Chapter Fourteen
Family Sucks
Tyr
I paused at the top of the stairs to watch as Ginger’s red Mini pulled up in front of Vixen’s Den. Safe and sound, just the way I liked it. I took another moment to chuckle to myself as she checked her appearance in the Mini’s rearview mirror, making sure all the hickeys I’d put on her the night before were covered.
Damn, she was cute.
Then, while I still had signal, I tried one more time to text my brother, all the while wondering if this was what Sisyphus felt like, trying to push a stupid rock up a hill.
“ Loki, goddamn it, answer me, shithead. What did Ginger want?”
Sending…
Delivered.
Then a pulsing ellipse appeared, indicating a response.
Finally.
“Loki can’t answer right now.”
I stared at the text bubble, baffled. “ Alice?”
“No. It’s, um… baby Catherine.”
“FUCK U LOKI.”
A single laughing emoji showed up.
Honest to Christ, family sucked.
My phone chimed . “U sound like UR in middle school, asshole. ‘Does Ginger like meee? Did she say anything about meee? Does she want to be my girrrrrlfriennnnd?’”
I would kill my little brother slowly. Surely Alice and the kids would understand.
Then a thought hit me and I thumb-typed fast. “Wait. Did Ginger actually talk about any of those things with you? What did she say?”
An entire block of cry-laugh emojis appeared.
Okay. Checking in on why my idiot brother had lunch with Ginger today was clearly the worst mistake ever.
“Don’t let G get away from you, brother. Srsly. UR both so fucked up no one else would have you.”
He probably wasn’t wrong.
“Also, feed her. You ate her dinner last night and I ate her lunch today. In my defense, she wasn’t eating fast enough, so…” A shrug emoji appeared to finish that thought, something I gave a thumbs-up to. Then I took another five minutes to order what I considered to be a reasonable amount of snacks to be delivered ASAP to Vixen’s Den from a nearby store, before finally heading down the stairs, tucking my phone away as I went. My booted footsteps echoed on the hard concrete floor as I passed the locked Situation Room, continuing down the long hallway. It ended with a door where guards from Ajax’s enforcer crew stood on either side of it. The one closest to the door’s handle punched the code in and opened it for me. I nodded at them and headed inside, finding Ajax just inside the door, also standing guard.
The smell hit me first.
The room itself was square, with walls and floors two feet thick. It had once been one of the safe deposit box vaults, and I’d had it converted into temporary cells. No modern-day accommodations existed down here, like plumbing or windows. Ventilation was the only thing I did allow to avoid suffocation, but it wasn’t enough to sweep away the mingled scents of human waste, stale sex and sweat-drenched body odor. A construction bucket in the corner told me where the human waste stench came from, and the rest…
“I believe we’re just about done with you, Yoyo.”
In the corner farthest from the door, a lump stirred. Other than the construction bucket, there was no furniture in the room, just a scratchy wool blanket on the floor, along with a flat pillow picked up at Army Surplus. The only light came from the naked bulb overhead. It was a nightmare of a cell, because thanks to the thick walls no one could hear you scream even if they were standing directly above you.
Man, I loved this converted old bank.
The spy, Yoyo, had lost her boots somewhere along the way. At some point, someone had given her a stained T-shirt to wear, no doubt because her barely-there top hadn’t made it over the last twenty-four hours. The tiny miniskirt was still in place, now stained and just as useless in covering her as it had been when she’d walked into the Gravedigger Clubhouse the night before. After all, she’d come here in the hope of tempting whatever men she could, myself included.
Be careful what you wish for, Yoyo.
She lifted her head and peered up at me through her now-lank hair. It looked sticky in several places and I didn’t have to guess why.
“What…” Her voice was hoarse, unrecognizable. I looked around, saw a four-pack of bottled water at Ajax’s feet, and grabbed one up for her. “What time is it?”
“Almost three.”
“AM or PM?”
“PM.” I looked around the bare walls as I opened the bottle of water for her. “You haven’t even been here twenty-four hours.”
