomplish nothing.”

“If you hate them, why do you do this?”

“I find it rewarding to extract mass amounts of cash from people I don’t respect. Especially when it takes care of my family.”

Some commotion materialized toward the alley exit. Hero squinted slightly and leaned over, and within seconds he mentally composed the situation.

“Shit. Come on.”

He grabbed her hand and they rushed to his office. He planted himself at his desk, hit a couple keys on his keyboard, swiveled his chair to the monitors, and slapped a button on his intercom.

“Stone, talk to me.”

“Dragon problems. They on Mixer.”

Hero’s jaw tightened. “Shit.”

Olivia walked behind Hero to get a look at what he was seeing. There was a security camera in the back alley, so they got a clear view of a crowd was forming as some guy shoved Mixer around like a bully on a playground.

“Come on,” Hero said—to no one in particular.

The man laid a heavy punch onto Mixer’s face, throwing the boy’s whole body backward.

Hero hit the intercom. “Dub C, you on this?”

Wildcard’s voice popped up. “I’m watchin’ it, yo.”

“Watching it?” Olivia gasped. “Why aren’t you helping him?”

Hero lifted his hand. “Baby bird’s gotta learn to fly.”

The crowd forming around, though inaudible in the office, was clearly hollering. Mixer had fallen onto all fours, his torso expanding and contracting.

“Get up,” muttered Hero. “Get up, monkey.”

Stone’s voice. “Want me to go in?”

“Fuck no,” said Hero. “Then the Dragons will think Mixer’s the weak one. We gotta stand equal. Hold back.”

The man standing over Mixer was laying kicks into his rib cage. It looked like some blood was dripping from his mouth.

Ace’s voice. “Hero, he’s spitting blood.”

Wildcard. “It ain’t internal, he just busted a tooth.”

Stone. “You sure?”

Wildcard. “Yeah, that’s my boy, he alright. Come on Mixer, get the fuck up!”

Olivia hugged her own arms. “Someone’s going to call the cops if this doesn’t stop.”

“Let them,” said Hero. “Shit, Mixer, get up.”

Seneka burst through the door, leaving jet trails behind her. “Hero, Mixer’s—”

“I know,” frowned Hero.

Seneka moved to Olivia’s side as they watched the attacker circle Mixer like a wolf. The only sound in the room came from the bass buzzing through the floor—and the process of the three of them turning oxygen into carbon monoxide. Hero’s breaths were to the beat of the predator’s steps.

“Hero, you could make him stop at any second,” whispered Seneka.

“I didn’t get this family to the top by advocating inadequacy,” said Hero. “If he doesn’t defend himself, he deserve to get his ass beat.”

Seneka chewed on her fingernails.

“Come on,” whispered Olivia. “Come on, Mixer, get up.”

The attacker swung another leg forward, but just before impact, Mixer got himself a nice grip on it. Olivia’s breath stopped in her chest, and with whatever strength Mixer had left, he twisted the man’s body by the ankle, causing him to lose enough stability to slap the ground. With his opportunity open, Mixer climbed on top of him and beat that piece of shit into a stain on the gravel. And the crowd went wild.

“That’s my boy,” smirked Hero. He hit the intercom. “Stone, stop Mixer before he kills that motherfucker.”

“Got it.”

“Yo, Ace,” said Hero. “Why the fuck are there Dragons in our club?”

“Door guy didn’t recognize him. The guy’s drunk as shit, calling Mixer a pussy ‘cause of old times.”

“Figures,” said Hero. “I’m glad Mixer had a chance to prove otherwise.” Hero took his hand off the intercom and leaned into his chair.

Seneka didn’t move. She fingered her necklace and looked at the ground.

“You got a problem?” Hero asked her.

She looked at him. “No… I don’t got a problem.” She looked back down and began to walk toward the door.

Olivia observed Hero’s flower ladies as they treated Mixer’s wounds. He was sitting on a chair in the office as Orchid wiped the blood from his chin and Pansy disinfected the scratches on his elbow. Rose was wrapping gauze around the scrapes on his opposite arm.

“Hero,” said Mixer in a low, weak voice. “Thanks for not steppin’ in on that. I appreciate it.”

Hero kissed Mixer’s forehead and rubbed his hands in his hair. “I’m real proud of you, monkey.”

Mixer glowed like a kindergartner with an A on his spelling test, and though Olivia wasn’t at 912, she could have sworn she heard the beep.

After closing, Hero and Olivia headed down the road in Hero’s silver GT-R. Olivia turned down the music.

“I don’t get it,” said Olivia. “How does a person end up the way you are?”

“And what way is that?”

“Why do all these people do what you say?”

“Because if they do, they make money, and if they don’t, they get hurt. Pretty simple.”

“I don’t think that’s why Mixer does what you say,” said Olivia. “If you want me to keep working for you, tell me who I’m working for.”

He gathered his thoughts. “Alright, fair enough. So, from the beginning?”

“Please.”

“Well, we formed the Dragon Blades as kids in the Thomas Chaucer projects.”

“Also known as 8th Block?”

“Smart girl. A lot of bad shit was going on back home, and my family was one of the last to make it over the Pacific before shit went from bad to worse.”

“How much worse?”

