Little Bird by Kally Ash
Wren
I joltedaway in my bed, blinking in the darkened room. What had woken me? Turning, I glanced at the clock, trying to focus my blurry eyes on the digits on the digital readout. Was that one o’clock—in the morning?
Bang, bang, bang!
Someone was at the door.
Opening up the drawer on my side table, I pulled out my Beretta 92FS and got out of bed. It was still in the high nineties in my non-air-conditioned apartment, so I’d slept in a shirt and panties. But this was Boyle Heights, and there was no way in hell I was answering my apartment door in the middle of the fucking night without a weapon in my hands—modesty was simply optional at this point.
Bang, bang, bang!
“Jesus! Wren, let me in.”
At the sound of my brother’s voice, I flipped on the living room lights, undid all three deadbolts, then the slide lock before opening the door. Hawk was weaving on my doorstep, his face a bloody mess, one of his eyes swollen shut.
“What the fuck, Hawk?” I guided him inside, re-shut things, and forced him to sit on my worn-out couch. The furniture groaned around him, but it didn’t fall apart—this time. He still hadn’t answered me, so I walked into the kitchen to grab some ice before hitting the bathroom for the first-aid kit.
When I came back, he was laid out on the faded yellow couch, an arm laid gently over his face. “What happened?” I asked, easing onto my knees beside him.
He moved his arm, so he could open his one good eye and look at me. “I fucked up, Wren.”
My stomach clenched. “Fucked up, how?”
Hawk was forever getting into trouble. He had been ever since we were kids, and because I felt responsible for him, I’d always done what I could to get him out of it. I feared the day he turned up with a problem I couldn’t fix, though. Every time the problem got bigger, the stakes got higher.
“Fucked up how, Hawk?”
He blinked and sucked in a breath through his mouth. His nose was probably broken if the angle was anything to go by. “I’ve been selling drugs.”
“What about RadioShack? I thought you had a job. Why would you need to sell drugs?”
He stared at me with such pity, but I wasn’t the one bleeding and bruised on the couch. “I lost that job a few months back.”
I wanted to punch him in the face, but I held myself back. Besides, I was pretty sure he was feeling sorry enough for himself right now. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me you needed cash, too?”
“I can’t sponge off you for the rest of my life, sis.”
If it were a choice between sponging off me and dealing drugs, I would’ve taken on the financial burden. Although, I wasn’t sure how much more my failing dog grooming business could take. “No, Hawk. Jesus. I can’t believe you did that.”
He shrugged, then winced like he’d forgotten he’d had the shit beat out of him. “It’s done now, but I owe the boss.”
“How much do you owe?” I was afraid to ask, but I had to know how hot the water was here. When he didn’t answer right away, I pressed, “Hawk, I swear to fucking God if you don’t tell me—”
“Fifty grand.” He stared at me, begging me to understand even though I had no idea what the particulars were this time around. My brother had always been the kind of kid to bet over his head. Most times, his bluffs worked, and he walked away with more cash in his pocket than he’d had in the previous months. I always thought his luck would run out eventually, though.
It turned out this was that time.
Jacking up onto my feet, I cut a tight line in front of him, grinding my molars as I tried to think about how I could secure fifty grand for him. There was no way I wouldn’t help bail him out, but the how was a fucking mystery. I barely scraped together enough for the rent on my shop and apartment on a weekly basis. My savings account was in the negative the last time I looked.
“When do you have to have it by?”
“I was given a week.”
A week to find fifty grand?I’d already refinanced the shop, so Lord knew the banks weren’t going to help me out. I glared at him, hands on my hips, and I adopted the true ticked-off-bigger-sister position.
Who the fuck had he done a deal with? I waved my hands in front of me, silencing my already silent conversation. No, I didn’t want to know details.
Hawk’s business was his business—until he made it my business.
Motherfucker.
“Who did you steal from?”
“Bane Rivera.” At my questioning look, he added, “He owns that gentleman’s club, The Dollhouse, over in West Hollywood.”
I had heard of The Dollhouse, I’d also heard about the reputation of its owner. Bane Rivera had been voted most eligible bachelor three years running. I was not ashamed to say that I’d picked up those copies of the magazines and stared at him, taking in his dark hair, dark eyes, and scruffy jaw. He looked like pure sex on the pages, but a man like that didn’t rise to the top without getting his hands dirty somewhere along the way.