She shuddered. “Seems longer.”
“That’s the trouble with being in a vault—no windows. And they’re soundproof. All that screaming has ruined your voice, but no one heard you.”
A short burst of high-pitched laughter escaped her and just as abruptly stopped. “They wouldn’t have cared even if they had, this being club business and all.”
“Glad you understand this is nothing personal. It is just business. More than that. It’s war.” When I closed in, she flinched, trying to become one with the wall at her back. “Easy. It’s water, yeah? Just water.” I handed her the bottle, and waited as she greedily sucked down half of it. “You look like shit, Yoyo. Anyone who wasn’t aware that you came into my house as a goddamn enemy would probably feel fucking sorry for you.”
“Not you, though.” She darted a hunted look at me through her hair. “Right?”
“I didn’t get to be where I am now by being a soft-boy Care Bear, bitch. My old man Odin taught me how to lead. But it was Uncle Hades who taught me how to punish.”
Another shudder went through her, then another, and she dropped her head onto her raised knees. “Ah… shit.”
Good. Message received. No matter how bad things were now, she understood they could always get so much worse.
I glanced at Ajax. “Your enforcers have had her a while. What do you think? Has she given us everything she’s got?”
Ajax seesawed his hand. “No one’s going to give her a prize for being the most stable bitch in the world. Girlie’s got more than a few toys in the attic, so you have to figure out what’s real and what’s bullshit with her. Personally, I don’t think even she knows the difference.”
Yoyo let out another staccato burst of high-pitched laughter that weirdly cut off once again.
Ajax pondered her a minute before looking back to me. “Feel free to ask her anything. I think she’s softened up enough to sing like a fucking canary. If not, I’ve got Buzzard and Rose waiting in the wings to crack her wide open. All my enforcers enjoy their work, but those two are special. They can be remarkably… inventive.”
“N-no.” Yoyo was shuddering again, her entire body shaking as though suffering an internal earthquake. “No more. I’ll say anything.”
“I don’t want you to say anything , Yoyo. I want the truth.” I hunkered down so that we were at eye level, and I could see it, the same thing I saw when she first showed up. Cunning calculation tinged with white-hot madness. She truly was a creature of Hades’s world. Just like me. “Why did you think you could come in here and hurt us? You, when Marvel and Slash failed so completely?”
“Hades.” She clutched her water bottle like she thought she could hide behind it. “Mr. Big Man himself said I could do it if I followed his plan. I fucked him, too, you know. Just to see if I could stomach looking at his shriveled-up wiener and his gray-haired balls.”
“Good for you.” I tried not to gag. “So, Hades had a plan? What did he want you to do?”
“He said your chapter was nothing but a bunch of dumbasses playing at being 1%ers—a load of butter knives pretending to be machetes. With all your fancy glitter-bike sales and your candy-ass businesses, he swore you’d become fat pussies that anyone could fuck over, even me.” Her fingers tightened on the bottle, making the plastic crinkle. “He was wrong. You’re just way better at hiding what you really are.”
No shit . “What did he want you to do once you got here, Yoyo?”
Again she looked at me through the lank curtain of her hair. “What else? To slit your throat, Mr. President.”
So we were back to that, were we? “And how would you ever get a chance to do that?”
“You have to sleep at some point, yeah?” Her smile was sweetly demented. “I’m good at one thing only, or so my daddy says. That’s what I was supposed to do with you .”
“Jesus,” Ajax muttered behind me. “That goddamn Radar.”
Yoyo ignored him, her eyes clinging to mine like her life depended on it. “And once you had drifted off to dreamy-land all happy and satisfied, I was supposed to give you a nice, long slit from ear to ear. I had the straight razor in my boot, ready to do the job. It’s gone now. Poof. Bye-bye.”
“Straight razor.” A dark foreboding hit me, and I looked to Ajax. “Where?”
Ajax moved to hand over a familiar-looking, gold-edged razor folded into a mother-of-pearl handle.