“Like the government would rather shoot you than feed you worse,” he said. “Didn’t take long for more people to show up, and none of us had shit, so that’s how we ended up in the projects. Most of us, our parents were so busy trying to get their shit together we kind of had to fend for ourselves, find a way to survive. While Stone and Ace were still fighting the niggers, I was slinging crack for them and learning the game.”

Olivia winced. “Niggers?”

He laughed a little. “Oh, pardon me, I was slinging crack for upstanding African American citizens.”

“You could just say ‘black guys.’”

“They weren’t black guys, Larry Elder is a black guy. Bill Cosby is a black guy. I wasn’t slinging crack for Larry Elder or Bill Cosby, I was slinging crack for niggers. Now do you want to discuss the gap between your state sanctioned suburban education and reality or do you want me to continue?”

“Please, continue.”

“What I had that the nigg—pardon me, blacks didn’t have—were contacts overseas. Back home, the only money anyone’s got comes from drugs, so once I could learn how to get shipment into the country, I was made. We formed the gang and made a shit load of money real, real fast.”

He took her back to the house. Her stomach was in knots, but she couldn’t figure out why. She knew what was going to happen. The same thing always happened, and it was always something like this.

“It’s real late,” said Hero. “You can stay here tonight if you don’t want to go the whole way home.”

Her cheeks flushed.

“Don’t worry,” said Hero, “your position—”

“—doesn’t require any tasks of an indecent nature. I remember.”

With that same old disappointed look, he offered to drive her to the station. And once again, though she declined, he insisted.

Olivia’s phone went off at five thirty. Five thirty in the fucking morning.

“Hero,” she groaned. “It’s five thirty in the fucking morning. Why are you calling me this early?”

“To see if you’d pick up at five thirty in the fucking morning. I’m very pleased.”

“Well, I’m so glad to hear that. What do you want?”

“Very important job for you this weekend. Seneka’s birthday party, it’s the annual ceasefire between the Dragons and the Blades, and a good opportunity for the rivals to see me with my snow bunny.”

“Sounds like fun. I’ll be there.” She told him she would get down there herself, primped, pampered, and ready to be objectified by the drug dealing masses.

Dan came home from work Friday night with a giant bucket from KFC. Olivia, having been getting ready for the evening’s outing, was putting in her earrings and walking downstairs to witness his entrance. “Le gasp, father. I didn’t realize they had certified organic free-range grilled chicken at KFC. What will the health-harpy say?”

Dan laughed as he unpacked the meals. “Your mother’s working late tonight.” He looked at her suspiciously. “You look nice.” His tone didn’t match his words in the slightest. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to a party with Penny.” Olivia helped her Dad prepare their plates and they sat down at the table together. “So with Mom gone, does that mean it’s father-daughter bonding time?” She bounced with amusement. “Cool! So, how was work?”

“We build things. You?”

“We sell things.”

“Neat. We’re really good at this bonding thing, aren’t we?”

“That we are.”

They took a chow-down break.

“Okay,” said Olivia. “I think I’m ready to turn up the bonding intensity level.”

“Go for it.”

“When I was a little kid, do you remember what I wanted to be when I grew up?”

“Hmm. Refresh my memory.”

“A fighter pilot. You said that was a boy’s job and put me in ballet that week.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled. “You wouldn’t have been happy as a fighter pilot.”

Olivia played with her food. “How the hell do you know when you’re happy anyway.” She didn’t phrase it like a question. “Happiness might be just a good mood. And unhappiness could come from eating a bad lunch.”

 “That’s a pretty Sartre thing for you to say, Olivia. Way to contemplate the nothingness.” He had a loaded smile on his face. “You and Penny have a fight?”

“Why did you say Penny like that?”

“Like what? I just said Penny.”

“You you didn’t, you said—” Olivia stopped herself from becoming the most annoying woman she knew.

He took a bite. “You and Penny have been spending a lot of time together lately. Which is funny, I didn’t think you enjoyed her company that much.” He fiddled with his fork. “Olivia, you inherited your IQ from me, you do realize.”

“Of course,” she said. I certainly didn’t get it from my mother.

“Whatever snarky remark you just had in your head about your mother, thank you for not saying it.”

“You’re welcome.”

He stared at her. “Please tell me he at least has a job.”

No answer.

“You met him at Barrington’s, right?”

She chewed and swallowed.

“I’d rather you didn’t lie to me.”

She looked at him. “I’d rather you trusted me.”

He lowered his expression, beaten. Disappointed. “I’d rather I did too.”

The rest of their meal was shrouded in a cloud of silence. Excluding the beep in Olivia’s head.

When Olivia got to 912, the boys were setting up the keg and stocking the fridge. Wildcard jerked his arm from the grocery bags to the fridge in sharp, impassioned motions, steam rising from his ears. Olivia sat at the kitchen table while Mixer was fiddling with the stereo system and Stone and Ace were dealing with the keg on the back patio. Hero was doing God only knows what upstairs. He was good at making people wait.

“I don’t fucking like this,” grumbled Wildcard. “Fuckin’ Dragons in my goddamn house, all up in our business. If it wasn’t so important to Senny I’d say fuck this shit, fuck it all.”

“There’s a couple people gonna be here I wouldn’t mind seein,’” shrugged Mixer.

“Real manly of you to say, after what they done to you,” muttered Wildcard. Ace and Stone came back in and Ace closed the door behind them.

“What happened to me was done by one man, not by the whole group,” said Mixer as if rehearsing a script. “Love as a pack, live as a man. There is no collective soul.”

