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  “When I decide to share information is my decision,” he says dismissively.

  I sit back, studying him closely. He’s more than on the edge; he’s near-manic. And yet if I went out into the clubhouse and started telling the brothers that there was something wrong with the boss, I’d be pushed out in a heartbeat. Jackson feeds the brothers, all of them, especially his private army of pledges. They look up to him because he gives them what they want: women, booze, freedom.

  “I want to go after the Broken Sinners, really go after them like they’ve been going after us. Firebombing my sister’s store is one step too far, Dirk. You know it. I know it. And I bet that fuck Badger knows it too. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that you ought to expect a call any day now. We’ll be going to war.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “What?” he snaps. “Is somethin’ the fuckin’ matter, Dirk?”

  “It’s just our intel, sir. If we’re going to war, I’ll be right there with you.” I think about the packed duffle bag under my bed, full of clothes and a new passport and cash. I’ve been ready to leave since the day I got here. “But I can’t just turn off the part of me that evaluates intel, and it seems to me that we haven’t got any. Why don’t I go by the store and have a look around? Or at least let me go and check in with our moles to see if they’ve heard anything. Let me investigate.”

  “There’s no need.” Jackson waves a hand at me, the same way a king would wave a hand at a servant. “You can go now. Dirk, you won’t go by the fucking store and you won’t keep questioning me like this. Don’t forget who I am. I’m the goddamn boss, you hear me? And the boss don’t take bullshit.” He stands up and lays his hands on the desk, leaning forward. Maybe he wants to look imposing but he looks more like a gaunt scarecrow. “I could have five men in here to tear you apart in a goddamn second.”

  “Five pledges, sir?” I ask.

  A shadow moves across his face, almost imperceptible. “I hire as many pledges as I want,” he says.

  “I know, sir. I know.” I stand up and go to the door. “You handpick them, don’t you, sir?”

  He squints at me, trying to figure out if I’m messing with him. “I do,” he says, apparently convinced that I’m not. “And each one of them would die for me. Don’t you forget that. Goddamn, Dirk, I’ve given you my sister. What more do you want?”

  I leave the office, stopping on the other side of the door to open and close my fist, calming myself. There are a few of Jackson’s pledges in the corner, all of them ex-criminals, hard criminals. One of them, a man who calls himself Rider, with a gold thumb ring and arms almost as big as his gut, reaches across to a club girl who’s standing at the bar and grabs her around the waist. He drags her aggressively into his lap, laughing when she makes a sound of shocked surprise.

  I turn away, disgusted.

  I need to talk to some of the proper brothers and see what the hell’s going on around here. I glance at Rider and the poor goddamn club girl.

  And I need to make sure that Meghan doesn’t end up out here, at the mercy of these fucking animals.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Meghan

  I lie on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I managed to open the window by sliding my fingers through the bars, but it only opens a couple of inches. Still, it’s enough for me to listen to the birds which fly overhead. Like they know this place is death, circling and waiting for their chance to descend and pick us all apart.

  I want to go to the door and kick it and keep kicking it until it falls down, but I know that will only draw the attention of one of the bikers, and it might not be a good one. I stand up, the bird sounds annoying me now—who knew bird sounds could be annoying—and pace around the room, restless. Then the door starts to open, clanking as whoever-it-is unlocks the padlock. I return to the bed and pretend that I’m reclining, comfortable and undisturbed, just in case it’s Dirk. I don’t want him to see the effect this is having on me. It takes me a moment to decide if that’s because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction or I don’t want to worry him.

  Then the door opens and I end up not deciding anyway.

  The bottom falls out of my world for a second, everything falling into a deep, dark abyss, and then the world remakes itself and Sissy closes the door behind her. She’s wearing a mini skirt showing her pale freckled legs and a tank top. She does not look like Sissy with her face covered in all that makeup.

  “I’m dreaming,” I whisper, sitting up. “I must be. This is a nightmare. Sissy?”

  “It’s not a nightmare.” She carries the tray to the desk. “I know you prefer chicken burgers to beef, so I had one of the pledges—one of the nice ones—run out and get you some.”

  I join her at the desk: fries, chicken burger, corn on the cob. “It looks good,” I assure her. I sit down to eat and she sits next to me, her legs tucked beneath her in the chair. She looks like a sparrow balancing on a spire, like she could topple any second. “What are you doing here?” I ask between mouthfuls.

  “Isn’t it obvious? I work here, as a club girl.”

  I sit back, letting a fry fall from my mouth. “I suppose it is obvious, now you say it like that,” I mutter. “I’m not sure what I thought you were when you walked in, but … a club girl, Sissy? This is your other job, then.”

  She nods, not meeting my gaze. “This is my other job.”

  I turn back to my food, stunned but also hungry; I haven’t eaten since last night. I devour it quickly and wash it down with a glass of water taken from the bathroom. Then I pull my chair close to Sissy’s and fold my hands over hers, squeezing softly. “How did you end up working here, Sissy? Remember, I grew up close to this world. I know how it works. You say you’re working here but they don’t pay you. You—” I pause, thinking of the most tactful way to phrase it. “You work for tips.”

