4. Nina
4
NINA
Nina
A t the end of my shift, visions of burning my shoes flitted through my head. These dressy flats were old, with hardly any cushion left to the sole, and I was past due to replace them. With how long I had to be on my feet waitressing at the Hound and Tea, replacing my footwear was a necessity, albeit a necessity that wouldn’t be seen to. Not with the shitty lack of money in my life.
When Dad passed away, Ricky and I were both stunned. First, that Dad knew about the cancer but chose to hide it from us. Then, that he wanted to spend the remainder of his viable days of functioning away from us, still serving for as long as he could. We’d been notified too late, after his discharge, and saw him only for a little bit of time when he was at the hospice.
I wouldn’t lie. I was glad to see him out of pain after all that suffering he’d hidden from us. And when we were told about the amount that would be left to us—which was no great wealth but to us, a bounty—I was thrilled that while he’d been so selfish to never be there as a father, he’d give us something after he was gone.
“But it’s not there,” I whispered to myself as I finished cleaning the tables in my section and mused about Dad’s death. Ricky had seen to the rapid disappearance of all that our father left us, and I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him. If he wanted to lose his half, fine. I would’ve been responsible with mine.
“Hey, Nina?”
Speak of the devil.
I turned slowly to face my brother as he entered the dining room. The Hound and Tea was now closed, and without any customers in here, my supervisor wouldn’t care if he walked through.
“Hey.” It was on the tip of my tongue to apologize for how I’d talked to him earlier, but the logical, stubborn part of me wouldn’t allow it. He needed the tough love. He had to be told that he couldn’t be trusted with money. More than anything else, I deserved every right to tell him how mad I was that he’d lost my half of what Dad left us.
“You about done in here?” he asked.
Tessa had already left. Her dad came and gave her a ride, but she had to leave right then. He wasn’t in the mood to wait for her to wrap up her duties. I offered to stay and finish cleaning up her section since I walked home every night—further abuse on my poor, tired feet.
Ricky never came to give me a ride. He was often home playing video games or off doing who knew what. We shared an apartment, but we were more like roommates than family.
Because we always argue about money. Until he changed, it would continue to be a point of fighting. I refused to back down because I was already doing everything I could to avoid our being homeless.
The fact that he was here now, asking if I was finished working, raised alarms. “What do you care?”
“I, uh, I’ve got a favor to ask you.”
I let my head tip back and groaned at the ceiling. You have got to be kidding me. “A favor?” I deadpanned as I faced him again. “You want to ask me for a favor ?”
He winced at how I raised my voice.
“I am not giving you my tips,” I warned. Tonight had been busy, likely because the customers ate here and then went upstairs to gamble. I never asked questions about what went on above the Hound and Tea. I learned long ago to simply be grateful for the steady influx of people who’d tip me before potentially losing their money up there. Nothing could be overly legal about it, and I adopted an ignorance-is-bliss mentality.
“I don’t… I don’t need your tips.” He lowered his gaze and bit his lip.
Huh? That was a first. I crossed my arms. “You don’t need my money?” Yeah, right. My brother declining a chance to ask me for money didn’t make sense. It implied he had his own money, and that was bullshit.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, and I tensed up.
Shit. That’s two tells now. Ricky was likely a terrible gambler because he was too damn easy to read. First, the lip bite, now the clearing of his throat. He was nervous.
“What’s going on?” I knew whatever he’d say next would be bad news.
“You know, uh, how I told you and Tessa that I had an idea?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You said you had a ‘genius’ idea.”
“Well, it sort of… backfired.”
Imagine that. I wasn’t surprised. Something else filled me. I lowered my arms. They, along with my legs, felt leaden with dread. “What happened?” Backfired how, exactly?
“I lost…” He ran his hands through his hair and fisted the strands as he stared at me, eyes slitted with fear.
What else is new? I cocked my head to the side. “You lost…?”
“You.”
A long moment passed between us. It hung heavily, potent with confusion on my part. He lost me? What did that mean? The best I could guess was that he was experiencing, finally, a moment of reckoning where he learned that I’d had it with him. That I was a teeny fraction of a millimeter from ending all my ties with him, my only family. Was he trying to acknowledge that our sibling bond was severed because of our last argument? That I was finally sick of his bullshit and done with him?
