Dark Heart Read online

  “Are you getting to the point about why I am here because of Jay?” I was in the mood for Chinese food – chicken chow mein maybe. I considered my dinner options as I waited for this dipshit to get to the point.

  “Lela arrives tomorrow from New York,” he continued, “you’ll pick her up.”

  “Not happening.” The coin continued to travel over my fingers. I watched him watch the coin.

  “She’ll get in about 4:30 in the afternoon, I want you there to collect her and take her safely to her mother.”

  “Are you deaf? I said no.”

  He got up and walked round the desk. He leaned against it and eyed me. I held his piggy stare.

  “You will get her. You owe me.”

  I’d had enough, I stood up. “I owe you nothing Skinner the Crook, never have, never will,” I taunted, as I turned to leave.

  “Your brother cost me a lot of money. He booked upcoming matches with semi-pros for those three college boys. Matches in which expenses had already been incurred. Matches where these guys pulled out of other matches to come here, to fight here. Now those boys aren’t fighting anymore, these fighters are not getting the payload promised them. Who do you think has to pay that?” I closed my eyes briefly. I really should have gone back and kicked Jay’s ass myself. I was just scared that I wouldn’t have stopped had I let myself loose on him. A hard fact to admit to yourself, especially when it was your brother.

  Fuck.

  I turned. I kept my expression schooled. “And? This is my problem how?” I retook my seat. “You were the one who decided you wanted in on the action, you were the one who decided Jay was your guy to make the bets and deals. You stayed clear of me and Shadow. You wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t used Jay.”

  He looked out the window. “You’re not twisting out of it. He did this, I’m paying for it, therefore, you will owe me this debt.” He turned to me and his eyes held mine.

  “Fuck off. You brought those guys into this, it’s your own fucking fault. They were never staying in this long term. No matter how good they were.” There was no denying it, they had been good, Theo and Matt were really good…but Colton, he was exceptional. Yeah, they were a loss and yeah, the fights would miss them, but there was always someone waiting in the wings to step in the ring and make their mark.

  He smiled at me. I kept my calm, but I felt my temper rising. He had something on me. I could feel it. He was a good player at this game. For all my mocking, you didn’t get to this level where he was, without being good at it. I had known him since I was a kid and ran notes and occasionally other less innocent things, between him and his crook friends. I could see the wheels turning, he had an ace card. I braced myself for it.

  I got up and walked over to the window, looking out over Denver’s business district. I turned to him, appearing seemingly bored.  “You may as well tell me, you look like you’re going to bust in your pants soon. Either tell me now, or I’m gone.” I glanced at the door making my intention clear.

  “Jay told me where Alicia is.” I didn’t break his stare, I didn’t react, but my heart slowed. He wouldn’t. I would kill him with my bare hands if he had told this bastard where my baby sister was.

  “You wanna try again?” Bluffing was all I had. I was six feet three of muscle and I had a scary fucking temper. I was going to smash his orange shaped head into that mahogany desk so bad, they were never getting the blood out of it.

  He didn’t move, he knew how volatile I could be.

  “He told me when he was stoned. Said it was your biggest secret where Alicia and your mom were, but he knew,” he leaned forward and grinned, “and... he told me. Nice little set up they have in Seattle. House has nice alterations for your mom’s wheelchair. She’s still a stunner...even with the wheels.”

  He walked calmly back around his desk and sat down. He steepled his hands together and looked at me over them. He hadn’t lost that smug grin. I knew my expression hadn’t changed but I also knew I had to move soon. I had frozen, and frozen meant taking a hit.

  “You fucking dare and I will rip your throat out.” I walked over to his desk. I placed my knuckles on the desktop and leaned over, taking his space. “I will stand over your rotting corpse if you touch them.”

  Skinner held his hands up – a bullshit placating gesture.

