TWENTY TWO
P oison woke up with a jolt that sent her heart racing. Throwing back the blanket, she jumped off the couch and got ready as quickly as possible.
The sun was barely chasing the darkness away when she sped into the streets. Fuck Gunnar if he thought she would just sit idly by and wait for them to talk to Scorpion. She needed to see him, and she needed to do it now.
She had enough time before work and knew the best place to find Scorpion was the factory. Twisting her wrist, she pushed her bike as fast as she could.
With her heart rate crawling into her throat, she rounded the street corner just as someone exited the building.
She nearly dropped her bike as she skidded to a stop in front of the door. Her heart pounded, adrenaline surging through her veins. But it wasn’t Scorpion. Instead, Gunnar stood there, arms crossed, eyes narrowed in annoyance.
“What the actual fuck are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice a low growl.
“Is he in there?” she asked, pulling off her helmet and shaking out her hair. Her voice wavered slightly, betraying the desperation she felt.
Gunnar’s scarred eyebrow arched, skepticism etched on his face. “Why are you looking for him? I thought we told you to stay away?”
She didn’t answer. She moved to push past him, but his massive frame blocked her path. His gaze held a mix of incredulity and irritation, as if he couldn’t believe her audacity. Maybe she was crazy, but she didn’t care.
“He’s not here,” he drawled, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it with a flick of his lighter. To her surprise, he lit a second one and handed it to her.
She hesitated, then took the cigarette, the familiar burn of nicotine offering a momentary distraction.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, drawing in a deep breath and exhaling slowly, trying to calm her racing mind. “He’s not here?” she asked again, her heart aching with defeat.
Gunnar shook his head, taking a drag from his cigarette. “Why are you here, Poison?”
The genuine concern in his eyes caught her off guard, and she nearly choked on the smoke. “Because he was in my apartment last night,” she hissed, anger bubbling beneath the surface. “He tore the place apart. I need to find him.”
“Fuck,” Gunnar muttered, staring off into the distance.
“Any idea where I can find him?” she pressed. If anyone knew where Scorpion would be, it was Gunnar.
“I’ll ask again. Do you have a death wish or something, woman?” Gunnar shook his head. “I told you to let him cool down first.”
“He came looking for me, Gunnar!” She struggled to keep her composure. “You think he’ll calm down? Because I don’t. I need to make him calm down.”
“Clingy much?” he scoffed, a smug grin spreading across his face, right before his head snapped back.
She had punched him.
Without thinking, her fist connected with his jaw. The satisfaction of wiping that grin off his face was worth the sting in her knuckles.
“Bitch!” he roared, dabbing at the cut on his cheekbone.
“Aww, you’re going to make me blush,” she teased, shaking her hand to relieve the pain, her forgotten cigarette smoldering on the ground.
“You can be lucky Scorpion would strangle me if I killed you before he could,” he sneered.
“Where is he?” she insisted, her voice hard.
“It’s your funeral, woman,” he shrugged. “He’s most likely at the Temple or the boss’ gym, neither of which you’d get access to.”
His triumphant smile made her blood boil.
“Then get me access,” she demanded, crossing her arms to hide the tremor in her chest. She hated feeling so out of control.
“No can do, sister,” He shook his head. “They’ll kill you if you set foot in the Temple, and I don’t even have access to the gym.” Jealousy flickered in his eyes.
“There must be something you can do!” Her throat tightened, and she loathed herself for pleading with the brute in front of her.
“Poison, there really isn’t. Go to work, take the day, and calm down. I’ll get Dennis and we’ll go look for him.” His voice softened slightly, but his eyes remained hard.
“Fine,” she muttered, her voice barely audible. “But if you don’t find him, I will.”
Knowing it didn’t help to argue, she turned to her bike but stopped in her tracks. She turned to Gunnar and asked: “Why are you helping me when you clearly don’t like me, and Scorpion wants me dead?”
He studied her for a moment before he answered.
“You’re right. I don’t like you,” he said without a trace of emotion. “But Scorpion does. Heaven knows why.” He gave her a once-over as again. He always seemed to be looking her over. “But his judgment is clouded by vengeance at the moment. I know he’ll regret it and hate himself if he does anything. So this has nothing to do with helping you but everything to do with helping my brother.”
She couldn’t help but respect Gunnar for his loyalty.
“Noted,” she mumbled and, with a nod, turned on her heel and got onto her bike.
She made it to work twenty minutes late. Traffic had been a nightmare. Rushing up the stairs to her office, not bothering to wait for the elevator, she was met by almost deserted halls, which made her slam a palm to her forehead. They had a staff meeting, and she was late. Turning back to the stairs, she took them two at a time to the conference hall.
In front of the door, she took a deep breath and braced herself for the onslaught that would follow once she opened it.
So, with a grin on her face, she plucked the doors open, making an entrance as every head turned to face her. Topaz’s eyebrows nearly touched his receding hairline as she took a seat at the back.
“Miss Sloan,” he called into the microphone. “Do you care to explain to the rest of the staff why you are late to work?”
Her smile grew sinister as she rose to her feet again and looked him in the eye.
