6. Lifesaver
6
LIFESAVER
Girls swing elegantly around poles in bright-colored lingerie. A few smile my way, but I don’t smile back, which is unlike me. I blame the hangover, but that pretty much went away when Brander reminded us that we got married last night.
To Alice.
It was her idea, and I didn’t think we’d actually go through with it, but it turns out all three of us simp over the girl harder than our favorite celebrity crushes. Mine is Margot Robbie. I actually saw her once in Vegas, and when I glimpsed her sipping on margaritas in VIP my heart didn’t burst out of its cage like it did when Alice drunkenly proposed.
I sit back in my chair and absentmindedly watch strippers twirl, and I wince. Stumbling hand in hand with Alice down the street is all I remember. I think Brander had directions up on his phone guiding us to the nearest chapel, and Match, I think, was the first one to slur an “I do.”
“The vicar only pretends to marry you in Vegas, don’t they, when you’re drunk?”
Brander deadpans a “no.”
“So it’s official. We actually fucking married her?”
Side-eye from Brander is all the confirmation I need to know we tied the knot.
I glance at Match. He doesn’t look like himself. A corpse has more color than him right now, and though his eyes are staring at the strippers, the vacant look in them suggests that his thoughts are elsewhere. Not even on planet earth.
There are worse places to sit and regret last night than a corner VIP booth at a twenty-four-hour strip club. The windowless building gives the illusion that we’re not living in reality, something I think all three of us are fighting to escape currently. Red lights twirl from spotlights above, landing on the seven girls center stage that move around their poles. Other podiums are dotted around the room. Near us is a girl in pink lace who keeps making eye contact with Brander, but he doesn’t look interested. No offense to the woman—her body is one made in heaven—but I prefer Alice. This woman doesn’t have the same innocent look in her eye, and her body moves entirely different than Alice’s.
The strip club isn’t working. It was my idea to come here, to rinse away the thoughts of yesterday. After dropping Alice off at the Venetian, we last-minute booked ourselves into Caesars for somewhere to crash. At that point, the marriage and the tattoo were starting to come back to me, but it could’ve all been a dream.
It wasn’t.
We really hitched up her skirt after the two-minute ceremony and borrowed a tattoo gun from the parlor next door to brand our names into her ass cheeks.
“Till death do we part,” said Brander as he inked out the design, Alice bent over the altar.
Match flings his head back into the booth. “This isn’t helping. We should all go home.”
I sigh. “I think you’re right.”
“We also need to ring Alice so we can organize an annulment,” he adds.
The word stings my chest.
“Brander?” Match continues. “You have her number, don’t you? Let’s get out of here and we can give her a call.”
Brander remains in the same frozen position he’s been sitting in for several minutes now. He sets his eyes. Shuffles even more onto the edge of his seat.
“Brander?” Match repeats.
“Quiet.”
He angles his heads.
He’s not looking at the pink-lace stripper anymore. He’s trying to see past her to the cluster of suited men gathered around the VIP booth opposite us.
I count five, and they all nod, brows pinched together like they’re deep into a serious council meeting. Black seems to be their favorite color too, but it’s not leather they wear. It’s Italian-tailored blazers and linen shirts, the sleeves clipped back with gold cuff links that catch the red light.
The Russian accent gives it all away.
Members of the Bratva.
“That one at the end,” Brander says with a low murmur, “is the boss. Vlad.”
He’s the tallest one, and the frown on his face is so deeply imprinted that it looks like it’s the only expression he has. Sitting, twirling sunglasses in his hands, he speaks to his team.
“What are they saying?” asks Match.
Living on the streets of Las Vegas taught Brander many skills as well as survival and brutality. Russian and Belarusian are languages he understands perfectly, and it’s worked out in our favor whenever Russian whispers have crossed our paths. They like to lurk, and they think speaking in their native language keeps them safe.
Brander narrows his eyes as Vlad continues speaking. I’ve never seen him before, but that’s because mob bosses tend to live their lives underground, ordering people around and keeping themselves out of the limelight.
The syndicate call them leaders.
We call them pussies.
I’ve never once seen Grizzly take a step back and let one of us carry out his dirty work for him. The fine-tailored suits, expensive aviator sunglasses, and nice hairdos are all fronts the Bratva wear to woo the girls and keep the suspected unsuspecting. Behind closed doors, they’re capturing people, rolling up their sleeves and doing damage until their knuckles bleed black—the same color as their hearts, if any of them even have one.
The Venom Vultures, on the other hand, do damage only when necessary, and for the greater good. We don’t cover up, and that’s because we have nothing to hide.
When the degenerates break up and return to wherever they came from, Brander turns back around to us. His gritted teeth mean it’s not good.
For me, at least.
He’s not looking at Match.
“They want Peter dead.”