  “Tips.” Sissy giggles at the euphemism. “Don’t beat around the bush with me, Miss Alonzo. I go to bed with men and they give me money and presents.”

  “But why?” I ask. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s your life and you can make your own decisions. It’s just a massive shock. You are literally the last person I’d expect to see here.”

  “Literally? What about Genghis Khan?”

  “Okay, apart from him.”

  She shrugs. “I started working here when I was nineteen. I never told you my age, remember? I just let you guess. Well, you always got it wrong.”

  “I guessed nineteen, twenty,” I mutter, remembering one night where we got drunk and I asked her almost one-hundred times how old she was. She’d never tell me. “So I was wrong, then?”

  “I’m twenty-six,” she says.

  My mouth falls open. That makes her a year older than me. “You look incredible,” I say after a long pause. “Really, you look nineteen. I never would’ve guessed that.”

  She blushes, looking so much like a nervous nineteen-year-old, I have to do mental backflips to remind myself that she was actually born the year before me. “Thank you,” she mutters. “Maybe that’s why some of these men like me so much.”

  There’s a note of darkness in her voice I don’t like. “What do you mean? How are things here, Sissy? Are they treating you okay?”

  “I started coming here just as Jackson became the boss. It was good at first. There was still the older vice president and all the old guys who used to work with the old boss. The men were respectful. There was this one man, Leon, who used to take me on rides and buy me roses. But then, after a couple years, Jackson took complete hold of the club. He began kicking the older guys out. He told everyone that it was because they stole, or that they betrayed the club in some way. I thought there would be a riot but there was always evidence there to back him up.”

  “Evidence he’d fabricated.” My voice is faraway and hollow. All these years of using my store as a neutral zone, thinking I had my finger on the pulse of the club life, and yet this was happening right beneath my nose. And Sissy knew the whole time. �
��You could’ve mentioned this to me earlier!”

  “It all happened before we met,” she says. “The only reason I got the job at your store was because of the way things were going here. Are still going here.”

  “I don’t get it. What exactly is going on?”

  She glances at the door, lowers her voice. “Jackson’s recruiting pledges who are loyal to him, not the club, and the way he makes sure they’re loyal to him is by giving them all-you-can-eat access to the club girls. These men, Meghan … they’re way rougher than the normal bikers. They’re—it’s like they get a thrill from handling us like we’re meat. Lots of the girls have left.”

  “Why haven’t you?” I snap. I hear myself go into lecturing mode, the way I do when she screws up at the store, but I can’t help it. “You should leave right now, right this second. As soon as you get into the hallway, just make a run for it. Are they keeping you prisoner?”

  “No,” she says. “I don’t want to leave. I—I like this job, Meghan. I just don’t like the way it’s changed since Jackson—”

  “Fucking Jackson,” I growl, remembering a thousand scenes from our childhood when he displayed the exact same callousness he’s displaying here.

  “It’s not just the club girls, either. The club’s going into darker stuff. You know how I call you the Big Bosses’ protector as a joke? Well, I also reuse the joke around here sometimes, when it’s just me and the other girls. Listen, Jackson is a bad Big Boss, because he’s letting his pledges—encouraging them, actually—sell hard drugs and stuff like that. Really, really bad stuff. I heard two of his men whispering about ‘a fine pink piece’ once.” She shivers. “I don’t even want to think about what that means.”

  I give her hands another squeeze. “Don’t think about it, then.” I wrap my arms around her, hugging her close, and then sit back and look her up and down. “I’m still trying to get it through my head that you’re here voluntarily and that you normally like this job.”

  “I do. It’s me.” She smiles from ear to ear. “See, I even have the same fake smile I use for the customers.”

  “You must’ve had a crazy time of it, working at the store and here. Didn’t the bikers recognize you?”

  “Of course they did. But Jackson ordered them to pretend they didn’t know me. I guess he didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “How sweet of him,” I mutter darkly. “What a lovely man. But he lost any right to give a damn about me when he let thugs beat up my friend.”

  “They don’t beat me up,” she mutters.

  “Hmm.” I let my head fall back, closing my eyes, and then a thought occurs to me. I snap my eyes open and stare at Sissy. “And what about Dirk?” I ask. “What is he like?”

  A small smile touches her lips, making her into half a child again. “He’s not like the others, not at all. To be honest with you, he doesn’t even go for the club girls. They’re always throwing themselves at him. Maybe I’ve even thrown myself at him a couple of times. But he never takes any of us. I know he gets women—in bars, in clubs—but he seems to dislike the idea of club women. I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But he never hurts us or ridicules or belittles us like the other ones do. He’s a good man.”

  “A good man,” I murmur. “That doesn’t seem too hard around here.”

