Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
LYDIA
“Stop locking your elbows,” my trainer, Eve, barks out.
I grimace and swing at the punching bag again, quick to pull in my arm and guard my face.
Sweat drips down my spine and my black leopard print sports bra sticks to my skin.
A few strands have tumbled free from my bun and I can feel them on my face but I don’t brush them back.
Not with Eve Night watching. She’d have my ass on my back before I could blink.
It’s why we pay her the big bucks.
“Again,” she says, standing at my side.
The black bag lurches back.
“Move. You’re staying in one place. An easy target. You know better, Lydia.”
I strike again, then again, twisting as I do, getting an oblique workout in without meaning to. I glance at the window from the second story of Rector’s, the private gym me and Lele both head to when we want to get off Riddle Lane.
Thinking of my younger brother, my pulse thuds faster and my stomach turns to knots. It’s Monday night, three days since he had a seizure in my arms, and he’s not better.
He’s not awake.
He’s in one of the few private hospitals in the state, Astor Memorial II. There’s another closer to Alexandria, North Carolina, but this one is a short drive from Rector’s.
He has a private nurse and a doctor whose rotation of patients is extremely short.
They think he’ll wake up.
They think he’ll wake up.
I can’t keep pacing in his room though. I know the nervous energy isn’t good for him. So tonight, after staring at him throughout the entire day only to see the same sight I’ve seen for seventy-two hours—him hooked up to too many machines—I left.
Outside, in the dark night, the streets of downtown Stone Fell are silent. The party is over with the beginning of the weekday, I guess. But for Lele, it’s just starting.
And for whomever sold him the drugs that fucked him up, death is coming. It’s not solely personal, I tell myself.
Dead users are bad for business.
I shift on my feet, strike again.
And again.
I’m breathing hard, but I keep my mouth closed, inhaling and exhaling through my nose as I attack the bag and put my guard up, bouncing on my toes. My fists are loose, and only partially for technique. My Russian gel manicure doesn’t want to be trapped too tightly, either.
“You’re looking tired, Lydia. Faster.” Eve is right in my face, at my side, and a muscle in my jaw ticks.
If she was a man, I’d have the tactical knife strapped beneath my loose blue boxer shorts in her face.
Something about men talking down to me I can’t fucking stand.
But me and Lele pay Eve for this, and I don’t think she’d take it too well if I cut her in the gym she owns.
Not to mention despite the fact she’s an inch shorter than me, she could do some serious damage.
Probably to Lele too, and he’s six foot one.
I think it’s why he’s always so nice and respectful to her.
She scares him a little. He’s never even tried to sleep with her, which is a feat for him.
When I told her the news, she went perfectly still. But she hasn’t been any softer on me, and I’m grateful. I need the hardass approach. Especially now. It helps turn my brain off.
I lift my chin and roll my shoulders back, then strike again.
Again. I bounce around the bag but keep my core tight, my body locked in, elbows close to my sides.
I hit again. Again. The bag creaks, then slams against the wood mounted on the wall behind it for that purpose.
Another strike.
Sweat blurs over my eye.
I blink it out of the way but hit again.
Again.
I think of Lele in my arms Friday night. Two hits. Another. I’m using both hands now but retracting them one at a time, bringing them quickly back into my body.
One, two.
One, two, three.
“There you go,” Eve says, and those three words are the most praise I’m gonna get from her.
My pulse pounds hard in my chest, sweat slick down my elbows.
I hit again, and again. All I have is Lele.
Uncle Lynx sees money far more than he sees family and while I’m grateful to him for taking us in, I know in his head, I’m nothing but a weapon.
Whatever Lele feels for him, he simply doesn’t understand what Lynx wanted us for.
To use. It’s not personal; it was just business, and I’ve conducted business well.
I’ve always imagined the blood I crawled around in of my mother’s was the birth of the real me.
The Lydia Flynn meant for this move to Stone Fell, this stronghold of Lynx’s empire.
My childhood wasn’t exactly a picnic. I was raised for this, but it made me better, and for that, I’ve already forgiven my uncle for everything he did to me.
I slam the bag again and try to blink Lele’s cries from Friday night out of my head.
I strike again.
Fox and our team are looking into who the girl was the escort mentioned, and the guy who made the drug.