“What does that mean?” I wrung the dishrag in my hands, needing to twist something to let out some steam from the tension brewing within me.
“I lost you.” He cleared his throat again. “In… a bet.”
My eyes opened so wide that it hurt. Shock punched through me, sending my heart rate racing. I breathed quicker with shallow inhales that didn’t help. “You what ?”
“I thought I could gamble on…” He gestured at me. “You.”
I opened and closed my mouth, stunned speechless.
“I’m sorry, Nina.”
“No.” Shock bled out, replaced with fury. “No. You didn’t.” I rushed past him, hurrying to run. To sprint. To flee. I didn’t want to even look at his face.
“Nina, wait.” He followed me out of the dining room, through the kitchen, and out to the area where the stairs led up the back of the building. “Nina!”
I whirled around to face him as he grabbed my wrist. “No!”
His fingers locked tight as he pulled me closer. Alcohol rose from his breath, and I scowled up at him. Drinking on my dime. Betting on my life. The irony killed me. I shook my head, straining to comprehend how this monster was my brother. My family.
“You can’t do that.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I screeched it, so bewildered with what he said that I lagged in a physical reaction to his pulling me up the stairs. “You’re sorry ? You think you can just say you’re sorry and that’s it?”
“I don’t know what else you want me to say,” he retorted as I fought to break out of his grip. In the narrow stairwell, I lacked ample room to turn and run. People walked both up and down, causing too much traffic for me to slip away. Even if I had full faculty of mind at the moment, it would’ve been a challenge to break away from him and actually escape. As it was, I was so rooted in shock that everything flew by as a blur.
“This isn’t… This is… No. This kind of shit doesn’t happen in real life.” In movies, sure. Reality was different. He was ridiculous to think this would pan out as he imagined it would.
“I bet you, Nina. And I lost.” He grimaced as though the admission of losing hurt more than the audacity of gambling on me.
“You always lose, Ricky. All the fucking time. But this—” I held the door frame to stop him from pulling me into the second-floor landing. “No. People don’t gamble on humans. This isn’t going to fly.”
He yanked on my arm so hard that my shoulder twisted painfully. My brother was a lanky man, but he possessed some degree of strength over me. He forced me inside, and still locking his fingers around my wrist, he leaned closer to snarl at me.
“It will. This kind of shit does happen up here. It’s not a fucking casino, Nina. It’s private gambling. And the people in here do barter with people.”
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck no. Panic set in, and I shoved at his fingers biting into my arm, straining to pry them off me. “No. No, Ricky. This isn’t happening.”
“It already did happen! I lost the bet. And now you have to go with…” He glanced over his shoulder. “With them.”
I went still, locking up so tight that all the muscles in my body ached at once. “With them?” I narrowed my eyes, not even wanting to know. “With who ?”
He broke eye contact again, and that only pushed me closer to throwing up. It had to be someone bad, someone really bad if he was this uneasy.
“With… the president.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“The president. Of the club.”
I stared at him, waiting for his words to click. “Of this gambling club?”
“No. The Constellas own this place.”
The faint reminder of one of Dad’s old friends did nothing to reassure me.
“The Devil’s Brothers,” he clarified. “That club.”
I gasped, unable to hide my utter shock. “The motorcycle club?” I knew of them. I recognized the patches sewn on their leather cuts. I saw them drive their bikes by. All of them were raggedy meatheads, overly muscled and angry looking. “You lost me in a bet to someone in the goddamn MC?”
“Not just someone.” He looked back over his shoulder. “To their president. Their leader—Reaper.”
My rage hit a high and spilled over. Anger coursed through me, charging me with rabid energy to strike out. I punched, slapped, and kicked. Without conscious thought, I gave it my all to beat him. “You lost me in a bet with someone named Reaper ? Are you insane?”
In any other circumstances, I would’ve rolled my eyes at the idea of my brother thinking he could bet on me. Like a human was a thing to possess and barter. That I could be owned and handed over in a transaction of debt. To normal, ordinary, and law-abiding people, it would’ve sounded ludicrous.
But a motorcycle club? An MC who was rumored to traffic women and children, not to mention drugs and guns and who knew what else?