Olivia wiggled in the swivel chair. “So why do you guys fight the Dragons?”

All four boys stared at her. Beep.

Wildcard was the first to attempt an answer. “’Cause they rivals.”

“Yeah but why are they rivals?”

“’Cause they fobbie motherfuckers.”

“Yeah, but why are they ‘fobbie motherfuckers?’”

“’Cause they Dragons, Dragons is fobbie motherfuckers.”

“Yeah, but why do you call the Dragons ‘fobbie motherfuckers,’ what caused the rivalry?”

Wildcard frowned. Olivia waited patiently for an answer.

 “I don’t think I understand the question,” said Wildcard.

Olivia scoffed and looked to her employer as he headed down the stairs. “Hero, why do the Blades fight the Dragons?”

Hero made it to the floor. “’Cause they’re fobs.”

“Well, yeah, Wildcard and I established that, but why do you fight each other?”

“’Cause they fobs, that’s why. It’s just that simple.” He came over to the table and took a seat. “We got different values.”

“With the Dragons it’s all about where you came from,” explained Stone. “With Hero, it’s about where you go.”

The night traveled down its regular road, descending from peace to party in record time. Within the period of one hour, the house went from clean and desolate to a claustrophobic mess of human bodies and deafening, barely organized noise.

The Dragons were easy to recognize, and their definability made it easier to characterize the Blades in comparison. The Dragons were quieter, stood up straighter. Their clothes weren’t necessarily more expensive, but they were cut straighter, evoked a more elite vibe. They were older, but not in age. They were more, well, Asian. They reminded Olivia of the yakuza or something you would see from a Jet Li movie.

The Blades had more swagger, more style, more ostentation. Their expressions were bigger, their mannerisms more pronounced. They were better dancers—in fact they were the only ones who did dance, spinning light sticks and participating in mini break dancing contests in the backyard. Even Stone, who otherwise seemed to be void of any sort of playful nature, proved to be the best dancers of the bunch, save for Seneka. The Blades were cooler.

Another very simple thing made it very effortless to keep each gang distinct—absolutely no interaction between the two. Not at all.

Olivia was standing proudly as Hero’s arm candy in the living room, her eyes unable to refrain from their examination, her unabashed scientific study of the social experiment unfolding. There had to be a fight here tonight, there just had to be.

And then Crash showed up, as if on cue.

“What’s he doing here?” Olivia asked Hero. “I thought he was ‘out of commission.’”

“Just because a kid gets a spanking doesn’t mean he can’t have dinner with the family,” said Hero. “Stay by me, he might know you were involved in what happened to him.”

“What happened to him?”

“Well look at the happy couple,” said Crash, swinging a drunk arm around Hero’s shoulders. His pinky and ring finger were bandaged.

Olivia took a closer look. “What happened to your hand?”

“I was fingering this fine ass bitch,” said Crash. “And that pussy was so tight, she fucked up my hand, you believe that?”

“No.”

Hero gave her a look of warning.

“You just jealous,” spat Crash, moving his arm from Hero. “’Cause you loose as a goose, you done so much fuckin,’ right?”

“Crash, you’re drunk,” said Hero. “Walk away before you do something stupid.”

“Before I do something stupid?” Crash snapped. “Look at you! What, Hero, you fuckin’ white girls now?”

Olivia’s took a step forward. “Hey—”

“I ain’t talking to you, bitch!” Crash’s saliva slapped her cheek. “I was talkin’ to Hero!”

Hero looked at Crash, then at Olivia, and like a football father who just watched his son miss the touchdown, he shook his heavy head. He then grabbed Crash’s arms, tightened Crash’s palms in one grip, and with his free arm, smashed his head into the kitchen counter.

“And now you’re talking to tile,” hissed Hero, firmly twisting Crash’s broken fingers.

“Echh,” said Olivia, shaking her head with faux sympathy. “That’s gotta hurt.”

Seneka walked up with her arms folded, staring at Olivia and Hero with equal abhorrence. “Hero, come on, not now!”

“Not until this bitch tells Olivia he’s sorry,” said Hero.

“Fine,” said Crash, muffled by the cold counter top. “I’m sorry your bitch has such a loose pussy.”

Stone stepped in and took hold of Crash, grumbling at him with all the reasons for his removal.

“I’m sorry he called you a bitch,” said Hero to Olivia. “It won’t happen again.”

Olivia looked back up at Seneka, and a thin-lipped man with small, piercing eyes, a full suit with pointed shoes, and a hundred dollar honey-colored haircut was standing right behind her. She recognized him from the photos. Om’bai.

Om’bai smirked, looked at Hero, and said something that wasn’t in English, and whatever he said, it embarrassed Seneka. Om’bai, taking a moment to give Olivia a loaded once-over and watch his comment sink into Hero and Seneka, walked away with an accomplished strut.

Olivia turned to Hero to inquire what the comment was.

“He said…” grumbled Hero. “He said that even if there’s peace between Dragons and Blades, it don’t stop the Blades from fighting themselves.” He looked at her. “Like animals.”

Seneka looked up at Hero and Olivia.

“King Tut,” she said, and mangled a smile of respect before walking away.

Olivia huddled into herself. “Why do I get the feeling that my being here is hurting more than helping?”