  “Calm down Aaron. I would never hurt them. Alicia was like a daughter to me.” My snarl made his complexion pale further. “I was just saying, I knew where they were. If Jay told me, I mean, who else has he told? I can make sure no one else knows, find out if he told anyone else.” He gulped audibly. “While I do that and pay the costs of those cancelled fights, all I need for you to do is pick Lela up from the airport, take her to her mother and then look after her for a couple of weeks. A fair exchange no?”

  I stood back abruptly. I watched him. Analysed him. He was a crooked bastard, but he did have better resources than me when it came to finding out stuff like this. He hadn’t gotten to where he was today with his charm, that was for sure.

  I could move them. While I was doing this shit babysitting job, I could move them. I’d have to be discreet. I could be discreet. I could be a fucking whisper in the dark.

  “What the fuck do you mean a couple of weeks?” I barked at him.

  I pretended to ignore his relaxing posture. It did my pride – and my unsteadily beating heart – good to see that I affected him.

  “Belinda and I are going on vacation. She wants to rekindle the spark in our marriage…” I held my hand up cutting him off. I did not need that mental image.

  “Isn’t she your fourth wife?” He nodded in agreement. Christ, he’d only been married a year at most. I shuddered inwardly.

  “She’s a bit younger than me, she needs excitement.” He smoothed his hand over his suit.

  “She shouldn’t have married you then,” I snorted.

  “We leave on Friday. I will know who, if anyone, knows about Seattle. You will look after Lela while we are gone.” He looked at his watch. “I believe she’s gone a bit ‘wild’ since graduating art school. Her father’s fed up seeing her in the papers for the wrong reasons. Thinks being near her mother will settle her.”

  “Drugs?”

  “I believe they are recreational only,” he answered as he stood, straightening his tie.

  “So, he’s sending her to a State that legalised cannabis?” The father was obviously an idiot, I decided.

  “You will keep her away from that scene,” Skinner interjected.

  “I’m not a babysitter and there is no scene, every house in Colorado can grow weed if they want. Don’t be stupid.” I ran my hand over my hair. At the moment, I was tempted to pull it out of my head in frustration.

  “Aaron,” Skinner levelled a glare at me, “she will be kept away from trouble. You will make sure she is safe while we are away. When we come back, Belinda is sending her to rehab. You will not tell her that.”

  “Is Belinda sending her, or are you?” I didn’t like the calculated look he sent my way. Poor bitch. “This is fucked up. What the hell do I do with a…” I trailed off. “How old is this girl?”

  “She’s 22. Keep her safe and away from temptation.” I turned and walked out the door in disgust. “Aaron, keep her away from Jay!” he called out as I pressed for the elevator. Not a problem.

  I gave him the finger in answer as I got in the elevator, I seethed internally the whole way down. I pulled my phone out my pocket.

  Me: Which fucking hospital did you take him too?

  My blood boiled as I waited. And I waited. I was out in the street before the dots appeared.

  Shadow: Where are you? I’ll come to you

  I left Denver in a fury and headed to the gym. I needed a punching bag. Shadow’s answer was enough to know he wasn’t telling me tonight where my scumbag brother was. Truthfully, I was scared that if I found him tonight, it wouldn’t be a hospital he would need.

  He better run far, because if I saw him again, I was g
oing to put him in the ground.

  My hands were strapped and I had worked up quite a sweat when I noticed Shadow in my peripheral vision. I stopped.

  “Tell me how bad before I offer to spar with you,” he asked wisely. I grinned. I knew it was my crazy grin, the one I had when I had zero fucks to give. Shadow swore under his breath as he shrugged out of his jacket. I noticed his knuckles were already bruised, I felt my control slip a little. That was because of my brother. His blood had been on Shadow’s hands and I desperately wished it had been on mine.

  “Aaron, I’m not doing this if you’re out of it,” Shadow cautioned. I looked at him. He looked relaxed but there was a resolution about him. I must be more on edge than I thought – he rarely warned me about my temper. We had been friends for so long he could read me better than anyone. He knew the tight reign I had over my temper and my ability to wing my way through situations when anger got the best of me. Shadow was the opposite. He was cool tempered and methodical. As I’d gotten older, I’d become more level headed, unless I lost control. It wasn’t good if I lost control. I reined it back; my inner beast howled as I tried to exert control over it. I dipped my head as I fought it. Control. I needed to get it back under control.