“What the fuck?!”
“Lower your voice before you fucking make a scene.” Brander stares at me, waiting for silence, and then continues. “Yeah. Peter has just done a live broadcast stating plans in his new campaign to eliminate all Bratva groups in the vicinity of Las Vegas.”
“Why has the fool announced that to the public?” Match says. “His life wouldn’t be on the line if he kept his mouth shut. That’s the thing with politicians. They run their mouths to please the public, and then wonder why they get so many assassination attempts.”
I shoot Match a death glare. The man should shut his mouth before I shut it for him.
Peter isn’t just a friend I met one day. He’s the boy I used to sit next to in biology class back in junior high. The one who defended me during recess when all our classmates took a bite out of me for being “deranged,” because I thought plants had hearts.
He’s my longest friend. We lost touch after high school, going to different colleges—he went down the road of politics and I sank my teeth into biomedicine. We’ve both been busy, so our friendship has always ever been an iMessage one, shooting texts back and forth about the believability of conspiracies, and about ongoing trauma in the hospital that he’s always taken an interest in.
He met Marybeth, and then had his daughter. Tied up with work and the motorcycle club he’s always had a love-hate relationship with, I was never able to attend the christening or any family birthdays, but I do remember hearing his daughter’s name—Al—for the first time and thinking he could’ve chosen a better one.
He’s never introduced me to his daughter, but I think that has something to do with me owning a gun and riding my Harley into danger.
There’s not much I know about his daughter, but I do know this—since Marybeth’s death, he’s become obsessed with Al’s safety. Las Vegas is a cutthroat city and I think, if he wasn’t mayor, he’d move them to somewhere quieter and with less crime.
I don’t blame him for keeping her from me.
He doesn’t want to ruin her innocent perception of the world.
And I don’t blame him. Riding with the Venom Vultures doesn’t give you the most friendly appearance.
“Are you sure he wants Peter dead?”
Brander nods. “That’s what he said. He was telling his men to make him a priority.”
“Did you find out how they were planning to—” I can’t even say the word. “Do it?”
“No. They moved onto a different conversation. Something about how much the gambling operation earned them this month.”
I sit back in the booth and tense my jaw. Great. Fucking great. I’m married, and my friend is top of the Bratva’s hit list.
“I need to call Peter.”
“Don’t,” Brander says, blocking my hand with his arm so I can no longer reach for my phone. “You’ll panic him, and we need to find out some more information first. Let’s?—”
RING! RING!
I jump out of my skin.
It’s not my phone. It’s Brander’s.
He slips it from his leather jacket, and winces when he sees the name. “It’s Alice.”
“Oh fuck.” I wince with him.
“Just answer it,” Match says. “Let’s get this thing over with.”
Brander enables the speakerphone and starts with a firm “hello?”
“Hey.” She sounds somewhat out of breath. “I need to speak to you. All of you. In person. Are you free tonight?”
Tonight’s supposed to be pool tournament night down at the clubhouse, and I’m on a winning streak. Tonight isn’t ideal, but the thought of seeing Alice again raises something unfamiliar in my chest.
“Yes, we can meet tonight.”
“My doctor’s office at seven,” I say. “Brander will message you the address.”
“Great,” she says.
And then the line goes dead.
We each share a look.
“How do you think this is gonna go down?” I ask.
Brander bites his lip. “Not good. She’ll probably ask us to fund the entire removal process.”
“Which we can’t do,” Match says.
The circumstances aren’t pleasant, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t please me knowing she’s walking around with my name on her ass.
Removing the tattoo would break a Venom Vultures code of conduct.
Tattoos can never be removed, especially the ones we give to women. It binds us together for the rest of our lives. Even if we enact an annulment, the tattoo ties us all to her in holy matrimony forevermore. It’s even more important than the ridiculously expensive ring we all paid for her to wear last night, because rings can be lost—tattoos can’t. Not unless the person attached to it is.
And under our protection, Alice will never be lost.
“What are we gonna say to her?” I ask Match.
For once in his life, he shrugs. “I dunno. I just guess we hear her out.”
We finish off our drinks and exit the club, returning to the blinding daylight outside. Sunlight is the starkest reminder that reality still exists. It always will.
I hop onto my motorcycle and adjust my eyes to the bright, sunny outdoors.
Fresh air and howling wind will bring me back to the reality that I married a bachelorette, and that I’m about to receive a mouthful from the woman who now has my name stamped on her ass.
But no matter how fast I ride, reality doesn’t crash.
Alice’s anger doesn’t faze me—my heart’s too busy thumping with excitement at the thought of getting to see her again. It doesn’t matter if she chains me to my own doctor’s bed and makes me eat my own intestines. The girl moves something unexplainable in my chest that no word in the English dictionary can describe.