“Someone told me to go to hell,” she explained. “I couldn’t find it at first, but I’m here now.”
A few people snickered, and she bowed at the hips for her audience.
“Sit down,” Topaz ordered.
His cheeks burned red, and she couldn’t help herself. She saluted him with a “Yes, sir”, just like he did to her at the launch, before sitting again.
The rest of the day crawled by in slow motion. The moment the clock struck five, Poison rushed to the parking lot and sped off.
She didn’t want to go home and didn’t want Scorpion to follow her to Nina’s place, so that wasn’t an option, but she wanted to confront him. She was on her way to his factory again when Gunnar’s voice rang in her ears. So, she changed course and found herself in the neighborhood she grew up in.
The familiar sights and smell hit her right in the heart as she parked her bike in an alley behind a dumpster. She covered it with cardboard boxes she found nearby, concealing every part from wandering eyes. In this neighborhood, a machine like hers would be stolen in the blink of an eye.
Car alarms and screaming had been the backtrack of her childhood, and gunshots had echoed through the air more times a day than the school bell.
Stuffing her hands into her pockets, she walked down the road. Nothing had changed since she had left—everything had just deteriorated. Big Al’s was still the only convenience store for miles, and Pam’s Pizza was the best slice in the neighborhood.
She wandered the streets until she stopped in front of her childhood home. Memories flooded her mind and threatened to spill through her eyes. Her foot hovered over the steps to the basement apartment, the moss overtaking the concrete.
How many times had she slipped on those steps in the icy winter months? How many scraped knees from running away from Jonathan? And how many times did she sit on those steps, tucked under her brother’s arm, when their mother had company as she had called it?
Her mother was only seventeen when Jonathan was born and eighteen when she had her. They never knew their father. Their mother had insisted that it had been the same man, and Poison wanted to believe it. They had the same green eyes and dark hair.
Turning away from the memories, she walked down the street again. Exactly as she had done on her eighteenth birthday, when her mother had kicked her out.
She knew her mother didn’t live there anymore. She had come here on her twenty-first birthday looking for her, but the new tenants had been there for two years already.
It was completely dark when the sound of a crowd cheering drew her to the entrance of an alley. On the other side of the alley was a hoard of people, and in the middle, she could make out the silhouettes of two fighters going at it.
Unorganized street fights outside of a ring only meant one thing—a power struggle, a crew broken apart over leadership.
She wanted to run and kick the shit out of them. No crew worth their salt would fight among themselves. But she just shoved her fists deeper into her pockets and moved on. Jumping into another crew’s fight would be suicide. She didn’t have backup, and even though they were already divided, they’d have each other’s backs when a stranger threatened.
Instead, she stomped down the street, trying not to draw attention to herself. Two gunshots, followed by screeching tires, echoed through the night, and her heart tightened. Fuck, she did not miss this neighborhood. It was a miracle she had made it out of here alive.
In Netherlands Avenue, headlights rounded a corner, and she jumped the closest fence she could find. She didn’t want any sort of confrontation. She cleared the fence, but the bushes on the other side grabbed at her legs, and she nearly toppled over.
Straightening, a smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she viewed the park before her. As kids, they would play between the tress, and at night, shady deals and make-out sessions went down under the cover of darkness.
She wandered to a discarded plastic crate, her footsteps whispering in the unkept, wilting grass. Each step became more and more challenging to take as the whirlwind of emotions finally spilled out in streams down her cheeks. She sank onto the crate and buried her face in her hands.
Years of bottled-up emotions came crashing out in hot, salty tears without any sign that they would ever stop. Like the rise of the ocean’s tide, frustration soared inside her. It kept rising as if filling her with lead from her feet upward. The feeling kept growing until it reached her chest and started choking her.
She hated herself for allowing her emotions to have so much control over her. She hated the shady shit she had done in the past. She hated that Scorpion was the brother of one of her victims. She hated herself for being mad at how he reacted, which only angered her more because she had no right to blame him for any of this.
She leaped to her feet in a frenzy of anger, sending her fist colliding with the tree closest to her.
That did it.
All her anger, hate, and emotions escaped through her fist, leaving her a hollow shell. Resting her forehead against the coarse bark, she took deep, calming breaths, and for once, the voices were silent.
Everything around her was quiet—too quiet. Even the crickets had stopped their serenade. She strained her ears. For a moment, she thought it was the wind, but then she heard it. She could make out the falling thud of footsteps on loose gravel. The grinding noise sent chills through her entire body, raising the hair on the back of her neck. She spun around in the direction of the footsteps.
Fuck, she was stupid to be here. She was out of her territory with no one to back her up. Stiffening her spine, she forced her frozen limbs to move and crouched, ready to fight or flee.
“Who…” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “Who’s there?” she ordered, forcing as much authority into her voice as possible.
The footsteps changed direction and moved from in front of her to her right, just behind the wildly tangled bushed. She turned to mimic the movement of the sound, remaining in her crouched position.
The bushes parted, opening up like the Red Sea before her. She recoiled a step back, startled by the sudden movement. Slowly, she started making out a silhouette against the light of a distant streetlamp.