Make You Mine by K.T. Quinn

12

Jayce

Fuck me sideways. And here I’d thought this day was going pretty good.

I knew the motorcycle rumble in the distance was Sid, and not just some of his goons out for a ride. The extra noise told me so. Sid always traveled with at least two dozen Copperheads, because he only felt safe when he had an army around him. Like all bullies, he was never cocky when he was alone.

I saw them in the distance, the sun reflecting off their shiny hogs like a parade of mirrors. There was still time to jump in my truck and hot-tail it in the opposite direction. But that would give Sid what he wanted. He loved the chase more than the kill.

And I wasn’t the kind of man who ran.

“Are… Are they going to do something to you?” Charlotte asked.

“Maybe.”

“What should we do?”

I shoved a pick-up stick and trash bag into her hands. “Go back to picking up trash. Say nothing.” I grabbed her arm. “I mean nothing. Be completely silent. You understand?”

“Okay,” she said in a shaky voice.

She wandered off to pick up trash. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm my thumping heart. Sid was a man who enjoyed slow escalation. Since his thugs had beaten the piss out of me the other night in jail, Sid was really going to hurt me today. He wouldn’t kill me since he hadn’t gotten what he wanted, but this was about to get ugly.

I wish Peaches didn’t have to see this.

I stood more calmly than I felt, my pulse throbbing in my ears. The motorcycles rumbled like distant thunder. A storm rolling in from the horizon, leaving ruin in its wake.

They rode two-by-two, taking up the entire two-lane road. Ten bikes in the front, and ten in the back, surrounded Sid in the middle. They slowed as they neared us, rolling their bikes to a stop on the edge of the road, parting like the Red Sea and leaving the middle clear. Only Sid parked his bike and stood. Even though he was a hundred feet out, I would have known him just by the way he walked. Slow and dangerous. Like a panther stalking its prey.

Sid was a sickly-pale man who wore his dark hair in dreadlocks that ran down his back like greasy snakes. His boots glistened with fresh polish, and tattoos covered his left arm and the left side of his face. Tribal bullshit that macho assholes used to think was cool decades ago. Faded jeans and the same leather jacket as all the other bikers completed his look. And above his shoulder poked his crowbar, strapped to his back like it always was. The sight of it made me wince. I’d seen that curved piece of iron break a lot of kneecaps.

He paused twenty feet from me to light a cigarette. A puff of smoke went up from his face, carried away by the gentle breeze. “There’s our favorite boy,” he said in his smooth voice. The voice of a used car salesman, altogether too friendly and too hostile. He pointed with his cigarette. “Been looking for you, Jayce. You sneaky little ferret.”

“Haven’t been lookin’ hard, then,” I said in an even tone. “I’ve been right here all day. Yesterday, too.”

“Cleaning up our fair town. Public service looks good on you.” He craned his neck and the register of his voice shifted. “Who’s that little thing over there?”

Don’t say anything, I willed Charlotte. Listen to what I said.

“Some out-of-towner they stuck me with,” I said in a disgusted tone. “Doesn’t pull her weight. Texts on her phone all goddamn day.”

Sid eyed her a moment longer, then returned his skeleton gaze to me. “Let’s take a walk, friend.”

He turned and walked back toward his bike. I followed because it was better than being dragged across the asphalt.

We passed between the rows of Copperheads seated on their bikes. Their sunglasses couldn’t conceal the glares they fixed on me, and each of them turned to spit at my feet as I passed. I stared straight ahead and suffered it. They wanted to provoke me into doing something dumb. I wasn’t going to give them the pleasure.

Be cool, I told myself. Take your beating, then they’ll ride off without hurting Charlotte.

“You stole something from me,” Sid said in an ominous tone. His sweeping gesture took in the other Copperheads. “You stole something from us. All of us. We’re a family, Jayce. You know that.”

“I didn’t steal anything from you, Sid.”

“As a family,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “we’re supposed to trust one another. Have each other’s back. It’s what makes us strong. A closed fist and all that. Do you understand me?”

I grunted. He took it as a yes.

“When someone within my family steals, it wounds me to the core. It chips away at my trusting nature.” He narrowed his eyes. “It disappoints me.”

I remained silent. One thing I knew about Sid was that it was best to let him lecture. He got off on it. Pain would soon come, and it might be less severe if I let him make his speech first.

Stay away, I told Charlotte in my mind. Keep picking up trash. No matter what happens.

“I’m a simple man,” Sid went on as we walked down the twin rows of bikers. He gestured with his cigarette. “All I want is one thing. What’s mine. Return it to me and all is forgiven. I’ll accept you back into the family with open arms. So we can heal.”

When we reached his bike, he turned and put his hand on my shoulder in an affectionate gesture. I clenched my jaw. This was what Sid did. He gaslighted people. He was pretending like he was the one who kicked me out, when in reality I was the one who left. Sid twisted the truth until it was whatever he wanted, and then repeated it so often even he believed the lie.

He looked at me with a calm, dangerous gaze. Waiting for a response. He was standing awfully close, which I was pretty sure was intentional. Trying to bait me into attacking him. Even though I knew it was a trap, I couldn’t help but consider the option. I might be able to wrap my hands around his throat and crush his windpipe before his goons could stop me. Snap his neck with one swift jerk. Drive my pocket knife deep within his gut, twisting and twisting until no doctor could put him back together.

The urge to do it was raw, primal. I’d been dreaming about it these past few weeks. For what Sid had done to me, but more for what he’d done to Theresa. I deserved a chance at revenge. I had a window right now.