  I started loosening up, skipping from foot to foot and shaking out my limbs. Keeping myself loose. I went through the breathing exercises. Yeah that was it, I could feel it dampening down. It took less than a minute, but I could feel myself cooling off.

  “You good?” he asked me. He was pulling his t-shirt off as I nodded. His boots were already kicked off. I advanced to the ring and ducked between the ropes. Shadow followed me, down to his jeans the same as me. He took his stance in front of me and we started a warm up routine that we could probably do in our sleep. Light sparring to begin with, then we got a bit more serious. I ducked his first throw. He followed up quickly with a jab to my ribs but I danced out of reach.

  This is what fighting was. It was a dance. I could dance all day. I swung high as he anticipated and as he dodged, my leg came up and I landed the kick to his kidneys. Making impact resonated within, I felt my anger take a step forward from where I had pushed it back.

  No. Control.

  A dodge, an upper cut. I heard the blow rather than felt it. Soon we were back to our usual sparring routine, the familiarity settled me. We continued to spar and after a while I noticed he was grinning, I returned the grin.

  He took a step away from me, indicating he was done. “You back with me?”

  I continued to move but was also slowing my steps. My body was tired. I eventually rested against the ropes.

  “He told Skinner where Alicia and my mom were.” I felt my head droop.

  “I should have broken more than his nose,” Shadow grumbled.

  I nodded in agreement as we exited the ring and as we cleaned up, I repeated my earlier conversation with Skinner.

  “What are we going to do with her?” he asked me incredulously as he threw me a bottle of water. I shrugged. I hadn’t got that far in my planning.

  “I need to move Alicia and mom without worrying them, I have less than no idea how I am going to pull that off either.” I drank down the water and tossed the bottle in the recycling bin.

  “How do you know he knows? I mean all you said was he mentioned the modifications to the house.” Shadow took a drink. “Your mom’s in a wheelchair, of course the house would have alterations. Doesn’t mean that he’s actually seen the house.”

  “It’s Skinner. He would have checked because he knows not to bluff me.” I shook my head in resignation. “No, he knows. He was so desperate to tell me, I know he knew.”

  The gym had a couple of leather couches for induction purposes for new members, places we could sit when we filled in the paperwork or for general relaxing. They were next to the small cubed office, where we went when we needed privacy. We sat down on a couch each, I kicked out my feet and lay my head back against the cushion. I stared at the ceiling.

  “Well it’s probably better to tell them the truth then. Alicia will adjust to wherever we move her to and this time only you and I will know. We tell no one else.” I nodded at Shadow as he spoke, this was going to be a mind fuck, but I needed to move them.

  Alicia was my youngest sibling, she had just turned 18 last month. She was a good girl but like any teenager, had dabbled with the wrong crowd when she was 15 – not long after my mom had her accident.  I had been running the autoshop with my uncle, who had just started the paperwork to sign his half over to me. My attention had been on that, my time taken with learning and running a business.

  I blamed myself, I wasn’t really a role model. Shadow and I didn’t have a circle of friends, we had acquaintances, we had guys that worked for us. Alicia dabbled with the criminals...the criminally stupid. Where I made the most of an opportunity, I did it legally – well, at least eighty five percent of the time, give or take. Alicia’s friends were petty thieves and vandals.

  They decided one night to up the ante and full out rob a pawn shop. A pawn shop. As I said, stupid. They asked her to be a lookout and she said yes. The breaking and entering went without a hitch, they filled their bags with second hand haul and took the cash left in the register overnight. The shop had no CCTV or security. Home run. Except, cash wasn’t the only thing the shop held overnight. That night it also held about two kilos of uncut coke, which the idiot kids took. The shop had no security or CCTV because everyone, and I mean everyone, knew that this shop was the shop Two-Bit Tommy ran his drugs through. Two-Bit was an occasional business ‘friend’ of Skinner the Crook.

