Page 13 of Asking for Trouble
Now, that was fuckin’ interestin’.
The White Raiders were a white supremacist club outta southern Alberta that dealt with toxic street drugs like heroin, meth, fentanyl, and stolen prescription drugs. They were still small-time criminals, but they’d been in the papers a time or two for beatin’ up people’a colour at bars from Medicine Hat to Lethbridge.
I hated them the first time I heard about them.
Racist pieces’a shit who deserved to die fiery fuckin’ deaths.
Lotta biker clubs were white-bred, but The Fallen family didn’t discriminate by skin tone but by the quality’a a man’s heart. It burned in me somethin’ fuckin’ fierce to think’a these lowlifes encroachin’ on Fallen territory.
Without warnin’, I cocked my left fist and sent it crashin’ into Beaker’s drug-ruined face. My right hand on his throat kept him from reelin’ back, but his legs went limp, so I was the only thing holdin’ him up.
“What the fuck?” he gargled through the blood pourin’ into his mouth from his broken nose. “What thefuck, man! I told you what you wanted!”
“Yeah,” I agreed easily. “The hit was for workin’ with assholes like the Raiders.” Then again. The second punch landed on Beaker’s left cheekbone. He wailed like a fuckin’ baby. “That was for betrayin’ the club. You don’t want more’a the same, you tell me everythin’ there is to know about that club. Startin’ with what thefuckthey’re doin’ in BC.”
Beaker kept cryin’, holdin’ his bloody face as if he was afraid pieces’a it were gonna fall off. I sighed heavily, then shoved him into a chair and started to root through the drawers in his tiny kitchen.
“You know,” I said conversationally as I rummaged. “I get it. Lotsa people think Wrath and Priest, or Zeus, Axe-Man, and Bat are the scary motherfuckers. It’s the pretty face,” I explained, gesturin’ to my features. “That trips people up. Same thing happens to Nova and King. People take one look and thinkshit,but those pretty boys don’t know pain or misery, let alone how to dole it out.”
Beaker watched me with blood drippin’ from his nose to his stained briefs, his hands twistin’ on top’a the Formica table. He was already jonesin’ for another hit, but he was too afraid’a me to ask for it.
“It’s funny,” I continued, shootin’ him a consolin’ smile as my hand finally encountered somethin’ worth usin’ in one of the dirty drawers. “People always assume bein’ pretty means bein’goodas if beauty can’t be evil.”
My laughter echoed through the cramped trailer as I stalked over to Beaker and crouched in front’a his cowerin’ form. When I brandished the pliers, his sickly yellow flesh went white.
Even though he clambered to get away, I pinned his left hand against the table with my forearms and brought the pliers to his index fingernail.
“I’m evidence to the contrary,” I finished with a wide, wicked grin as I pinched the nail between the metal teeth andpulled.
Beaker screamed as the nail peeled away from his flesh. Blood spilled to the table, bright and metallic-scented.
“I’ll do anythin’ to protect my family and my club, Beak,” I told him earnestly as I flicked the discarded nail onto the floor and pinched the next one. “Even if it ain’t pretty. Now, tell me what you know about the Raiders.”
BLUE
I was starved,so I ordered French toast.
It was indulgent, something I never would have ordered when I dated Otto because he would have shamed me about my body. I drowned the powder-sugared mountain of carbs in a lake of maple syrup and shoved a stacked mouthful betweenmy lips, eating with angry relish. It wasn’t enough that Otto had made me feel shitty when we dated and that he’d stolen my mother’s ring, but now he’d actually had the audacity to hold up Evergreen Gas Station? The one place he knew meant everything to me because it had been my soft place to land when I ran away from my old life.
Fuck. Him.
What was it about men wreaking havoc on my life like it meant nothing to them?
Like I meant nothing to them.
I sat there in the diner's bright white light, staring at my reflection in the dark window overlooking the street, wondering if it was the angle of my jaw or the plumpness in my cheeks that they took umbrage with. If it was the fact that I liked makeup, skincare, and clothes more than dude stuff or if it was my penchant to smother every real thing in humour until true emotion suffocated and died.
Whatever it was, life had taught me that I couldn’t rely on anyone to look out for me butme.
Except there was Aaron last-name-unknown.
Really, everything about him was a mystery besides what I could see with my eyes: his beauty, his crooked smile, and his silly sense of humour. The fact that he put himself at risk to help a random girl when she needed it. That he kissed like the devil luring innocents to sin.
Yeah, so I didn’t know much, but what I knew was heady.
Because it painted a picture of a man whoshouldhave been all the things I’d vowed to stay away from but who was actually proving to be the kind of man I’d assumed only existed in my fantasies.
I was musing over this as I dragged my last piece of French toast through the sticky remnants of syrup, bobbing my head tothe strains of Hamish Anderson’s “Trouble”, when I noticed the increasing roar of noise in the distance.