It had been over a month since we heard the waitress rattling plates outside the stockroom after her friendly knock, ending our passionate bout. Weeks and weeks of days just like our first one. At least the rush of them felt the same. As far as I know, he hadn’t fought in the cage again, but the danger, the watchful glares and distrust were around every corner.
Slayton drove me to work and home, most times he never left me for long during the day and if he did I always spotted someone lingering and watching over me. Usually, it was Channing.
Mrs. Jin wasted no time falling into place with the chaos of my life. Before Slayton took me home that first day she had her daughter and sister move all of my things, which wasn’t much, to her apartment. Her excuse was if the men came looking she wanted the truth in her corner, but I knew deep down she’d been looking for an excuse to get me free from my dad, and had found one. It didn’t matter how many times I told her I could control my dad, and I was not broken or confused. She didn’t like him. Never would.
Beyond that she acted like Slayton staying vigilant at my side was an ordinary affair. He never came in the shop, but he was always in sight. I was sure those drops people made to him had been moved to where he could work and watch me at once. More than once I saw shady guys by his bike.
Four days into my new life, Mrs. Jin and I were sitting in the sweltering back room, eating the lunch she made for me. That day Slayton had been gone most of the morning and I was staring out the door across the way at Channing, who was parked down the street.
Something deep, I mean deep, deep, down told me to trust Channing. But it was near impossible to do. He couldn’t have been much older than Slayton, mid-twenties at best, but he held a position of power in the realm of crime he worked in. Which meant he’d earned it. I was pretty damn sure that you didn’t earn the respect and fear he had by being nice and cuddly. There were times, even when they were glaring at each other or passing short words, that I saw Channing look at Slayton in a protective way, a brotherly way. Sometimes I was sure I was seeing what I wanted, and not the vicious reality. No honor among thieves....
“One of Odin’s princes. Foolish child. Wrong hell to choose.” Mrs. Jin’s scorn ripped me from my debating thoughts.
I leisurely moved my gaze to her. We were both drenched in sweat, and struggling to find our second wind so we could finish our day out. A pang of fear flared inside of me, an emotion that was so common that I only vaguely noticed it anymore.
I’d always known Mrs. Jin was more aware than she let on, but since I had been pulled into the world I was in I became really aware. I noticed the man who came at the start of every day and dropped an empty bag off and picked it up at the end of the day had been absent since Slayton had given him a stare down the first morning he dropped me off. I noticed that at times Mrs. Jin stared out at the streets like she was watching a thriller movie and preparing to duck if the action thought to pull her in.
There were people’s eyes she’d never meet; others she’d glare down. I knew there was a hierarchy I was ignorant to, but it was a monster I wasn’t ready to see just then. I needed to hold onto whatever oblivion I could so the thinning shreds of my sanity had a hope of survival.
“What does that mean?” I whispered as I leaned forward slowly trying to keep all the expression off of my face the way Mrs. Jin did. I doubted Channing could see every detail of my face from where he was down the block, but I never knew who he was guarding me from, how close he let them get.
“I heard the man down the street call Slayton the same. Odin something. Is it the gang? The reason he has a thirteen and a nine on each hand?”
She looked at me like I was a silly girl, I took no offense when she did so; it was her norm. “A gang,” she said like a curse shaking her head. My stare pleaded for an answer.
She tsked me with her wooden chopsticks before she dropped them back to her bowl and moved the vegetables from one side to the other. “Odin was king, he fell.”
“Of the streets?”
Her impatient stare looked up at me before she went back to her food. “I was a little just older than you. Painfully handsome,” she said with a glint of nostalgia in her dark eyes. “Fought hard, loved hard.” Her skin blushed as she looked over her shoulder to see where her sisters were in the shop. Their English was horrible, but they could read Mrs. Jin without even trying.
“Angry man,” she said. “Possessive.”
All of this was hitting close to home with me, which made it all the harder to not show much of a reaction.