Hero looked down. “To be blunt, that remains to be seen.”

Beep.



Chapter 06

Knock. Knock. Knock. Olivia could feel the corner of the crisp hundred dollar poking into her thigh as she waited for someone to open up at 912 Branden. The scorching yellow sun was hanging low in the cerulean sky, clinging desperately onto the fading day, and Olivia was doing something stupid yet again.

Stone opened it. His expression pulled weightily on his ever glowing skin. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too.”

The sarcasm flew right past him.

“Look, I’m just here to do some business.”

“What kind of business?”

She pulled the money out of her pocket. “You know. Business.”

Despite his better judgment, he moved aside to let her in. If ‘8th Block’ had taught him anything, it must have been you never turn down a buck.

“Where’s Hero?”

Stone shut the door. “He ain’t here. What you looking for?”

“Um, a gram?”

Mixer was playing a video game in the living room. “Ya gotta wait for Hero, Stone. He gotta open the safe.”

“I know that,” grumbled Stone.

Mixer and Olivia exchanged enthusiastic pleasantries.

“Why don’t you have a seat, alright?” said Stone, walking his guest to the couch.

Olivia made her way inside and sat behind Mixer. He was planted on the floor, swaying his body with the racing game in front of him like a little kid.

“So Hero’s the only one who can get to the drugs?”

“Yeah,” said Mixer, his eyes not leaving the screen. “Yeah, it’s like a security thing, like if shit go missing, we know who done it ‘cause Hero the only one who got the combination. It’s in the code.”

“The code?”

“Yeah, the Blades code, like a code, like we got rules, and shit, you know. Hey, ya wanna go look at pichers? Oh snap, that fool got me, fuckin—”

“Hold up, Mixer. Look at me.” Stone walked up to Mixer, grabbed his face, and pointed it toward his. “You fuckin’ bitch, you high!?”

“Well, a little, yeah.”

“Ain’t it a little early for that!?”

“I didn’t wanna be up all night, hy’ung! Don’t worry. I ain’t that fucked up.”

Stone looked back at Olivia. “Look, don’t listen to any shit he’s sayin’ right now, alright? He’s high as shit, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“Hey, it ain’t even like that!”

“Fuck you, you motherfuckin’ monkey, don’t talk to strangers about the code. Do I gotta babysit you? You twenty years old, you ain’t a baby no more. Stop acting like one.”

“I won’t. But hey, can I show the snow bunny some pichers?”

Stone looked like he didn’t want to say okay, but he did anyway. “For a little bit, ‘til Hero get back.”

“When will Hero be here?” asked Olivia.

Stone looked at her. “Hero’s good at making people wait.” And he left the room.

Mixer stared into Stone’s exit with a protruding bottom lip. As soon as he was gone, he scurried across the floor and shut off the TV. “Hey, O, you wanna look at pichers?”

Olivia lifted one eyebrow. This wasn’t how she expected things to go tonight. “Um, sure?”

Mixer exploded into a smile. “Come on, I’ll show ya pichers!” He was nearly at the bottom of the stairs before he was got onto his feet again. “Here! Here! Come on!” He zoomed up those steps with Olivia trailing behind. “Come on!” She couldn’t possibly have been fast enough to satisfy him. A twenty year old man had retrogressed to age eight.

He went into a bedroom, leaned under the bed and pulled out a plastic box. After removing the lid, he pulled out a Wal-Mart photo album. With an ear-to-ear grin, he invited Olivia to sit next to him on the floor. “Look! Look!” He flipped a couple pages into the book to a photograph of himself and a couple of other guys Olivia didn’t recognize. “Look, that’s me with Om’bai and Kei’kei.” Om’bai had one of those faces that looked angry no matter what his actual mood might be.

 “Are they ‘Blades’ too?”

“No. They Dragons now.”

“Dragons?” She remembered the word written in the graffiti in the alley.

“Yeah, but that ain’t what I wanted to show you. I wanted to show you this.” He turned the page. “That’s my sister, Kai’lah.”

Kai’lah was not a beautiful girl, but she wasn’t ugly either. She was a young, flat-chested woman with long, straight, black hair, and the scale of her smile made her eyes look smaller. She was sitting on a man’s lap, her legs on either side of his thigh, and the elation on her face proved her to be proud of that positioning. The man was looking to the side, a red cup on his lips as something off camera clearly held his attention. His hair was long and messy, and his muscular arm rested passively on the side of Kai’lah’s hip.

“Is that Hero?” Olivia asked, leaning her face in closer to the page.

“Yeah, that’s Hero,” said Mixer. “Always looking the other way when Kai’lah’s in his face, look at that.”

“Were they together?”

“Fuck, no, he ain’t havin’ it. She tries and tries and tries and he just ain’t havin’ it.”

“Why not?”

“Roger Williams,” said Mixer.

Olivia questioned him with a baffled pause.

“Roger Williams,” repeated Mixer. “It’s somethin’ Hero always says, it means somethin’ like it’s the choices you make when you ain’t bein’ forced or when nobody’s lookin’ that define you. It’s a part of the code. A Blade gets punished if he don’t do right, but one of the one true five, that’s me-Stone-Hero-Wildcard-Ace, we don’t need no threats to do right, that’s why we got trust between us.”

“Right, but what does that have to do with your sister and Roger Williams?”

He was gravely serious. “Everything.”

