Six Brothers

Ten

We are roaring down the highway when it occurs to me that I’ve driven this route before.

“Where are we going?” I asked. It was hot, the air blowing into the car stifling. Jase and I sat in the backseat, Mariana and my father in front.

“You’ll see,” Mariana said, her Columbian accent clipped and anxious.

I looked over at Jase, who was glancing between Mariana and my father before landing his gaze on me, a troubled expression on his face. I put my hand on the hot leather seat between us and held my palm up, wiggling my fingers. Jase smiled, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners, grabbing my hand and squeezing it.

My father stopped the car when he reached Mariana’s house, parking out the back, hidden from view. My stomach roiled when he did that. I had grown up in the life and I knew that when my father started hiding and acting secretively, things were about to get bad, real fast.

Inside Mariana’s apartment, the one where Jase lived, we were told to sit down on the sofa, Mariana and my father sitting across from us.

“Daddy,” I said thickly. “What’s going on?”

He sighed, his eyes pinched and old, as he looked pointedly at my hand and Jase’s, squeezed protectively together between us.

Mariana didn’t sigh, though. She smiled, her beautiful face lighting up with things long forbidden for the mistress of the Vice President of the Gypsy Brothers. For although the name suggested they were vagabonds and travellers, the same could not be said of their families, their children, their mistresses. These people were effectively trapped in a web of lies and bloodshed, forbidden to step away from the watchful eyes of the club.

“We’re leaving,” she said, hope dancing in her eyes. That hope she carried around with her was such a dangerous, devastating thing to clutch onto.

I nodded, looking at Jase, who looked like he was about to flip out.

“You are coming with us, hijo,” Mariana said affectionately, reaching her hand over to brush his cheek. “You don’t need to be scared. I will always take care of you as if you were my own.”

I continued to look at my dad, one thought troubling me, a weakness in their plan.

“Is mom coming?” I asked, finally noticing the way Mariana and my father sat so closely together, their knees touching every now and then, her hand patting his arm, the way she gazed up at him and the way he looked down at her.

My throat constricted as I saw what they had been trying to hide for a very long time.

“No,” my father said heavily, and I could practically taste the guilt in his words.

I didn’t drop his gaze, something powerful passing between us. I needed him to know that I understood. Why he would leave his wife, the mother of his child, to the wolves.

Because she was one of them.

“Good,” I said firmly. “She’d only rat you out.”

At that, my father hung his head, with relief or sadness, I’ll never know.

“You’re a good girl, Juliette,” he said to me, his words hitting me hard in the chest.

A few weeks later, we were all either dead, or wishing we were.

Before I know it, we are at Jase’s place. He’s never moved, even after Mariana was killed here. I am shocked, thinking of all the times my hand itched to snatch up the phone and call him, to tell him that I was safe, to tell him that I was loved by someone, even if that someone couldn’t be him. I wonder what compelled him to stay here, and realize that since his own mother died, it’s probably the only place that’s ever felt like a home to him.

He helps me inside and past the same sofa from my memories, the smack and my grief threatening to tear me open and expose all of my secrets. As Jase helps me to his bed and tucks the covers over me, I swallow back tears, and the powdery remnants of snorted heroin that coat my throat.

“Sleep,” he says, gentle and firm all at once. I open my mouth to protest, but he has already left the room.

Hours later I wake up with a start. Where the fuck am I? I can smell coffee and bacon, and my stomach complains as it reminds me it hasn’t been fed in a very long time.

My mouth tastes horrible, bitter and stale, and I crave that coffee like an addict needing a fix. I throw the covers back and stand gingerly on my leg, testing it with my weight to see if it will hold up. It hurts, but less than it did before, and I can limp to the kitchen by holding onto the walls and placing most of my weight on my unharmed leg.

Jase is busy, cracking eggs into a pan and flipping pieces of sizzling bacon. My stomach clenches again. I am positively starving. I collapse onto a stool at the breakfast bar, hauling my leg into the least painful position. Spying two coffee cups in front of me, I grab the handle of the closest one and drag it across the bench toward me. It is hot and bitter, a strong Columbian blend just like Mariana used to make, and I have to wonder what else Jase continues to do just like her.

I wonder if he thinks I look like her, too? If he’s been trying to place me since he laid eyes on me, or if he’s had me figured out as her taller, paler doppelgänger all along?

“How’s the leg?” Jase asks as he butters toast on two plates.

I nod. “Alright. Thank you.”