“Not faithful. Several. Like a king,” she said in a lower tone. “Girls vanished. Most of the streets said he killed them. That they misspoke, cheated, grew old.” She shook her head. “The body of one of his girls surfaced. Once it did Odin struck his rival.” She scooted her chair closer to me. “He was retaliating. The woman was a mother; the child had seen it all.”
My eyes begged the question I wanted to ask—was she talking about Slayton?
She barely shook her head. “Child, not infant. Much older.” She glared down the street at Channing. “Odin’s attack proved to the others he had a weakness. He did have a heart.” She lowered her head. “Seven years later he was slain by his second, Malcolm.”
When she felt me tense, she nudged my water telling me to take a drink.
“Some say Malcolm knew that every time Odin sent a girl away it was because she carry his child. A few even said Malcolm was the one that killed the mothers and hid the babies in the system to protect them from Odin’s enemies.”
I felt so sick that I had to lean forward. Mrs. Jin fussed in her native tongue as she poured water over her napkin and gave it to me before moving the fan closer to give me more air.
“Only half truth,” Mrs. Jin said in her broken English.
“Which half? I’ve heard people call Slayton Odin’s prince—if they knew who he is...” I couldn’t compute all of this.
“Odin has princes. God willing, they will rise again.”
My lost, sick stare met hers.
“Yes, there were fights, bets, drugs, sex. But it was safe. Odin never let anyone who did not belong in his world inside.” She tilted her chin down and said what I thought was a blessing in her native tongue, it was that or a curse—either way she said it a lot when she appeared to be warding off bad mojo. “Odin was slain, Malcolm rose saying he was marching on the same as he always had.” She shook her head. “Territories were overridden, more gangs moved in. People like us became property—property that had to pay for protection. Pay to live.”
I swayed my head. “Is all of this rumor? Do you know any of it to be fact? If this is a true monarch of the cities underworld would Malcolm not want to take out all of Odin’s princes?”
“All rumor. The princes are the people’s hope. Not Malcolm’s reality.”
Relief edged into my emotions. “Why did you mess with me like that?”
She stared at me like words had been lost in translation. “Odin’s prince. Looks the same, fights the same. There are many.”
“But Slayton works for Malcolm,” I argued, struggling to hold on to my resolve.
“Enemies close,” she said right as Slayton’s bike zoomed into its place outside the shop.
She was right. God, she was right. I’d been close enough to Malcolm to know he was not oblivious. If this were true, at all, I couldn’t see him having Slayton stay close to him.
***
I’d yet to relax in my new life. Each night we’d crash at my building, but never for long. It was all for show, to make the others watching realize they had just misread everything over the last few months.
Slayton and my father would hiss back and forth about money and bets as I perched on the fire escape, or even more bravely, out front with my journal the way I had before I knew how dark my world was. I knew it was dangerous that I wasn’t spending more time with my dad, that with me out of sight I was becoming a memory, which made more room for his demons to rise.
> I said as much to Slayton, but my complaints never received a noticeable response beyond anger. We sucked at using actual words. I learned to read his kisses, the intensity, the emotion behind them would tell me if someone was watching or not. Even when we spent a few nights in his unit, he was guarded. Nestled close to the door listening, demanding that I rest. I swear the boy never slept, and if he did, it was lightly and only for a few hours at a time.
Three weeks in felt like three years. I couldn’t fathom how life made any sense before he stepped into mine. He’d filled a void that I didn’t know I had. Woke me up. But every time I felt myself slipping, allowing myself to be okay with this treacherous world I’d talk myself out of the insanity of it all.
At times it was easy to do, our life made it that way. After our bout of passion in the deli’s stockroom, it was days before he touched me again. Just like he had before, he stopped me from loving him and made the experience all about me, my pleasure. Right as I let myself go and decided he had to have his reasons for not letting me touch him, someone banged on his unit door, and he slipped outside and talked to them for hours, or rather argued.