We’ll find them.
We always do.
Flynns don’t falter.
Lele and I are council, meaning we rank high in Stone Fell.
There’s one other family close by who does anything remotely similar to what we do and Hawthorn and Cassia are worse, because they deal in bodies.
We steer clear of them. If we didn’t, it would start a fucking war, and my uncle has always made it very clear that the unsteady truce we have with those two keeps us all from collapse.
But they are the only people I know in Ellicottville, a town where someone else might want our territory’s business.
They have a son, Storm.
Thinking of him makes my chest tighten.
We met once, and right after, my arm was pulled out of socket.
But that was back in Virginia, both of us teenagers.
It meant nothing, and all the nights I dreamed about him and all the desire I had about wanting something I couldn’t have, it all meant nothing too. Girlhood infatuation; little more.
Besides, my uncle always told me Storm wasn’t part of any of this. And when he wanted me to move here, and I dared bring it up, the proximity of Ellicottville to Stone Fell, he told me Storm didn’t live with his parents anymore. You’ll probably never see him again, Lydia.
Maybe I still think about the funeral home where his fingers found my throat when my own were broken but… He’s irrelevant now.
The only person in my world who doesn’t answer to me when it comes to our business is Berlin, and Berlin wouldn’t OD my brother.
So who fucking did?
Berlin told me I needed to keep in mind it was probably unintentional and Lele chose to take the drug.
Berlin knows better. Sure, we keep the Flynn name quiet and ourselves out of the mouths of even most dealers in this area, let alone Ellicottville, but someone knows something.
If it was an attempt to get to me, it’s fucking working.
My stomach aches as I punch again.
What if Lele owes someone money? What if his life is the price he’s meant to pay in exchange for the debt?
I’ve heard of it, sure. Revenge that won’t rest until blood is spilled.
But it wouldn’t make sense. We have money, and Lele isn’t the type to cause a blood feud.
What we don’t have is trust in anyone or anything else.
I hit once more.
Again.
If Lele dies…
Again.
Again.
My knuckles ache.
“Lydia, relax.” Eve’s voice cuts through my thoughts and the fact I’m rampaging on the bag.
I step back from it and drop my arms by my sides, shaking them out. They feel like they weigh a thousand pounds but I didn’t realize it until now.
My chest heaves and I open my mouth, gulping down air in the vast air conditioned room on the top floor.
I blink the sweat from my eyes, then wipe the back of my forearm over my temple.
The hardwood creaks under me when I take another step back, firmly coming to this room, this moment, and not sporadic, useless thoughts of Friday night.
The fear in my heart. The way Lele felt as he shook in my arms.
I stretch my neck and glance at the ring in the center of the dim room. It’s black, like nearly everything in here but the flooring and my midnight blue boxing gloves and shorts. I use it all to ground myself.
“You good?” Eve asks me and I turn to face her.
She’s a few feet from me, her hands on her curvy hips, deep blue eyes locked on mine.
Her hair is raven black with streaks of silver-gray, and it’s twisted into a single French braid which trails down her back.
She has on a white crop top and black booty shorts and it’s fascinating, looking at someone without ink for a change.
I nod once, then bring the band of the gloves to my teeth and rip the Velcro apart to get them off. After it’s loose, I brush it off with my gloved hand, drop the glove, then take off my other one and drop it to the floor too while I circle my wrists, still beneath black hand wraps.
Once upon a time, my uncle would break my fingers when I fucked up. It made me never take them for granted.
It made me never fuck up again.
“You acted like that bag had killed your brother,” Eve says casually.
I still, my gaze going down to hers.
She’s forty-five, twenty-three years older than me and Lele, and she could kick my ass but I don’t like what she said. Especially since she knows where he is right now.
“Not cool,” I say under my breath. I imagine breaking her fucking neck.
She smiles at me, and her eyes light up. “There you are. Come back to me. He’s going to be okay. Lele is too stubborn to die.” She searches my face. “Have you talked to Berlin?”
I nod, thinking of him on Riddle Lane last night when I stopped by to speak to him and check on our place. His presence was there to make sure no one else was trying to attack the Flynns.
Berlin’s deep brown eyes, curly brown hair and arms bigger than my head were a comfort.
But I don’t want to marry him.