Well, well. Thought I’d never see this again.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Yoyo stared at the razor as though she longed to grab it so she could start dicing me up into bloody chunks. She sighed when I tucked it away in my back pocket.
“There’s a code among bikers,” I said evenly, watching her. “When war breaks out, men fight men. Men kill men. Our women stay the fuck out of it. Sending a teenaged bitch into enemy territory to kill me , the goddamn president of the Gravediggers… That’s a fucking insult .”
She flinched.
“But it’s also a sign of weakness on H’s part, and there’s nothing that disgusts me more than weakness. If you are his secret weapon, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re worried about. At this point, Hades is nothing more than a pissy little joke, and we should just leave him alone to run his has-been chapter into the ground.”
She shifted. “He might be weak. Orrrrrr, he might have seen me for what I really am.”
“And what are you?” This should be good.
“A killer.”
“Yeah? How many people have you killed, Yoyo?”
“None. Yet. But I’ve always wanted to see if I could kill someone. I think about it alllll the time.”
“No surprise there,” Ajax muttered, running a hand over his shaved head. “Someone broke this bitch long before she fell into our laps.”
“Hypocrite,” she hissed at him, then hid behind her water bottle when he scowled at her. “So all the fun of killing is meant for the boys, but not the girls? That’s not fair. I told Big Man Hades all about how I wanted to see if I could kill just like the boys, and he finally gave me a shot at it. He even said he’d throw me a party if I brought him your balls, Mr. President. Said he wanted to make earrings out of them.” Another wild laugh, choked off too soon. “He’s super-obsessed with your balls, in case you didn’t know. Guess that’s weird since he’s your uncle. But I try not to judge. My daddy’s weird that way about some of my body parts, too.”
“We’re going to kill Radar for that,” I heard myself promise her, because it had to be said. In this case, it wasn’t club business. It was just the right goddamn thing to do. “When we do, do you want any body part of his that you can make into earrings?”
“I just want Daddy dead. Mommy too, because she knew. She knew all the things happening under her roof, and she did fucking nothing . My family sucks and deserves nothing but horrible, bloody death.” She said it with such viciousness I knew she meant every word. Too bad I couldn’t arm her to do the deed herself, but the fact was Yoyo would happily end me if I were ever stupid enough to give her a weapon deadlier than a spork. No matter how batshit she was, she was still programmed to be loyal to the people and club that spawned her.
Then again… Maybe not.
Not if I played this just right.
I rose and looked to Ajax. “What else have we gotten from her?”
The naked bulb reflected off his ever-present sunglasses. “The Chicago Gravediggers have filled up that bedbug-ridden flophouse out on the Kennedy, close to O’Hare—Arrowhead Inn. Hades probably got the idea from you and how you use the Barracks for all our brothers when they’re in town. Problem is, Hades never cleaned out the Arrowhead. Even as we speak, that lazy asshole’s still running his stable of whores out of there, so an all-out attack won’t work. Too many civilians, too many witnesses.”
Shit . “Numbers?”
“According to a quick internet search, the Arrowhead Inn has fifty rooms. Double capacity minus the working girls, we’re putting the numbers at slightly under a hundred. The Arrowhead is five minutes away via surface streets from Rooster Juice and the Chicago Gravedigger hangout.”
In my head, I began mapping out possible routes. “What else?”
“According to the completely stable and not at all fucked-up Yoyo here, there are anywhere from thirty to forty brothers living within the Chicago Gravedigger compound itself, including Hades. In fact, he hasn’t left there since we saw him at Arthur’s funeral months ago.”
Ha. Uncle H would die a coward. “Personal security for Hades?”
Ajax tilted his head toward Yoyo. “Little Miss Slit-Your-Throat claims Hades is never alone. Always has Cheese, his advisor, and at least one bodyguard with him wherever he goes. They even check out bathrooms with guns drawn before he goes in to take a dump. And get this—he’s got himself a food tester now. Thinks we’re a bunch of bitches who’d stoop to poisoning him. Personally I find that insulting.”
