Chapter 17 Eliana
ELIANA
render /?rend?r/: verb
Saints & Skinners announces itself from two blocks away with bass frequencies so low they shake the car’s windows. It’s like we’re hermit crabs that chose a subwoofer for a shell. Even through the car’s soundproofing, I can feel every thump in the marrow of my bones.
“Frank really knows how to pick ‘em,” I mumble.
Bastian pulls into what I assume is the back lot, based on how the car careens over moon-crater-sized potholes. The suspension whines in protest before he kills the engine. The wub-a-wub-a-wub of the bass continues, though, much to my dismay.
“There’s a bouncer at the door,” Bastian notes as we sit in the cooling vehicle. “Big motherfucker. Looks like he ate another bouncer for breakfast.”
I crack my window. Between pulses of music, I hear the braying voices of drunk, rowdy men.
“Alright. Let’s go. Stay close,” Bastian murmurs. The instruction is a little unnecessary. I’m not exactly about to wander off solo in a place like this.
Inside, the assault on my senses intensifies. Cloying baby powder mingles with copious cigarette smoke and what has to be an entire shelf’s worth of knockoff Drakkar Noir. Underneath it all lurks the sticky-sweet reek of spilled J?germeister.
No one in here has ever heard of the word “cliché,” apparently.
The music keeps reverberating through my skeleton. It’s Megan Thee Stallion at maximum volume. Every suburban mother within a ten-mile radius is probably clutching their pearls and/or secretly adding it to their Zumba playlist.
Bastian’s hand goes to its old home on the small of my back. I huddle close to him as we venture further inward.
“Booth in the corner,” Bastian says against my ear. “Frank’s already there. And—”
“And what?”
“Nothing.” But I still hear tension in his voice and his hand is pressing harder against my back.
“Bastian. What is it?”
“There’s a guy at the bar. He’s been staring at you since we walked in.”
“Down, boy,” I murmur, squeezing his arm. “We’re here for Frank, remember? Not to start a bar fight with every creep who stares too long.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it. You just have to ignore it.”
He makes a sound that suggests ignoring it is physically painful, but he keeps moving. His muscles remain coiled under my fingers, though, ready to spring at the slightest provocation. Through that connection, I can practically see the violent fantasies running through his head.
Broken bottle jabbed into the creep’s eye socket.
See how many times he can smash a skull against a stripper pole until it cracks like a watermelon.
A stiletto in the eardrum would get the job done…
But even with my overactive imagination, I’d bet I’m barely scratching the surface of what he’d like to do.
Fortunately, we manage to reach the corner booth without bloodshed. Frank is waiting. Even without sight, I can feel how wrong he is. All this frantic, nervous energy radiating off him in waves. His breath catches wetly when Bastian slides into the booth across from him.
“Jesus Christ,” Frank breathes. “You actually came.”
“You called,” Bastian replies. “I answered.”
“I didn’t—I wasn’t sure you’d—” He breaks off, and I hear the gulp of him taking a swig of beer. The bottle clinks against his teeth. His hands must be shaking badly.
“You look like shit,” Bastian observes.
“Yeah, well. Working for your brother will do that to a guy.”
I settle down next to Bastian with Excalibur propped against my leg. Frank’s attention turns to me.
“She’s with me,” Bastian supplies before Frank can ask.
“I can see that.” Frank’s seat creaks as he leans forward. “But why the hell would you bring her here? To this?”
“Because I’m not decoration,” I answer before Bastian can. “I’m here to make sure you don’t waste our time with bullshit.”
Frank makes a strangled noise that is immediately washed out by Megan Thee Stallion informing us about her body’s various curved surfaces. “Fair enough.”
“Start talking,” Bastian barks. “We can’t afford to waste time.”
“Where to begin, though?” he wheezes.
“I’d suggest the beginning,” I say acidly.
“Right. The beginning. Christ, that feels like a lifetime ago.”
Bastian clicks his tongue. “Get to the point, Frank.”
“I am, I swear. So, the beginning: Your brother came to my house,” he explains. “Four years ago. Right when Olympus was getting off the ground.”
I feel Bastian go still beside me.
“Late one night,” Frank continues, “I’m in my kitchen, having a beer, watching the game.
Doorbell rings. I open it, and there he is.
Walks right past Bruno—my Rottweiler, hundred and twenty pounds and a bad motherfucker more often than not—but he walks right past ‘im like the dog was a fucking houseplant. Bruno just sat there. Whimpering, tail tucked between his legs. I’ve never seen that before nor since, man. Never, never.”
Frank takes another shaky swig of beer.
“Your brother sat at my kitchen table and started laying out photos. My daughter Melissa. At her apartment in Wicker Park. At the Whole Foods on Ashland where she does her shopping. Getting into her boyfriend’s fucking Subaru.
” He swallows. “He never said he’d hurt her, nothin’ that crazy, you know?
Never made a single explicit threat. Just kept sliding those photos across the table, one by one, while asking me all about Olympus.
Real simple questions, almost like he was just a curious guy who liked to know how shit works.
What systems were going in first, how the inspections usually went, that kinda thing. ”
My stomach churns in a way that has nothing to do with morning sickness. “And?”
“And I told him what he wanted to know. The fuck else was I supposed to do?”
“Not fucking sell me out to a mobster, for starters,” snarls Bastian.
“I’m not that kind of guy,” Frank answers immediately. “There’s shady dudes in my line of work, for sure—but I never wanted to be one of ‘em. All this shit is way above my paygrade. B’sides, I didn’t know what he was gonna do with all that info.”
“Until he came to you and started asking favors, didn’t he?” I interject.
Frank swallows again. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what he did.”