He stayed tense for days after as we played our part. All the while I felt the want and need building in both of us; in the stolen touches and lust filled glances he’d pass my way.
Every excuse I gave him for his restraint, ones like he knew we were not alone and he wanted to make it right and not just a fuck, went up in flames when the whore he was with the night I first met him stalked into the cleaners. Jealously, right alongside a cruel reality check, slammed into my gut. I’d purposely forgotten her, ignored every girl that passed Slayton by like they knew him, and knew him well.
That early morning Slayton had just left, I knew he wouldn’t be long because Channing was nowhere in sight but still, even a second with that girl was too long. She was taller than me, full in all the ways a sensual woman should be. But the streets were reflected in her eyes. They were cold and blind to anything beyond her petty fights. She reeked of smoke, liquor, and sex.
“Damn, did he mean for me to meet him at my place?” she said with a sly grin as she hitched her thumb toward her block down the way.
It was so hard to not puke, to not charge her with my warranted jealously. My expression must have been easy to read because she flashed an evil grin then leaned across the counter as her gaze gave me a disgusted once over. “You think you’re hot shit because he lets you suck it?” she giggled. “You think you’re woman enough to get him to make a single sound?”
I blushed as every sexual encounter I had with Slayton crashed into my thoughts. The very vocal—on both our parts—encounters.
She laughed. “You won’t. He’s not treating you any different than the rest of us,” she smirked as she stood. “Go ahead, feel proud he let you go down. That a guy that looks like him noticed your pathetic existence.” She tapped the counter as she pressed her glossed lips together. “Tell him I’m sorry I got the address wrong, that I’m waiting.”
When she left I categorically had a breakdown as I cursed myself for every emotion I had. I had to get out—run. I only made it as far as the bathroom. My head was spinning with my rage and delirium. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. No one would. I was now one of those girls, the ones who inflated and deflated based on the attention of others. A flat, lifeless being that fooled herself into thinking that one day all of this shock she was living through would make sense.
It had never been harder to grip who I once was and let go of who I was becoming at once. Pain had a definition, so did betrayal. And the only person I could blame was me; the girl who lived with her eyes closed.
I ignored Mrs. Jin pounding on the bathroom door. It was hard to hear her over my fast breaths and hard tears, but moments later the entire door all but left its hinges as Slayton broke in. I backed into the corner as all the Jin’s present at the dry cleaner that morning charged around him and stood before me cursing him. I don’t know what he said, but they all hushed then scuttled away, leaving me with a devil I was sure I’d never outrun.
Slayton slammed the broken door as shut as it would go then moved toward me like I was a wounded animal. I pushed against his chest as he came closer, as tears soaked my cheeks.
“What?” he demanded pinning my hands to each side. “Who rattled your cage?”
“One of your hookers,” I spat.
The way he jerked back, you would have thought I struck him. I wanted to. I was sure it would help kill those nasty thoughts of him and that girl, of any girl.
“She said she thought you wanted to meet her here, that she was waiting on you down the block.”
Slayton’s intense stare was burning me; the one that made me feel like I was insane, and it was slowly breaking through to me. I still didn’t trust him, though.
“What? You got so many going down on you that you’re not sure which one? I guess that’s why you haven’t hit this shit yet, huh?”
Was I really begging for it? Shaming him into it? Dear God, I’ve lost it—I didn’t know this person who was animating me anymore. Sickening shame rooted in my gut.
I regretted my words as soon as I felt his hand clasp around my neck. He wasn’t squeezing. He was holding my neck up, demanding I look him in the eye, but I pressed into the pressure of his strength. I did it to show no fear, but somehow it stirred my unyielding want for him. What did that say about me? I was jealous of a whore and getting off on violence and fear.
“Hit this?” he growled pushing his hips into me. “That’s what you want from me? A fuck?”
I glared back finding stubbornness as a defense. “I don’t take sloppy seconds.”