But Sid was waiting for it. Expecting it, even. That’s the only thing that stopped me: the fact that I wouldn’t be successful. He would live, and I would die.

I chose my words carefully. As if that would make any fucking difference.

“I don’t have it,” I said. “That’s the truth, Sid. I don’t. And killing me won’t change that fact.”

I could have ended it there. Maybe he would believe me if I told him enough times. But all this talk of family was igniting something within me I couldn’t ignore. I couldn’t just leave it at that, because it wasn’t who I was.

The words poured out of me before I could stop them.

“But even if I did have it,” I said bitterly, “I wouldn’t give it back to you. This ain’t a family. Families love one another. The Copperheads? You just use them to get what you want. They’re only family as long as they’re useful to you. And the moment they aren’t…”

I snatched the cigarette from Sid’s mouth, dropped it to the ground, and grinded it underneath my boot.

“…you extinguish them.”

There was a quiet moment while Sid and the other Copperheads processed what had just happened. The wind rustled the surrounding trees, and leather creaked as more than one biker shifted to reach for a weapon. Preparing for what their leader would command.

Rage, psychotic rage, flashed in Sid’s eyes. There it is, I thought. The real Sid. But it lasted only for a moment, and then he laughed.

“That’s funny.” He pointed at my face. “You always were a clown, Jayce.”

The other bikers laughed nervously. I stood, tense, waiting. I knew Sid. I knew what would come next.

In one smooth motion Sid reached over his shoulder, pulled free the crowbar, and swung it across his body. It smashed into my upper arm, in the middle of the muscle, and a flash of pain filled my arm like fire before going numb. I stifled a cry and fell to my knees.

Sid laughed some more, high-pitched and hysterical. The laugh of a madman. “He says he wouldn’t tell me even if he knew!” he announced, which drew more laughs from his henchmen. “What kind of an idiot would say such a thing?”

On my knees, I had an opportunity to look back at Charlotte. She had stopped picking up trash to watch us. Hoping she stayed silent, I turned back to Sid’s boots.

“Hurt me all you want,” I growled. “I don’t have anything to tell you. Killing me will just put more innocent blood on your hands.”

Sid stopped laughing, then sighed. “I was afraid of that. You’re a stubborn fucker, you know that, Jayce? You don’t even care about your own miserable life. So I’m gonna have to take something you do care about.”

He walked past me. I got up to follow him but one of the other Copperheads stood and grabbed my arms, holding them behind my back. Brick, I recognized him from the grunt he gave as I tried to pull away. He used to be one of my friends, in another life. He was one of the good ones.

“What are you doing?” I called.

Sid twirled his crowbar in his fingers while strutting down the road. There was a skip in his step, now. “Helping you understand what happens to people who lie to their family.”

Family. The way he kept saying that word was a hammer to my skull. Taunting me with what he’d already taken.

Take something you do care about, he had said.

That’s when I realized he was walking toward Charlotte.

She stood on the other side of my truck, still picking at trash while glancing up at the scene every few seconds. She’d done exactly what I had told her, remaining silent the entire time. And it wasn’t going to matter.

“Sid…” I began.

He raised his voice but he didn’t slow down, and didn’t look back. “You got something to tell me, Jayce? Speak up!” The skull on the back of his jacket, peeking through his dreadlocks, sneered its toothy smile. It looked like it was laughing at me.

“Sid, please…”

Brick anticipated that I was about to resist, and shifted one arm to put me in a headlock. “Give him what he wants,” Brick said in a deep voice. “Come on, man. Make it easier on yourself. On all of us.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I gritted out.

Sid paused next to my truck. Charlotte had just returned a full bag of trash and was getting a new bag ready. Sid wasn’t looking at her, but she was within reach of his crowbar swing. Run, I wanted to scream at her, though it wouldn’t have changed anything. Run, Peaches, and don’t stop until you’re out of this fucking town.

Sid cocked his head at me from across the distance. “Sounds like I’m rubbing up against a nerve. Seems there’s still something in your life you’re afraid of losing. Last chance. Tell me. Where is my money?”

I stared at Charlotte and hoped she was looking back. I’m sorry.

Sid turned, and swung the crowbar.

I winced. Waiting for the horrible cracking noise I knew would follow. For Charlotte to scream and fall to the ground. If it happened, if she uttered any noise at all, I knew I would cave and give Sid whatever he wanted.

But she wasn’t the target.

The crowbar smashed through the side window of my truck, throwing shards of glass across the pavement. He pulled back and swung three times into the windshield, sending spiderweb cracks across the surface. He swung the crowbar low into the rubber of my truck tire, then lifted his boot and kicked the curve of the iron. There was a bang and a whoosh of air as the tire burst, causing the front-left part of the truck to sag.

Sid thought he was damaging something I cared about, but all I felt was relief. Immense, overwhelming relief. He was only hurting my truck. Not her.

The leader of the Copperheads panted with effort, then rested the crowbar against his shoulder like a baseball bat. “Hope you got a spare.” He turned toward Charlotte, and for a brief instant all the terror came pouring back, but he was only grabbing my half-eaten sandwich off the truck bed. He took a bite, then tossed the rest into the ditch.

“I’m hungry. Let’s get a burger at Flop’s.”

Brick let go of me. The pain in my arm where the crowbar had struck suddenly flared back up, and I cradled it with my other hand. Sid sauntered up to me on the way back to his bike.

“Next time?” He tapped the crowbar gently against my skull. “It won’t be your truck I smash.”

I kept my head high as I walked back to my truck.