  Skinner knew Alicia had been involved. As soon as the idiots tried to sell the drugs they were caught. Two-Bit didn’t get all his drugs back or the money made from what they sold. Even when the kids were beaten badly and scared shitless, none of them mentioned that a girl had been a lookout. Two-Bit didn’t know about my sister. He did know that their stories didn’t match but couldn’t figure out who was keeping the money off him. Skinner didn’t buy their story and had wheedled out of one of them that there had been another, that a girl had been the lookout. Maybe the girl had the money? When he realised the kids were more scared of revealing her identity than of Two-Bit, he knew the only girl it could be, and that would be my sister, Alicia.

  My sister was 15 years old, young, stupid, but essentially a good kid. She didn’t have Two-Bit’s money but there was a good chunk of it missing from the drug sale and he had wanted it back. My uncle packed them up and they all moved. It worked out well that mom’s accident was completely believable for them moving. I didn’t trust anyone; Shadow and my brother knew where they were and that was it. They cut all ties. Alicia hadn’t been tempted to dip her toe in with the wrong crowd again, she went back to being a good student and was going to community college, she was better off away from here.

  “Did they ever find the money?” Shadow’s soft voice interrupted my train of thought, he knew what I had been thinking about. I shook my head.

   “The idiots probably undersold it, not realising the value and then when the buyers realised whose drugs they bought, who’s going to come forward and say to Two-Bit they bought his cocaine on the cheap?” I snorted. “If only they hadn’t taken it.”

   “Hindsight is twenty-twenty my man,” Shadow muttered.

   “Ain’t that the truth.” I stretched and stood. I held my hand out and pulled him to his feet. “You better go back to Maria before she comes looking for me.” I grinned at him.

  “You’re golden, she loves you, but yeah, I better go. Bump’s being restless.” His smile was huge.

  We said our goodnights, he checked I would be ok. I assured him I was going home, I needed sleep. I needed to plan and work out where I was moving my family to and what it actually meant to look after a spoilt brat while Skinner was on vacation.

  “Aaron, there’s a car booked this afternoon for a consultation for respray, Gregor is out, who we got to cover?” I looked up at our front desk girl Daisy,
she was easy on the eyes and didn’t have to try hard to keep the guys spirits up in the workshop. Today she was wearing a tight leather mini skirt and a sleeveless shirt, that showed too much breast and a bare midriff.

  “What the fuck are you wearing?” I asked her.

  “Do you like it?” She leaned forward to give me a good view of the girls.

  “No, you look like a whore. If I was running a whore shop, you’d fit in. I’m not, this is a family friendly repair shop, change your top before any more of my customers see you,” I snapped at her. I don’t know how many times I had to say no to this girl, but the guys liked her and for all her faults, she did handle the front desk well. Shadow said she was good for the staff morale. I didn’t like it, but I also couldn’t be bothered finding someone else.

  “Trey’s due in, he can do it. Now go cover up.” I turned my back to her and caught one of the other mechanics, covering his laughter. I shook my head in disbelief.

  The autorepair shop was doing well, I had a decent bunch of mechanics that my uncle had hired and that had stayed. About a year ago, I hired a mechanic called Gregor, who came recommended but he was also into car modifications, from modifying engines to body design. It was a small part of the business, but it had potential and I was keen to explore it. Resprays, especially custom designs, were a niche market and you needed to be exceptional to compete. Even doing a complete respray of a normal car looking for a ‘freshen up’ was good money.

  My ability to fix a car was limited, I wasn’t really a mechanic. I could steal a car if I had too, but when it came to fixing them, I knew the basics only. If it needed an annual check, I could do it, but the real work I left to the guys. I checked in every day, chatted with my staff, made sure Daisy was wearing work appropriate clothes and checked the bookings. I usually bailed to the gym in the afternoon to help Shadow. If I stayed the whole day, it’s because we were short staffed and I didn’t mind doing menial manual labour if it kept money coming in.