Something made a beep sound. It sounded like some sort of alarm, but Mixer didn’t seem to notice it.

“Um, okay. Where is she now?”

“She outta town. Hope she come home soon, ‘cause I need a haircut.”

“I could cut your hair for you.”

“Nah, I don’t let nobody touch my hair but Kai’lah.”

Olivia smiled wryly, but judging by Mixer’s scraggly do, he really need to give another stylist a chance.

Mixer turned the page. “Oh snap, look, look, that’s the block party.”

“8th Block party?”

“Yeah, 8th Block. We was celebratin’ ‘cause Hero just bought the house – first Asian out of the block to own his own home. He shoulda stopped flossin’ at the club after that, but he was always up to no good – look, there’s Kai’lah, and Om’bai, and there’s me.”

“But he’s still ‘flossing at the club,’ isn’t he?”

“Nah, he gave that shit up years ago. Now we own the club, so that’s different, everything’s different than it used to be, since we got the code.”

“So is everyone at this party a Blade?”

“Nah, we was Dragon Blades.”

“I thought the Dragons and the Blades were different.”

“They are now. They wasn’t then. Then, we was family.” He turned more pages. “Oh, snap! Look at that – Pansy doin’ the keg stand. She found out she was knocked up a couple days later, and we was like, oh, damn!”

He flipped through a few more photographs, presenting a steady montage of other people’s alien memories. She saw Wildcard asleep in the bathtub (she only recognized him because of the fire-engine hair), a close up of Orchid and Seneka touching tongues and making silly faces, Ace and Crash arm wrestling, a newborn baby—apparently Pansy’s, little Kang’ju—and a lot—a lot—of photos of Mixer’s beloved older sister, Kai’lah.

The heavy creaking sound of the opening door made its way to the room.

“Shit, that’s probably Hero,” said Mixer. “Gotta put this shit up.” He put the book away. “Isn’t Kai’lah pretty?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty.”

“Wish Hero thought so. She loves him so much. Back in the day, wherever he went, she was gonna follow him. She’d follow him anywhere.”

“Mixer?” She looked at his eyes. His pupils were so big, his chocolate irises were reduced to feint halos.

“Hm?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you on?”

He grinned. “Bliss. Blades brand, best shit in the world, world’s best, best shit.”

“What does it feel like?”

Suddenly and with great cheer, he grabbed her shoulders and pressed his forehead against hers. She could have sworn she could feel his eyelashes on hers, tickling her, but it may have been her imagination.

In a deep, silly voice, he boomed, “Look into my eyes.”

Beep.

Stone’s voice interrupted his childlike reverie. “Hero’s here. Come on downstairs.”

Olivia followed Stone down the stairs and toward an obscure door tucked in the corner of the house. At first, based on the nature of the door, Olivia assumed they were going into the garage, but instead she saw a creaky set of stairs leading toward a basement lit by color-sucking fluorescent lights. Each step shrieked upon impact.

When they got to the bottom step, she saw what looked like a teenager’s attempt at a science lab. A long counter with a sink framed the corner of the room, boasting a strange contraption built out of a laundry detergent bottle and a scattered array of tubes, funnels, and tools.

Hero was sitting at a table, his back turned to the staircase with a phone on his cheek. He was wearing loose-fitting pants over bare feet, his torso covered by a nearly translucent white tank.

“And I’m looking at about twenty kilos of white girl,” said Hero. “Half in powder form. Cut the other half into twenty-dollar rocks. I’ll have someone pick it up in one week. Seven days, no fucking joking, alright? Alright. Peace.” He turned around, expressionless. “And now I’m looking at a buck twenty of white girl, it would seem. How’s it going, snow bunny? What you need?”

Olivia put the hundred on the table. “I need whatever I can get with this.” She swallowed what was left of her uncertainty. “Bliss.”

Beep.

Hero frowned. “I thought you said you didn’t do drugs.”

“They’re not for me,” I said. “They’re for my co-worker, Taylor.”

Hero nodded. “Taylor.” He looked at Stone, then back to Olivia. “Taylor done business with us before?”

“He said he normally works with Crash.”

Hero nodded slowly before looking past me. “Crash. Alright, well Crash is out of commission at the moment, so his clientele has been transferred to Stone.” He looked at Stone. “Since he’s your client, so you get ten.”

“Hy’ung!” Stone scoffed. “My cut is twenty, you know this.”

Hero’s face opened. “Do you want to fight about this?”

“O ain’t here for business, she’s running a fucking errand,” said Stone. “Taylor is my client.”

“Watch it,” said Hero. “You didn’t bring this in, O brought it in. Remember we had that talk about being consistent? I cut O out, fucking floodgates are open. You’re splitting it.”

“Fifteen,” Stone said sternly.

Hero rolled his eyes before he looked at Olivia. “You cool with five percent?”

Olivia weighed her options and the situation. Beep.

“No,” she said. “No way. I’m taking this money and walking out the door if I don’t get all twenty percent.”

Her words sucked the air out of the room, leaving only the men’s astonishment to fill the space between the walls.

Hero nodded respectfully. “Alright. Plead your case.”

“Crash is out of commission,” Olivia recalled. “Stone wasn’t answering Crash’s phone for him when Taylor wanted to buy, and the first person Taylor came to was me. I’m obtaining and delivering his product and the only effort that Stone here has put into this transaction is opening the goddamn front door. I want twenty.”