Slayton’s hand reached around and squeezed my ass. I hated myself for the moan that came. With one hand, his thumb firmly caressed my neck, while with the other, his fingers edged under my shorts. “I don’t fucking touch whores,” he said through a clenched jaw.
“But you let them get you off,” I said boldly staring him down. “You stopped me,” I said in a far weaker tone, embarrassed I was even arguing about this.
His lips crushed against mine. I didn’t open for him until he bit my lip right as his hand hooked my thigh on his hip so he could press deeper into me, so I could feel his raw desire pulsing between us.
Even with his tongue invading my mouth I fought, pushed against his chest, pulled at his hair, bit his lip. The fight didn’t halt him, if anything I felt him barely holding himself back. My entire protest lasted seconds. That’s how long it took for his fingers to find their way to my clit, to toy with my ultimate undoing. Right when I went limp, moaned into his kiss and decided I could hate myself later, he broke away and pressed his forehead to mine.
“You’re not one of them,” he panted. “I fucking refuse to treat you like one, let you act like one.”
I became boneless in his arms as his fingers kept to their glorious work. “I’m not a pet,” I said in a quiet tone. “I don’t want to be played. Not when I’m defending my life. Not ever.”
Slayton’s fingers stopped. He dropped his head to my shoulder and turned his lips to my neck. “It’s been a year...”
A red flag went up in my mind when I remembered him coming out of that girl’s place, her pulling him back in. The last thing I wanted to know was my savior was a liar.
Reading my body, he lifted his head, both his hands reached for my face. “That whore is pissed I turned her down and is rattling your cage because of it.” It was the look in his eye that had me believing him. It was vulnerable. Honest.
“No one else?” I asked as my eyes welled.
Slayton swayed his head. “Never has been a one before.” His famous awed gazed, the one he only stared at me with when no one was watching filled his gunmetal eyes. “That’s what makes my claim on you so believable...and unbelievable.”
He was no Romeo, but this boy’s words still curled my toes and engulfed me in a storm of emotion I was content to weather.
Two hours later,
Channing and a guy I’d seen around marched the girl into the cleaners. Her lip was bleeding, her hair was a mess, her shirt was ripped and her lipstick was smeared.
At the time, Slayton was outside leaning on his bike, on his phone, watching me through the glass. I looked at him in confusion and fear. The last thing I wanted this girl to know was that I’d caused her trouble.
Channing had her arm gripped, but it was in a way that most who walked by would never know she was under siege.
“Ember,” Channing said with an easy smile. “Sugar here has something to say, if you have a second.”
I offered a shallow nod.
Shakily she spoke. “I didn’t know there was a claim. I ran my mouth out of turn.” Channing tightened his hold and when he did she bit the word, “Sorry.”
She wasn’t sorry, not at all. But when Channing led her to his car and put her in the back I felt sorry for her. I even prayed for her. As twisted as it was, she taught me more than one lesson. The first was to never let my emotion act on an unverified truth. The second was that the grace given in this neighborhood was far from stable. It only took one careless cross of a line to turn you from a friend to a foe.
NINE
Sugar, or whatever her name was, quickly became a distant memory. The next day when Slayton took me home to Mrs. Jin’s so I could shower the sweat of the day away, we found the place surrounded by the law.
I argued with him, but finally I convinced him to let me go in and see what was going down. I’d spotted Vinnie half a block away and knew if he saw Slayton send me in that it would only further fortify our claim that we had always worked together—I was Slayton’s blameless face he used with things like this.
I soon regretted going in alone. Not because I was afraid, but because I didn’t want to be alone when my ultimate fear bubbled up into my reality—that my dad had finally crossed the wrong line. The door to my flat was busted open. Everything I could see inside was destroyed. I made my way to Mrs. Jin’s, pretending it was my place. Before I went in, Slayton told me no matter what I had to do, I better not go on record as living there, being my father’s daughter.