This was real. Ricky’s “genius” idea wasn’t a joke, but a tangible, actual debt to uphold.
Fighting him off didn’t hurt him, but in my instant reaction to attack him, to strike at him for the sheer stupidity of what he attempted, I earned my freedom. He was too slow to block a kick to his shin, and as he doubled over and crouched from that impact, he loosened his grip on my wrist.
The second his fingers released me, I took off, into the gambling hall, through the hallways, and around corners. Running through the throngs of people, I tried to hide and get away from Ricky the best I could, but there were so many damn people in here. Every one of them contributed to this creeping claustrophobia that dizzied me.
They chatted and laughed. Drank and gambled. Some of the older servers from the Hound and Tea were doubling up here as waitresses hoisting trays of food and booze.
I slowed, unsure of where to go among all these richly decorated and fancy rooms of wealth and elitism. In the corner of another hallway, I spotted two grungier men and instantly identified them as my new owners. Men from the Devil’s Brothers MC. They didn’t wear their cuts, but they were recognizable, regardless. I knew it when they held up their phones and glanced back at me, as though they were checking the sight of me with an image on their screens.
“That’s her,” one said to the other.
His friend nodded, and they both pursued me.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “No.”
I turned and ran, but I didn’t get far. Slamming into a rock-hard body was a hell of a way to stop my stride. Firm fingers wrapped around my upper arms, but these hands weren’t gruff and possessive. This strong man merely caught me from the collision, preventing me from careening toward the floor.
Scents of sandalwood and cedar wafted from him as I lifted my face from his suited chest. While my heart hammered away, I dragged my gaze up to peer at this tall man who’d caught me. His hold on my arms wasn’t tight. He wasn’t trapping me here in place, but with the MC guys rushing toward me, I felt like I was stuck and vulnerable no matter which way I ran or where I stood.
“Are you all right?”
Oh, God. He had one of those gravelly, raspy baritones, so deep and low and full of command. I swallowed, trying to understand why his voice seemed so familiar. As I looked up into the ruggedly handsome face of Dante Constella, I knew why.
It’d been years since I’d seen him. Many years. Even though he looked older, I recognized him with a confusing and instant hit of comforting familiarity.
“Nina?” He narrowed his brown eyes. Surprise and disbelief showed on his lean face. “Nina Bardot?”
I nodded, immediately defensive. “You didn’t come to my dad’s funeral.” It was the lamest, stupidest fact to cling to, but it was the most recent detail that pierced through the panic claiming me.
He blinked, not wounded and owning up to my excuse of a greeting. “I didn’t. I’m sorry that I was away for business and only heard about his death earlier today.”
It hardly mattered now. Nothing mattered. A sense of doom seeped through me, almost rooting me to the spot. Nothing would matter in my life anymore. Not this unbelievably sexy man smoothing his thumbs over my arms, almost like an unconscious afterthought he had no control over. Not the shock of seeing this face from the past again, and like this, here. Not the disrespect of him not attending the funeral of one of his old friends, either.
All I could focus on was the time that slipped away. My freedom would end as soon as those MC men caught up to me. My idiot brother had signed me away to heathen bikers. And there was not a single damn thing I could do about it.
Dante gazed down at me, seeming to overcome his shock at encountering me. He swiped the tip of his tongue over the seam of his lips and furrowed his brow. “Nina?”
I jolted, blinking numbly as I took in all the rugged features on his handsome face. “Hmm?”
“I hope you’re not too busy,” he said.
I couldn’t help the incredulous laugh at that joke. Busy running from my life, maybe.
Ever so slightly, he urged me to step closer to his warm body, so fine in that tailored suit. “Would you like to get out of here and catch up?”
I locked onto the promise in his words. Get out of here. That was all I wanted. In a trance, cautious in thinking his sudden appearance was too good to be true when my life was coming apart, I nodded. “Yes.”
I had to escape. I needed to get away from those bikers until I could figure out a logical step in stopping this disaster of an arrangement from happening.
He lowered his hands from my arms, and I boldly hurried to hold one before I’d lose him in the crowds.
As he glanced down at my fingers linking with his, I swallowed and tried not to sound like I was begging. “Yes, please. I’d love to catch up.”