Hero tried to stop himself from smiling. “Stone? Retort?”

Stone glared at Hero. “What, is this bitch in the fucking gang now!? No bitches, Hero. It’s in the code!”

“Don’t call her a bitch,” said Hero. He looked at Olivia, and though his lips were straight as an arrow, the aura of a smile was there. “Normally a gram is one twenty-five, but I’m feeling generous tonight. Hang tight, I’ll go get your product.”

As Hero walked toward the safe, Olivia leaned into her chair smugly. She stuck her tongue out at Stone.

The next day, Olivia was well into another unfulfilling shift at work. Hello, how are you?! Who helped you out today? Interested in signing up for a Barrington’s Card? It only takes five minutes and you can get five percent off your entire purchase! Sign here, please. Thank you, have a great day. Hello! Who helped you today?  Interested in a Barrington’s Card? Five percent! Sign. Thank you. Hello! Who? Interested? Five! Thank you. Hello!

“Hello—” Before Olivia looked up at the next customer, a twenty dollar bill and a torn piece of paper with a short note on it were on the counter in front her. She knew who it was. She smiled at him. “Are you stalking me?”

 “No,” said Hero. “You forgot something.”

With a smile, she took the money and the note into her hand. She didn’t need to read it, she knew what it said. She had written it herself ten minutes before she left his house the previous evening.  It’s not about the money, said the note. It’s about the respect. She has placed it beside her twenty dollar cut on the counter as she left the basement.

He glared at her. “My home is not your playground to addle in the brains of men with craft, chag’ya. Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you came over as a pro bono delivery girl. What were you really there for?”

“Maybe I’ll answer that as soon as you admit why you asked me to dinner.”

“Christ, chag’ya. Get the fuck over yourself. I wanted to offer you a job—what do I gotta do to get that through that over-grown head of yours?”

Customers began to form a line behind him.

“Hero, I am at work. There are customers in line behind you. Come back when you’re ready to admit you’re into me. Until then, I don’t care about anything you have to say.”

Hero looked behind him. The two women in line looked a bit perturbed. He looked back at Olivia, seething with rage. “I am taking you to dinner. I am not asking you out, I am commanding you out. You will change clothes here and you will be ready when I come pick you up at six. Do you understand?”

“Change into what? I don’t have a change of clothes here.”

Hero pulled out his wallet and slapped a black American Express card on the table. “There are plenty of dresses here. We’re going to Premier Cru so try to resist the temptation to buy something slutty.”

“Shoes too?”

“Do I look like I give a shit?”

“What’s my price limit?”

He smirked and put his wallet back in his pocket. “What do you think?” And he left.

Once the line died down, Erin and Lana in customer service gawked at their co-worker. Olivia tapped on the counter, thinking and rethinking the choice she had just made.

“Did that guy give you his AMEX and tell you to buy whatever you want?” asked Erin.

“Uh,” said Olivia. “Yeah?”

Lana stood silent in awestruck wonderment. “Marry him.”

Olivia was raised affluently. When she wanted a new CD or a new DVD, she bought it without question, and there was always fresh food in the top-of-the-line fridge, always immigrant workers keeping the grass trimmed and the floors mopped. But she had never in her life seen anything like what Hero showed her that night. If she had, she might have had the proper vocabulary to describe it.

She supposed the word “shiny” could describe the wood in the walls and floor that framed every room like a work of art. She could use “pretty” to describe the paintings on the walls or “classy” to describe the overdressed serving staff. “Elegant” might have worked for the chandeliers or “soothing” might describe the music playing. This place was going to be well over a hundred bucks for a plate of food, of that Olivia was certain.

“Mr. Vem,” said the maitre d.’ “Always a pleasure. Your regular table?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind,” nodded Hero. Or Mr. Vem. Olivia chuckled.

They walked over to ‘Mr. Vem’s’ regular table, which had the most intricately folded napkins and astonishing array of silverware she had ever seen. It was right by a large window and the moonlight made its way to the table with graceful radiance.

“Would you be interested in seeing our wine list this evening?” asked the host.

Hero frowned. “Where’s Lou Ann?”

The host paused. “My apologies, sir. She is actually off tonight.”

Hero raised his eyebrows. “But Larry, you know Lou Ann is my favorite.”

“I deeply apologize Mr. Vem.”

“Why don’t you call her?” Hero asked. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. I really want her to meet Miss Cunnington here.”

The maitre d’ gave a submissive nod. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” said Hero. “And in the mean time could you bring that 1976 Chateau Latour?”

“As you wish, Mr. Vem,” he said, and briskly walked away.

“Hero!” Olivia cried. “You’re calling in a girl who’s off work?”

“I tip very, very well,” said Hero. “She’ll be fine.”

She grimaced. “Well, you can at least tell that nice man he can call you Hero instead of Mr. Vem.”

Hero frowned without looking at her, his face pointed at the menu. “But he can’t.”

A couple moments later, a new waiter came holding the bottle. The way he did it, the process of taking the cork out and pouring the wine into our glasses looked like an elegant, choreographed dance. It put the waiters at Olivia’s dad’s country club to shame. He bowed a little before he walked away.

She picked up the glass and took a small experimental sip. When she put it back on the table, she shuddered to think what that bottle was costing him.