“Well, I’ll just go down there and talk to him.”
Stupid. Stupid idea, but I was grasping at straws here.
“You can’t do that,” my brother said weakly.
I huffed and lowered myself back to the floor in front of the couch. “You lost the right to tell me what to do when you barged in here, bloody and broken, and owing the richest man in California fifty grand.” I opened the gauze pack and Bactine and began to clean Hawk’s injuries. As I sponged the blood away from his face, I realized the wounds were mostly superficial. The bruising would be a bitch, though.
By the time I was done, Hawk was asleep—although fitfully—on my couch. I laid a light blanket over him, then dumped the used medical supplies into the trash in the kitchen. It was edging up to two o’clock in the morning, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep—not with the news of my brother’s troubles on my mind.
Marching into my bedroom, I changed into some jean shorts and threw on a tank top. I didn’t bother with a bra given that I didn’t intend to stay at The Dollhouse all that long. Going to see Rivera might be the worst decision I’d ever made, but it was also the only one I could make. After this, though, I swore my brother was on his own.
Sliding my bare feet into my Vans, I grabbed my car keys from the hook by the door and shut the apartment quietly behind me. Traffic was light as I drove to West Hollywood. Even in the dark, I could see the wealth and affluence of the people who lived here. We hadn’t always been poor. At one stage, my dad had had a thriving printing business, but then he began to gamble. It was only small bets here and there to start with, but as soon as my mom died, he upped the stakes and spiraled into a pit that he had no hope of climbing out of. He died penniless, leaving Hawk and me to scrape and scramble our way through this life. Neither of us had gone to college. Neither of us had wanted to. We’d grown up quick, and survival was the name of the game.
The game had left Hawk bitter and stupid.
It left me cautious yet independent, stubborn, and fucking unwilling to be taken advantage of.
“Holy shit,” I muttered when I pulled up to the curb outside The Dollhouse. The entire building was at least three stories high, the red-brick industrial exterior making it look like it belonged somewhere down by the docks. There were no windows, no tacky neon signs—no signs at all. It was like it was just known as the premier gentlemen’s club in LA by sheer will alone.
As I parked the car and shut off the engine, I had a brief moment of hesitation.
What the fuck was I doing here?
What did I hope to achieve?
Well, whatever it was going to achieve, I had no choice. Hawk had made sure of that.
Getting out of my car, I pulled down the legs of my shorts that had ridden up a little, shut the door, and locked the car. As I cast a glance at my early-model Toyota, I doubted anyone would try to boost it, but I also couldn’t afford to replace it. I walked up to the bouncer at the door, who stared at me like I was the wrong kind of person to walk in here.
“Dolls enter through the back,” he told me.
“Dolls? What? No, I’m here to talk to Bane Rivera.”
His eyes found mine again. “Dolls enter through the back.” His tone was sharp, and I bobbed my head because maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought it was. I ducked down a driveaway running beside the building, coming to a large steel door. The words STAFF ONLY were scrawled across it in block letters. Raising my fist, I knocked.
It opened with a buzz, and I stepped into what looked like a very long hallway. There were half a dozen doors on either side, but they were all unmarked. The low buzz of people talking and the seductive beat of throbbing music and drinks being poured filtered through from the door to my left, so I opened it and stepped into a room of black, gold, and dark red. A shiver tracked over me as I was hypnotized by the low-lighting, the music, the women dancing in their eight-inch pleasers on raised platforms. This place was pure sex.
Walking over to the bar, I caught a lingerie-clad woman’s attention and called her over.
“What can I get you, sweetheart?” she asked in a sexy drawl.
I almost ordered a drink, but then I remembered why I was here. “I need to speak to Bane Rivera.”
The bartender jerked her chin up at a wall of glass hovering over the bar. “He’s in his office,” she said in a completely normal voice.
Well, clearly, I did not deserve the sex-kitten routine. Glancing around, I tried to find my way up there.
“Take the door tucked away around the end of the bar,” the same bartender said.
I nodded in thanks, finding the door and opening it. Butterflies turned into an all-out assault on my stomach, so I pressed my hand to the space just below my navel. I was nervous as fuck, but I had to do this. When I reached the six-foot by five-foot landing at the top of the stairs, I stared at the door and blew out a breath.
Fuck. It was now or never.
I knocked and prayed I could get my brother out of this.