“Look at it this way, my brother. If we know he’s thinking about shit like that, it means he’s thought about pulling shit like that. Nothing is useless information here.” I glanced back at Yoyo when she cackled again. “What? You think that’s funny?”
“No, I think it’s smart.” Her humor vanished like someone flipped a switch, and she peered at me with narrowed, angry eyes. “How the hell did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“How did you make him think you were stupid? And weak? Big Man Hades is just so… so wrong about you. About your club. About everything .”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Yoyo. Uncle H is famous for being wrong. That’s why so many of us left him back in the day. We were sick of dying useless deaths because of how wrong he always was.”
She looked at the bottle in her hands and slowly began to throttle it. “I wish I had known that… before.”
“Before you were sent to kill me?” When she merely shrugged a shoulder, I looked at her. Really looked at her, and slowly my humor fled while my blood iced over. “Damn, Yoyo, look at you killing that bottle. Even if it meant you would never make it out of here alive, you’d still try to slit my throat, wouldn’t you?”
“Or someone’s. Hades’s, maybe, for being so stupid and wrong. Honestly, I’m not choosy.”
No, but she was a rabid animal that needed to be put down. And goddamn it, Hades knew it. That was why he sent her, I realized as the light finally went on. Throwing Yoyo our way wasn’t a weak move, and it sure as fuck wasn’t proof that my uncle had finally learned to appreciate the strength of women.
No.
Yoyo had become too dangerous to keep within the Chicago Gravedigger family. Hell, Hades may have even feared for his own life with this killing-obsessed psycho sitting right next to him, but since he couldn’t show fear of a bitch and survive in our world, he’d sent her our way. Either she would complete her mission or we would kill her—a win-win, as far as he was concerned. More to the point, he’d be able to get rid of this embodiment of chaos without antagonizing Radar. No doubt he had plans of using Yoyo’s death as a rallying cry for his men—all of whom had fucked this psychotic little cumbucket—to burn us to the ground.
They would have tried, of course. And failed.
They’d still fail, especially now since I had figured things out.
Sorry, Uncle H. I’m not taking out your trash. That’s your job.
Better yet, I had an idea on how to make him do it.
“Do me a favor, brother,” I said to Ajax. “Contact that tattooist I evicted across the street—Draco something. Misty can help you find the contact info. Tell this guy that I’ll foot the bill for wherever he wants to set up in this city if he comes in with his tattooing equipment and does a very specific tattoo, single color, no questions asked.”
“You don’t want Loki?”
“No, he’s out of the life. I want Draco.”
“Understood.” Ajax nodded and vanished out the door.
“Now, then.” I took my phone out and hit the photo app. There was no signal down here, but I didn’t need a signal for this. “I only have one more question for you, and then we’re going to get you cleaned up and into some nice new clothes.”
She stared at me. “Is this a trick?”
“Nope.” I found the picture I wanted, hunkered down in front of her once more, and showed it to her. “Who’s this?”
She looked at the phone seemingly against her will. Then her jaw dropped, so comically it couldn’t have been faked, before she burst into her patented staccato hysterical laughter. I let her go for about half a minute before standing to loom over her. Her laughter cut off as if it had never been, and she stared up at me through her hair, quaking.
“Answer me, Yoyo. Who is this?”
“Marvel’s replacement.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Marvel’s replacement. Once Marvel got his sorry ass carved up like a Christmas turkey, Daddy thought he’d be Vice President and maybe even more. But Daddy’s just a scheming usurper to the throne. Big Man Hades knows that about Daddy. So Big Man Hades called in all the replacements that he could find. They’re here now. In Chicago. Daddy’s sad.”
None of that made sense, but before I could ask her to clarify, one of the guards outside knocked briefly and stuck his head in.
“Romeo’s trying to get a hold of you, boss,” the enforcer said, eyes on me. “He told me to tell you there’s some sort of red flag across the street. Does that make sense?”
With a curse I raced out of the room, with Yoyo’s mad cackle chasing me down the hall.