Bastian grips my thigh beneath the table. “Go on.”
“I didn’t hear nothin’ from him for a long time after that.
‘Til about six months before we were due to cut the ribbons. And then… It started.” Frank’s voice descends to a meek whisper.
“Guy I’ve never seen before in my life shows up one day and says, ‘The boss needs you to pull out all that ventilation shit you just put in.’ I was confused, you know, ‘cause I knew timelines were tight and you guys had a lot riding on it. But then I realized he wasn’t talking about you, Mr. Hale.
He was talking ‘bout the other boss. So again: what else was I s’posed to do? ”
For the second time, Bastian clicks his tongue in disgust. “Keep going” is all he says, though.
“So I went in with a coupla my guys that I trusted and we ripped out all that ventilation. All good stuff that had been installed, tested, inspected, approved. I hoped that’d be the end of it, but nah.
Week later, same guy, same kind of request. That time, we replaced working electrical with faulty wiring that’d fail the second anyone looked too close. ”
“Jesus,” I breathe.
“Few more things after that. It hurt my soul, you know?” Frank says. “This big, beautiful building got turned into a flimsy house of cards. I had pride in that thing, I swear I did. I felt cheated, too.”
“Spare me the fucking sob story,” spits Bastian. “It’s not your life’s work that got sabotaged. And besides, I bet he paid you, didn’t he?”
Frank must nod. “Seventy-five grand in cash. Twenties and fifties stuffed into a Home Depot bag.” Then he laughs hollowly. “You know where that money is right now, though? In my garage, tucked behind the snow tires. Haven’t touched a single bill.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because every time I look at it, I see Melissa’s face.
Those photos. Her walking to her car, grocery bags in hand, living her goddamn life without knowing some psychopath was documenting every move.
” Frank’s seat groans as he fidgets. “I wanted to burn it. Thought about it a hundred times at least. But then I figured, if something happens to me, maybe Melissa could use it. Get out of town. Start over somewhere your brother can’t find her. ”
“So that’s why you’re here,” Bastian concludes. “Your guilt finally got too heavy to carry around, so you figured you’d dump some of it on us.”
Frank doesn’t deny the accusation. “It’s been killing me.
When I’m lying in bed at night, I close my eyes and see that building.
All those people who coulda been hurt if something went wrong during construction…
Those guys I work with are like my family, and I put them at risk.
My own daughter, I almost— almost…” He stops and cries for half a second before he sniffles and clams up.
Bastian’s palm tenses on my thigh.
“So I want to help,” Frank continues shakily. “To make things right.”
“And what do you want in return?” I ask. If I’ve learned anything over the last few months, it’s that nothing in this world comes free.
“Just a clean conscience, Ms. Hunter,” he swears. “I gotta be able to look at myself in the mirror again.”
I feel the change in Bastian’s posture and I can almost picture his eyes darkening from blue to black as he leans forward and asks the only question that matters. “Alright then. Tell me this: Where’s Sage?”
Frank exhales. “Your brother hired me for some reno work a couple weeks back at an apartment building he owns on the West Side. Karlov Avenue, near the Eisenhower.”
Goosebumps prickle up on my skin. I don’t like where this is going.
“It’s a three-story brick building,” he explains. “Looks abandoned from the outside. But it ain’t. He had me put bars on all the windows and reinforce the doors. And while I was there, I did some observing. They got a rotating guard schedule, usually two guys at a time.”
“And Sage is there?”
“He was headed there soon, last I heard. They move him every three, four days to different safe houses. Keeps things unpredictable.” Frank pauses.
“I got a good tip that the next rotation’s in forty-eight hours.
After that, he disappears into a different location and I won’t know where. Nobody will, except your brother.”
Forty-eight hours. That gives us less than two days before Sage vanishes into the Bratva’s shadows beyond our reach. It’s not much to work with.
With that info in hand, Bastian has already lost himself in the logistics of what must be done, when, and how.
But I’m not done yet with what all this means.
“You knew people would get hurt,” I say, leaning forward until I can smell the fear-sweat radiating off Frank in waves. “You fucking knew.”
Frank makes a whimper like a wounded animal. “I told you, I didn’t have a choice—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I spit. “Your daughter’s safety doesn’t erase what you did. Guilt is just the tax you pay after cashing the check, Frank. You still picked your sides.”
I hear the creak of vinyl as he shrinks in place. This man who probably outweighs me by eighty pounds, who’s spent his career hauling lumber and swinging hammers and erecting skyscrapers, is folding in on himself like wet cardboard under the weight of my words.
Bastian stays silent beside me, watching. I can feel his attention split between Frank’s collapse and me. I wonder what he sees.
I wonder if he realizes that this is a part of me that he brought to life.
“But if you want absolution, you came to the wrong damn confessional,” I continue.
“You helped a monster terrorize a sixteen-year-old kid in a wheelchair. You sabotaged a building that could have collapsed on innocent workers. And you did it all while telling yourself you had no choice, because that’s the simpering little lie that cowards like you tell themselves so they can sleep at night. ”
Frank’s breath hitches. I hear liquid sloshing—he’s gripping his beer bottle so hard it’s shaking.
“You want to make things right?” I press on. “Then do it. Help us get Sage back. But don’t you dare sit there and ask me to tell you you’re a good person, because we both know that’s fucking bullshit.”
Silence. I’m quiet, Frank’s quiet, Bastian’s quiet. Even Megan Thee Stallion pauses for breath.
“We’re done here,” Bastian says finally, sliding out of the booth. He pulls me up with him.
Behind us, Frank doesn’t make any move to follow. He just sits, miserable, there marinating in the mess he’s made of his own life.
I hope he fucking chokes on it.