Chapter Five
Dixon
I know I didn’t drink that much last night, especially not enough to feel the way I feel right now, where opening my eyes is like running sandpaper across the shriveled, dry orbs and my tongue is this swollen, parched lump in the Sahara Desert of my mouth. I’d have to drink like a fucking eighteen-year-old after breaking into his dad’s liquor cabinet to feel like this. I know, because I was that dumb kid at one point in my life.
Not anymore, though.
Mainly because I’m older.
Still dumb, just older.
I blink again. It fucking hurts.
Where the fuck am I?
When focus comes into my dry eyeballs, I see that I’m in a messy room where every square inch of wall space, and much of the floor and ceiling, is covered in some type of insulating foam.
Am I dead?
“Hey, you’re awake.”
That sound makes me wince. It’s like someone jabbed a screwdriver into my brain.
I recognize that chipper voice, though.
Groaning, I turn my head and see the bartender from the night before watching me from her kitchen. She has a cup of steaming coffee in her hand and a smile on her face.
“What the fuck is happening?”
“I drugged you.”
“OK, that makes sense, considering I feel like shit. But why?” I try to stand, and all that happens is I wobble the chair I’m in. It’s then I notice that I’m tied and handcuffed to the damn thing. Damn it, I can barely feel my arms and legs.
“So I could bring you here without you fighting back. Duh.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
“What? Are you so stupid that you want me to grow a mustache and stand here, twirling it, while I narrate to you all the details of what I’m going to do to you? This isn’t a fucking cartoon.”
“It’d be the polite thing to do.”
“I think we’re beyond the point of politeness.”
“Well, for the record, I think you’d actually look good with a mustache.”
“Do you want me to thank you for that?”
“I can see a little one growing on your lip.” Her eyes widen and she brushes a finger across her upper lip. It’s a satisfying sight, seeing her put off. “I know I’m not in the position to ask you for anything, but I am in the position to point out that you’re being a real inconsiderate bitch right now.”
Her eyebrow twitches and her jaw flexes. “Do you think I care?”
“Yes, I do.”
A quick sigh. I can’t tell if she’s indulging me, or if she really cares. Either way, I’m drugged and clearly not going anywhere, so I might as well fuck with her, since she plans to kill me. I mean, what’s the worst she could do?
“You’re a real asshole. Which doesn’t surprise me, because I know what you’ve done. But it is surprising that you’d be such an asshole right up to the end. Most people, they repent right before they die.”
“Did I do something to you? I don’t remember your face, so we didn’t hook up, because your face is pretty memorable — pretty, even with that bushy mustache. And your morning-after attitude — it is morning, right? — is also something I’d remember if we had slept together. So we didn’t fuck, and I didn’t stiff you on tips because I always tip my doctor… so who the fuck are you and why do you want to Hannibal Lecter me?”
She frowns, which deepens the dimples in her cheeks, and makes me bite back an unwanted moan; I meant what I said when I said she was pretty, but now I realize that was an understatement. This woman is outright fucking beautiful. She has a hard edge, sure, and she’s absolutely fucking insane, but that doesn’t change the objective truth that looking at her makes my blood race. Then she takes a long drink of her coffee, releases a soft sigh, and comes so close she’s right in my face. Fiery eyes, plump lips curled in a snarl, and she smells faintly like roses.
“Look closely.”
“Not an unpleasant suggestion.”
“Fuck you. Do you see it?”
“Are you fishing for compliments? Because you don’t need to — you’re gorgeous. Psycho, but gorgeous. Does that validate you?”
“Thanks, shithead. So, you’re saying you don’t see the resemblance?”
“Shit, did I fuck someone you’re related to? A sister? A cousin?” I pause. “Your mom? Did I fuck your mom?”
“My brother.”
I blink. Then question a lot of things about myself.
“I fucked your brother? Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t even remember. And I would think I would remember if I fucked your brother, so I must’ve been real fucking drunk or your brother just sucks at sex so bad that I didn’t even know there was another dick in the sexual equation.”
I’ve done a lot of fucked up things in my life, including being an asshole to the kind people who were only trying to help me get my life together, like Striker’s sister, Natalie, but I don’t recall banging a dude. Not that I have anything against the people that enjoy it, but I would’ve thought I’d remember the novelty of having sex with a man and whether I liked it.
Maybe I’m missing out.
Maybe if I make it out of this mess alive, I need to call Moose.
“You didn’t fuck my brother.”
“You implied I did. If I did, did he say anything about it? Was I good? Did everyone involved enjoy it? I don’t like that there’s a mysterious chapter of my life that I know nothing about.”
“You’re really making me want to slit your throat right now.”
“Pardon me for being curious about whether I found satisfaction in another man’s penis. If your brother awakened something within me, I want to know about it.”
“It wasn’t sex. You didn’t fuck my brother. You murdered him,” she says. She throws her coffee in my face, the hot liquid raising pain down my cheeks and neck. “He was a good person, he was my best friend, and you fucking murdered him.”
“I’ve killed a lot of people, lady.”
“Lady? My name is Alexandra. Alexandra Reyes.”
“So you weren’t lying about that?”
“No, I want you to know who’s going to kill you.”
“Your brother was Lucas Reyes?”
Arms crossed, she nods, and remorse rises within my chest. I see it, now. See the resemblance to the same face I see in my nightmares and every time I close my eyes. The same face that calls me to step into the flames every time I’m on a call with my volunteer firefighter squad.
“Yes. Lucas Reyes was my brother.”
Something shatters inside me; it”s like glass breaking within my soul. The pain is sharp, visceral, a deep ache in my chest that feels like it’s cutting my insides to shreds.
”Yes, I see it. Lucas Reyes.” Each word is a stone, heavy with reality. I can see him now, clear as the day it happened. Lucas Reyes, with his life leaking out of him, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief; Lucas Reyes, a man who came to me with good intentions, with honesty and hope in his eyes and his voice, who had a plan to end a club war and fight the drugs that were flooding his neighborhood; a man who got nothing for his good intentions except a hole in his fucking head. ”I shot him. In the head.”
In that moment, I’m not in this dirty living room where the floor’s a mess and the walls are lined with soundproofing foam. I’m back in that concrete lot, with blood all around me, with members of my former MC dead on the ground alongside Lucas Reyes and several of his club brothers, too.
It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.
“You admit it. You fucking killed my brother, you piece of shit.”
She clenches her fists and hammers me as tears overcome her. She pummels my face, my stomach, even my throat while she cries.
I topple backwards in my chair, hit the ground with my head, and manage a gurgling gasp of air before Alexandra towers above me and throws several more punches. Pain floods through me as she hits me with everything she’s got.
But as much as she tries to hurt me, it’s nothing compared to the guilt that I carry inside. Guilt for killing Lucas Reyes, for betraying his trust and destroying any chance he had of a better life. For snuffing out all the potential he had. I knew the second I shook his hand that he was someone with the heart and the strength to make his club and community a better place.
“You fucking killed him. You killed him.”
Those words come over and over, each one accompanying a punch or a kick that makes my head snap, my bones bruise, my flesh break and bleed. Pain and anticipation flood me, fill me, make me feel so fucking alive that it’s like my skeleton wants to rip its way out of my skin.
She’s going to kill me now.
And she deserves to.
Just as I deserve to die.
Then she stops.
Sudden.
She grabs my chair, and, grunting, hauls it upright. There’s a confused look on her face. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because, as much as you hate me, you and I agree on something, Alexandra: I deserve to die. And I want you to be the one to kill me.”