  “He keeps to himself mostly. He doesn’t really party with the other men. He’s the best man in the club, though, so he has the respect of all the old-school guys. But the newer men, the pledges, they don’t like him because he’s so good and Jackson keeps using him. They want to be Jackson’s right-hand man, not that that is even what Dirk is.”

  “What an aspiration,” I mutter. “Who’d want to be little Jackie’s right-hand man, really?”

  Sissy giggles. “Little Jackie is not so little anymore, Meghan. He’s a big bad wolf now.”

  “He’s a twerp,” I say, both of us giggling now. “A pathetic little twerp.”

  We both laugh a while longer, letting out the tension, and then Sissy adds shyly, “To be honest with you, Meghan, you’re probably the safest person in the building right now with Dirk looking out for you. I know I’d feel safer if I had him watching over me. He won’t let anything happen to you, not if he’s already laid a claim to you.”

  “Laid a claim!” I break out.

  “Sorry,” Sissy murmurs. “It’s just something Rider says sometimes.”

  “Rider,” I snort. “It’s so strange hearing you talk like this. And your clothes. Listen, I’m no old maid, but your clothes!”

  She doesn’t look ashamed. Instead she tilts in the chair, displaying her legs. “You like it?”

  “Are you safe here, Sissy? Are the other girls safe?”

  Her smile dies. She looks at me for a long time and I can tell she’s deciding whether or not she should lie to me. “No,” she says eventually. “Not really. I think something bad’s going to happen. Some of the guys are better than others, but—it only takes one, and then everything goes to hell. Sometimes I lose sleep thinking about it. What if the next pledge he recruits is a real crazy person? A real sadist, you know? Maybe he’ll go too far. Maybe he’ll …”

  “Then leave!” I hiss. “Get out of here!”

  “I have friends here,” Sissy says with an odd sense of calm. “I can’t just leave. Not without them. If this life has taught me anything, it’s loyalty. Do you think that’s unique to the bikers?” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “We ride too, you know.”

  “Sissy …”

  “No.” She stands up and picks up the tray. “I won’t stay here if you’re going to keep telling me to leave, all right? I don’t want to leave, anyway. I just want the club to be like it was.”

  “You’re being stupid,” I growl, taking the tray and placing it back on the table. I don’t mean to slam it down but the plate makes a rattling noise. “You know it’s unsafe but you won’t leave. Come on.”

  “Meghan, seriously, don’t say that again. I’m not leaving and that’s that.”

  “Aren’t you scared?” I protest.

  “Of course I am!” she snaps. She walks to the window and grips the bars so hard that her knuckles turn white. “Rider hit me a few days ago. He didn’t do it hard. It didn’t leave a bruise or anything. But he did it to show me that he could, that nobody would stop him. I got off lucky. He’s given some of the other girls worse.”

  Suddenly the image of Maxine and Locke and Billy falls across my vision like a slide. But instead of Maxine lolling between the two men there’s Sissy, my friend Sissy, sucking and bucking and hardly awake.

  “If you won’t help yourself,” I say, gripping onto her shoulder and turning her forcibly toward me, “then you have to help me get out of here so that I can help you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Meghan

  “What?” She shrinks away from me, almost becoming a different person. Everything about her immediately turns toward the door. Not just her body, but also her desire; I see it in her eyes. She stares at the door like it’s an escape ladder out of a burning building. “I can’t help you!” she hisses, lowering her voice as though somebody might be listening. “You’ve got it all wrong, Meghan. I didn’t come in here to—to put myself at risk or anything like that. I volunteered because you’re my friend and I wanted you to know you’re safe.”

  “Safe?” I scoff. “In what world am I safe?”

  “Safer than any of us!” she breaks out. “You have Dirk looking out for you. Do you have any idea what most of us here would do to have Dirk frickin’ Dvorak looking out for us? I’m going now, Meghan. When I bring your next meal, please don’t ask me that again.”

  I should let her go. Respect her decision. But the problem is she has something I need: an escape from this place. She’s lived her double life here for a long time. My friendship half wants to let her walk away, but my negotiator half, the mask I wear every night at the store when I’m cooling off the Sinners and the Hearts—that half wants what
it wants, and it won’t let even Sissy stand in the way.

  “No.” I step into her path. “You’re not walking out on me like that.”

  “Meghan, move.”

  There’s so much desperation and urgency in her voice that I almost listen. I find myself wishing that Sissy was not Sissy, that they had sent another club girl that I could convince. But there’s the problem; I can convince Sissy because I know her. “No,” I say, stepping into her path every time she tries to slide around me. She’s smaller than me. Blocking her is easy, even if it does make me feel guilty. “I’m not letting you out of here until you give me a good reason why you won’t help me.”

  “Because … because!” She sulks to the other side of the room, leaning against the window bars. “What am I supposed to do, anyway?”

  “Help me get out of here! You know when there will be people on guard, when the best time to sneak out is. You obviously have a key. You can come and get me.”