He chuckles, and I wait for an explanation.

“You won’t be thanking me when you see the butcher job I made of sewing you up,” he says, sliding a fried egg onto each piece of toast.

I shrug, sipping my coffee. “It doesn’t matter.”

He surveys me intently as he finishes adding pieces of bacon to the plates, handing one to me. “It might make it hard to get a job in your line of work,” he says, aiming for casual but with a definite question behind his words. “After you leave, I mean.”

I almost choke on the piece of bacon I’ve swiped from my plate, my mouth full of delicious grease and salted meat.

“Let’s eat on the balcony,” he says, taking my plate back from me and walking over to the bank of glass windows that overlook Santa Monica bay.

He kicks open a sliding door with his foot and steps out to a terrace, large enough to hold a round table, two chairs, and a couple of potted plants.

I grab both coffees and go to walk, pain shooting up my leg. Jase hurries back to me and takes the coffees, setting them on the table with the food and zipping back to help me hobble to the table. With his help, I take a seat and breathe in the cool ocean air that drifts in from below us.

Jase eats quickly, almost demolishing his plate before I’ve even picked up my fork, and afterwards sips on his coffee, looking studiously to the horizon and the turquoise water beneath it.

“You like views,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I can edit them or stop myself. “The roof, this balcony—seems like you’re always looking to something else.”

A smile tugs at the corners of his wide, sensual mouth, and he tears his gaze away from the water to look at me. “I like looking at beautiful things,” he says, his gaze lingering on me so that I blush and look away. “It helps me forget the ugliness of my life.”

“Is your life really that ugly?” I ask, and more than anything in the world, I want him to say no. I want him to say that he’s happy. But I can see on his face and hear in his words that he is not.

He chooses not to answer, instead gesturing to the apartment behind us. “This place used to belong to Dornan’s last obsession,” he says, his eyes dark and troubled.

I don’t say anything; just stare at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

He places his coffee cup down and scratches his thumbnail across the rim absent-mindedly.

“She’s dead now,” he finishes, his voice thick with finality.

“What happened?” I ask, afraid to hear his version.

“She was faithful to him, and the club, for ten years. And then she tried to leave,” Jase’s voice cracks, “and he killed her.”

I swallow the enormous lump in my throat, not allowing myself to imagine what life we could have had if they had succeeded. If we had gotten out. It would have been glorious.

“She was from Columbia,” Jase says. “She’d been here for years by the time I got here, but she still had this really thick accent. At first I could hardly understand what she was saying.” He laughs without a sound, but his tale is not a happy one. For a moment I wonder if she was alive as Dornan cut her head off. I’d put all of my money on yes.

It suddenly occurs to me, as I’m staring at his lips move, that we haven’t spoken about what happened last night at the wake. That kiss, so brief, but full of so much feeling, my heart skips a beat just remembering it. I want to press him about it, but I’m scared he’ll run again, so I leave it.

“Does your father know I’m here?”

Jase’s expression becomes angry, his teeth gritted and jaw set stubbornly. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him.”

I nod. “I should call him. He’ll be angry if he gets back and I’m not there.”

Jase just looks at me incredulously, his eyebrows raised as high as they’ll go.

“I was supposed to clean up all the blood,” I add by way of explanation.

His mouth drops open as he listens to me speak. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, his hands becoming fists again. Fuck.

“Please don’t be like that,” I say. “You don’t understand.” You don’t understand, you don’t understand. Fuck, I still love you, after all these years and you just don’t understand.

He runs a hand through his short hair, a look of exasperation on his face.

“I understand perfectly,” he says in a measured tone. “I understand that you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

I swallow thickly. I want to respond but my brain suddenly feels like mushy soup. My leg is positively humming, and although I’m accustomed to pain, this feeling that quickly spreads over my body is something else entirely. My nerves are shot, hissing and screaming every time I take a ragged breath. I can feel sweat gathering on my forehead and I’m feeling kind of dizzy.

I open my mouth to say something, but I’m confused and no words come out. I close it again. I’m thirsty. I reach out to grab the glass of water that has miraculously materialized in front of me. It’s in my grasp for all of two seconds before it slides out of my fingers and shatters on the floor, water and shards of glass sloshing around my feet. I just stare. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Everything feels murky and thick, as if I’m trying to walk along the bottom of a muddy river.

Jase is talking to me but I can’t hear him above the angry buzzing in my ears. I need to close my eyes, just for a moment, and then I’ll be okay.

Then everything will be okay.