But somehow Mean Man was satisfied with her lack of response. He turned back to Mommy. “Does she have somewhere she can go?”
Tears streaked down Mommy’s cheeks. “Yes. She stays with the lady down the hall a lot.”
Willow’s fear dissipated a little at the thought of Mrs. Martinez, whose warm and cozy apartment she stayed in during the times Mommy was away with Jamey or working. Mrs. Martinez always cooked something for Willow, and she even let her help prepare the food. She let Willow call her Mama Mari, and it was like getting to have a grandmother the way her friends at school did.
“Fine. She goes down the hall, and we finish this.”
“C-can I at least say good-bye?” Mommy questioned, her chest rising and falling with her sobs. Seeing Mommy cry made Willow start to cry.
“Hurry it up,” Mean Man replied, shoving Willow toward the chair where Mommy sat.
Clambering as best she could into Mommy’s lap, Willow buried her head in Mommy’s neck. Still bound tight by her fear, she couldn’t seem to make her lips move to say the words she was screaming in her mind. No matter how mad and mean Mommy was, Willow always loved her. She wanted nothing more than to be hugged and kissed by Mommy, but she very rarely got what she wanted.
“I love you, Willow. You be a good girl for Mrs. Martinez. She’s going to take you to your daddy. You be good for him, okay?” Willow nodded. Mommy started to cry harder. “I’m sorry I was a bad mother, baby. I hope you’ll have a better one now.”
Willow jerked back to stare into Mommy’s eyes. What did she mean a “better mommy”? Was she going somewhere? If Willow went to live with her daddy, did that mean she would never see Mommy again? It made her cry, and her tummy twisted. “I love you, Mommy,” she whispered, finally finding the words she desperately wanted to say.
“I love you, too, Willow.”
“All right. Enough sentimental bullshit. Crank, take the kid down the hall. Tell the woman to get the fuck out of the building for the next few hours if she knows what’s good for her.”
Big Booted Man responded by snatching Willow up again and marching her to the door. As Willow gazed over her shoulder, Mean Man closed the gap between him and Mommy. Just as they started out of the apartment, Mean Man’s knife went to Mommy’s throat. Mommy looked straight at Willow. “I love—” Her words were cut off when the knife slid across her neck.
Willow’s mouth opened in a scream, but nothing came out. As hard as she tried closing her eyes against the sight of the red blood pouring from her mommy’s neck, she couldn’t. The last thing she saw as she was taken from the apartment was Mean Man turning back to her as he brought his fingers to his lips to remind her to keep quiet.
Willow knew that she would never tell. She never, ever wanted to see Mean Man again. No matter what was done to her, she would never tell.
Real men don’t cry. Yeah, that old adage sure as hell didn’t ring true in my line of work. Over the years, I’d come to see that even the biggest and baddest fuckers have their breaking point. It’s not just the physical torture that breaks them. Sometimes, just a threatening mind fuck involving their wives, girlfriends, or daughters cues the waterworks until they’re blubbering like absolute pussies. And at the end of the day, most would rather be beaten within an inch of their lives than give in to their emotions and show weakness. Men can handle physical pain, but it’s the emotional shit that truly fucks with us.
To prove my case, I give you Pussy #1: Frankie Delbraggio, or the dumb fuck sitting before me with a mixture of tears and blood streaming down his fat-ass cheeks. He was the current recipient of my wrath because he decided to pull an idiot move, thinking he could double-cross me by working with another club. He’d gotten greedy both for more money and more power in his territory. In the process, he’d become overstretched and let one of my club’s gun shipments run late.
Sure, at first glance he looked like your worst enemy—a really menacing bastard with tats and piercings who you sure as hell wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley. His skin was leathered from years of hard living, and his arms, which were currently bound behind him with cable ties, were pockmarked with track marks from the heroin addiction he just couldn’t beat.
As sergeant at arms in my club, the Hells Raiders, I had to be the strong arm—the main man who used physical and emotional torture to get shit done. If I let someone like Frankie get away with drag-assing his feet on shipment deliveries and wavering in his loyalty, the whole club suffered. I couldn’t and wouldn’t deal with that. The Raiders are my life. They’ve been what I lived and breathed for from the time I was a snot-nosed, thirteen-year-old punk plucked off the streets by my adoptive father, Preacher Man, or Preach, as he was affectionately known.
Standing behind Frankie to lend a hand if needed was my adoptive brother, Benjamin, or Bishop, as he was known. He chomped on a piece of gum while eyeballing Frankie contemptuously. He was probably less pissed about Frankie fucking us over and more pissed over the fact I’d torn him away from some heavy action with one of the sweet butts—aka the ladies who willingly spread their legs for club members. At twenty-three, Bishop, with his baby-blue eyes and wavy, dirty-blond hair, thought only with his dick most days. Even though he’d been patched in when he was just nineteen, he still had a lot to learn.
While I’d worked Frankie over with a few right hooks and sucker punches to the gut, I’d broken through to him only when I’d taken his wallet. Between the weed, condoms, and a few twenties was a picture. After I gazed at it for a moment, a smirk curved across my lips. Waving the picture in front of him, I said, “Mmm-mmm. Look at that pretty piece of ass.”