After she excused herself to the restroom, she saw a Mexican attendant sitting on a stool in there, flipping through a magazine. Olivia crossed the threshold, and as soon as the attendant took a fraction of notice, she skyrocketed to her feet, put her hands to her sides, and looked at the floor. Interesting.

She walked to the very last stall before doing her business. Once done, she opened the stall door as slowly as she could and took off her shoes so she could step silently across the narrow bathroom hall. When she got to the end of the toilets, the attendant was sitting comfortably looking at the magazine again. Olivia smirked.

Now, Olivia was only a couple feet from the sitting attendant. She took in a deep breath, and, “Hah!”

That little lady must have jumped about five feet in the air, as if that stool had burst into flames. The magazine was airborne, the colors of the pages scattering about my view like confetti. Naturally, onto her feet she went, arms and head jerking downward. Olivia laughed.

She returned to her seat with a pleasant skip to her step.

“So are you going to admit that you like me now?”

He glared. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

His glare increased intensity.

“Fine, then I’m gonna ask for a straw and start blowing bubbles into this Chateau Latour.”

She started to lift her arm, but Hero grabbed it and jerked it down.

“Stop it. Will you listen? I have a very serious offer for you.”

“Always so serious. Fine. What can I do for you, your gangstaness?”

He smiled. “Okay. Here’s what’s going on. Despite some of your less desirable personality traits, you are clearly very observant and intelligent.”

“Aww, that’s so sweet.”

“And as you may have noticed, white people aren’t very popular with my family. We’ve had problems in the past.”

“The white man always trying to put you down?”

“Not exactly. The fact is, I don’t believe that a person should be judged by their ethnicity, but by the content of their character. A ‘gang’ is nothing more than a business, and employment needs to be based on the capacity to perform needed skills. Assembling a functioning team based on race is primitive thinking, and I’m a forward thinking man. Do you follow?”

“So you want to hire a white girl to prove a point?”

“Well, not exactly. A woman can’t be a Blade. It’s in the code.”

Olivia squinted one eye. “So racism is primitive thinking, but sexism is the new Ed Hardy?”

“I can’t reformat my entire business overnight, chag’ya. The idea is that you stay with me. You look good, you keep an eye on shit, and you answer to me. You are seen by my side at parties, at functions, at the club. It’s a political move – if Hero Vem is seen with a white girl, the message is out that Blades are not defined by their ethnicity but by their fully-functional operation and their consistent values. You understand?”

Olivia took a sip of her wine. “You want to hire me as arm candy?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Sounds to me like you’re trying to make an excuse to keep me close to you.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

A 30-something woman with long blond hair came through the door like a gust of wind. She gave a nod of acknowledgment before disappearing toward the back, and she came back in proper waitress attire, her face with a clear message of exhaustion woven with ready attentiveness.

“How you doing Hero?” she asked. She called him Hero.

“A lot better now that you’re here,” he said. “Olivia, this is Lou Ann. Lou Ann, this is Miss Olivia Cunnington.”

Olivia smiled. “Can I have a straw?”

Hero frowned. “She’s joking.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Lou Ann said with a nod and a smile. It wasn’t the host’s phony kiss-ass smile, Lou Ann was genuinely happy to meet Olivia.

“Hope you didn’t mind coming in,” said Hero.

She shrugged. “It’s not like I have a life. I live but to serve you.”

Hero laughed. “The burden of being the best, my lady. The burden of being the best.”

“Ah, yes,” she chuckled. “I take orders like a pro.”

“Miss Lou Ann, you sure do look pretty,” said Hero. “You ain’t wearing all that make-up for me, are you?”

She laughed again. “I was on a date, actually.”

Olivia sat up. “You left your date to come to work?”

“Hero calls, you come,” said Lou Ann. “If you’re his girl, you should know that.”

They gave Lou Ann their orders.

 “I’ll be right back. You two need anything else?”

“That will do us fine,” said Hero. “Thanks so much for coming in. My evening would have been incomplete without you.”

“Feeling’s mutual, Hero,” she smiled and walked away.

“Hero!” Olivia said. “She was on a date!”

“She’s in the service industry,” said Hero. “It’s her job.”

“But on her own time?”

“I gotta work on my own time every day,” said Hero. “Every minute of your day is your time, it’s up to you if you wanna make money with it.”

“How come she’s allowed to call you Hero but the other guy isn’t?”

“She earned it,” said Hero. “So do you want the job or not?”

Olivia kicked her feet. “If I can’t get a straw, maybe I’ll tuck this napkin into my new Chanel cocktail dress, hop and the table and sing my ABCs.”

“Olivia, stop it.”

She started to tuck her napkin in. “I’ll do it. Watch me.”

She started to stand, but Hero pulled her back down and jerked the napkin out of her dress.

“Fine,” he said. “Fine. I like you. Are you happy now?” He took a sip of his wine and looked away.

Olivia grinned. “So what is it about me that you like? Is it my devilish good looks? Or my immeasurable charisma?”

“You already got me to say I like you,” he said, looking down at the table. “It’s going to take some time and some trust for me to tell you why.”

“Fair enough.” She took in a big, triumphant breath. “Okay. I’ll be your snow bunny arm candy.” Battle won. On both their ends.

Chapter 05

The night was hollow. A cheap lamp’s yellow glow hung over the room, partnering with the sharp, jolting choreography of the video game on the television to paint a hectic atmosphere. Despite the frantically shifting lighting, all Hero could see was the blackness out the living room window. He leaned into his arm chair passively, blocking out the social sparkles and clashing conversations. The music making his house buzz was silence, the people around him were faceless, and cup in his hand was empty. In his line of work, he had to be able to ignore certain things, the irritating things. He kept sane by keeping certain things, his things, perfect. His car, his office, his bedroom, his garden – perfect. Perfect things were so rare in this world, if they even existed at all.

Orchid, Hero’s most trusted girl-product, pressed her fingers into his shoulders. “You so tense. Do you want another beer, baby?”

He didn’t. What he wanted was something different. Something different from all of this, but this was all he knew. This was, he thought amusedly, his comfort zone. He thought of Olivia’s firm breasts and grating attitude.

“No thank you,” he said, trying to enjoy the soothing pressure of Orchid’s fingertips. Having a good looking woman at your beckoned call was satisfying, in a dry sort of way.

The door opened. “Hero!” A four-year-old, her pig-tails bouncing the beat of her girlish run, frantically crossed the wood floor to Hero’s chair. “Hey—hey Hero!”

“Princess?” Hero’s feet planted and he rose, shaking off the confusion the girl’s presence was making him suffer through. “Hey, how you doing, sweetheart?” He managed a sudden phony smile.

Stone crashed into the room, a light frown taking him over as he looked at Pansy. Pansy, a twenty-year-old awkward prostitute, had apparently decided to bring her four-year-old daughter to a drug and alcohol-infested Blades after-party.

Hero scooped all thirty pounds of Kang’ju into his arms, the fingers of her plastic ballerina doll lightly scratching his wrist.

“Hey Hero! Hey Hero! My mommy bought me a coloring book!” She popped with tiny of explosions of childish enthusiasm. “It has fairies in it!”

Pansy made an attempt at control, sitting the book next to a box of crayons. “Come here, princess, why don’t you sit over here and color? Grown-ups gotta do grown-up business.”

“But I just don’t wanna,” pouted Kang’ju, her bottom lip protruding from her tiny face. “I just don’t wanna do that. Hey, Hero? I colored a girl who looks like a flower, and, and, flowers have wings just like fairies do!”

“Flowers don’t have wings, they have petals,” said Hero. “Now come on, do like your mom says and color, alright? You be good.” He tapped her behind and she scurried across the room.

“I wanna be good,” muttered Kang’ju, taking her place at the table. She opened the book and scribbled color into blank spaces. “Hey, Hero! I’m coloring!”

Hero turned his head and Stone had already planted himself at his boss’s side. Hero’s voice was low and stern. “Look over the house and get all substances out of sight. If I see as much as a joint, heads are gonna roll, got it?”

“Got it.” And Stone did his job.

In the kitchen, Hero tried to get caught up in some trivial conversation over beers, but focus wouldn’t leave Kang’ju. She was being good, as she always was, coloring and fidgeting with her doll, off in another world. Ace was talking, but Hero’s brain processes were so far away from his brother that he didn’t create meaning out of the words. He had no idea where Pansy had run off to.

“Why is she talking to herself?” Hero took a swig of his beer.

Ace switched to Hero’s gear. “She ain’t talking to herself.”

“Then who she talking to?”

“She’s just playing, Hero. Maybe that’s why you such a clusterfuck of psychoses, you didn’t do enough playing as a kid.”

“Fuck you, I played. I played 8th Block dodge ball. We called it dodge bullet.”

“Well I’ll be goddamned, Hero Vem, you so damaged and mysterious. No wonder you attract such upstanding women. Speaking of which, where’s your little snow bunny?”

“You mean your punching bag?”

“Fuck you, ain’t my fault you got a schoolboy crush on a freak.”

Hero headed toward the stairs and Ace followed.

“What?” called Ace. “Where you going?”

“I felt the strangest urge to not be in the same room as you anymore,” said Hero, headed for the stairs. “I gotta talk to Wildcard.” Naturally, he couldn’t make it past Kang’ju without being bombarded with ‘Hey, Hero!’ and a picture she had colored just for him. It ended up on the fridge before Hero made it to his first step up the staircase.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up.” Ace was at Hero’s side, and in a wicked hurry, Mixer appeared at the foot of the stairs as well.

“Hey, Hero!” said Mixer. Hero was already exhausted with the phrase. “You was out so late, man! What was keeping ya?”

“Something I saw on the security monitors,” said Hero. “But right now I really need to speak with Wildcard.”

“Wildcard already drank too much and the fool is passed the fuck out,” said Ace. “Fucking dumbass. He may be a dumb shit, but isn’t he a nice guy? Always the life of the party, ain’t he Mixer?”

“That’s right,” nodded Mixer. “You give that guy a hundred bucks, ten years later he still gonna have your hundred bucks, that’s just the kind of guy he is. I love that guy. Don’t you, Ace?”

“Damn straight,” said Ace. “My best friend, til the day I die.”

“Right,” said Hero. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Ace. “The fool’s out of it. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

Hero searched their faces. It didn’t take long for him to find on them what he was looking for. “I’ll only be a second.” Without allowing any further interruption, not even another ‘Hey, Hero!’ from Kang’ju, he marched up the stairs and opened the door to Wildcard’s room.

He greeted two heated bodies, barely cloth