Heavy by Cate C. Wells

2

HEAVY

Since I turned thirteen, I’ve always been the biggest man in any given room.

I duck through doorways. Everything on my bike is extended—brake level, shifter, footboards. A hundred years ago, folks at fairs would pay to gawk at my freakish ass. In these modern times, people make way. Whisper. Scamper out of my path.

I’m a big motherfucker. Everyone is smaller than me.

The woman I just nailed into my closet—Dina—is a slight little thing. She comes up to my chest. Neat, compact, finely wrought.

And I’m shakin’ like a goddamn cold, wet dog.

I pause in the hallway, drag on a pair of jeans, and drop the hammer to the floor. Then I lean against the door and listen.

The rooms up here ain’t soundproof. If I’d have shot her with no silencer, a half-dozen men would’ve come runnin’. John Wall would’ve seen his sister slumped dead on my chessboard. Game over. It would’ve been a hell of a scene.

But I wasn’t gonna shoot, was I?

When I stared down the barrel of that gun and she blinked those round, blue eyes, my shitty knees got weak. They ache when it rains and click when I go up the stairs, but they’ve never almost given out on me before.

But those big eyes. Blink. Blink. I felt it. Not just in my dick. In my gut. Never happened to me before.

Dina.

Short name. Short woman. Big damn eyes.

There’s no sound from the closet. No muffled sobs. I didn’t figure. Little Machiavelli’s probably in there plotting her next move.

She should be on her knees, praying. I had the pistol leveled. Safety off. Despite whatever the fuck’s gone wrong with my insides, I was drawing in the deep breath, ready to exhale and gently squeeze. I didn’t lie. My aim is always true.

But her ears were peeking out of her black hair. I couldn’t center my shot ‘cause I was distracted by her tiny little ears.

And, damn, those eyes—what color blue is that? Cobalt? Azure?

It’s probably good she hides those eyes. They’re unnatural. Distracting.

She’sdistracting. And she’s a problem. Doesn’t matter that she’s small, she’s dangerous as hell. She’s a drunk idiot capering around with lit explosives, blind-folded. If she were a man, I’d have no compunction about putting her down. Relation to Wall or no.

I bang my forehead on the door once and head off to the common room. I need to shake this off, whatever it is. Think the problem through, then come back and do what needs to be done.

I dial Harper as I clomp downstairs. “Where are you?”

“At the bar.”

“The clubhouse bar?”

“What other bar’s open this early?”

My sister’s drinkin’ way too damn much lately. It’s not even nine in the morning.

‘Course, I already got propositioned and blackmailed, and I held a gun on a woman, so maybe I need a drink, too.

Dina was shakin’ so bad when I carried her to the closet. Trembling like a rabbit. When she put my hand on her skin, I could feel her heart thudding through her breastbone.

I grit my teeth.

She should be scared. She should be quaking in her weird socks that don’t cover nothin’ but the tops of her toes.

I scrub my chest. I got indigestion, and my antacids are upstairs. It’s some shit—I’m hardly thirty, but ‘cause I grew so fast and I carry so much bulk, I got every old man complaint. My joints tell the weather, my arches are fucked, and since I gotta constantly cut so the weight stays muscle—and greens make me bloat—my belly ain’t never right.

Can’t figure why my guts are knotted now, though. I didn’t eat yet.

When I get to the hall, I scan the floor. Harper is perched on a stool, glass of red poured and the bottle standing ready. Creech is passed out on a sofa with a woman on top of him. I don’t recognize her. There’s a pissed off clanging coming from the kitchen. Ernestine must be up.

The front doors are open. They’re not original to the garage, but I had them custom made to run along the existing tracks. They’re reclaimed oak, polished to a shine, and solid. It’s easier to leave ‘em cracked than shut ‘em behind you.

A woman as slender as Dina could slip right through.

I tug them shut as I pass to the bar and gingerly lower my ass next to Harper. The metal still creaks.

I slap the counter, and she swivels her head to face me, wobbly as a bobblehead.

“We need better security.”

Harper rolls her red-veined eyes. “We’ve talked about this. ‘When we are able to attack, we must seem unable.’”

“You really gonna quote Sun Tzu at me at the ass crack of dawn?”

“Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere,” she smirks, raising her glass.

I lean over the bar, rustle up a bottle of bourbon, and clink it against her merlot. Ain’t gonna help the indigestion, but it can’t hurt the nerves. I’m still jangly.

My closet door ain’t gonna give. Dina’s goin’ nowhere. Still. I’m unsettled. I got the kind of shakes you get after a near miss on the highway.

I treat the feeling with a long swig of Kentucky’s finest. “We need to go for a walk.”

“Fuck, Heavy. I’m in heels.” She’s wearing her court clothes. Black skirt, shiny white blouse, fuck-me pumps with red soles.

“Your policy,” I remind her.

We don’t talk business anywhere but outside or in church with countersurveillance measures fully employed. No documents on site except legit company records. The clubhouse is wide open to party crashers, hangers on, and randos.

Our goal is to seem really fuckin’ unable. Nothing to see here. Just a bunch of drunk rednecks. We’ll beat your ass if we don’t want you around, but we ain’t gonna bother locking a door.

“My policy sucks,” Harper mutters, lowering herself unsteadily to the floor.

“Agreed.”

Harper snorts and clutches her bottle. She’s stumbling as we head down the back hall, past the kitchen.

“You still drunk from last night, or startin’ early?”

She hiccups. “To be honest, little brother, it all kind of blurs together.”

She flashes a grin. Her teeth are stained red.

I hold open the door to the yard, and she sails through, chin high. A drunken queen.

I love my big sister. She’s vicious, nasty, and loyal to the bone. She practically raised our brother Hobs after our mom passed, and she went into the law so she could protect the club.

She’s a royal cunt, but what blade isn’t sharp?

She stumbles in the grass, and I barely grab her upper arm before she faceplants.

“You’re falling apart,” I point out, grinning fondly to take the sting out of it. We both know she’s losing it. This isn’t a new development.

She sighs, tightening her grip on the neck of the bottle and tucking her free hand through my elbow.

“I’ll be fine once it’s all over.”

I lead her past the bonfire pit and stage to where the trees begin. There’s a dirt bike trail that we stroll down when we talk business.

We’re silent for a while. It’s spring. The ground is wet with dew, and the sunlight has a dingy gray cast, but the birds are chirping, and the woods smell rich with thawed soil and new green shoots. The world is at peace.

What’s Dina doin’ right now? Is she freaking out?

She’s fine. She’s been in the dark fifteen minutes max. She wants to kill a man. If she’s up for that, she can handle cooling her heels in solitary for a few hours.

Maybe.

She clearly has issues. Her manner—I wouldn’t call it robotic. More impassive. Almost as if she’s reciting lines. She stared blank-faced at the floor while soliciting murder.

She should leave a man cold.

But the way she holds her body—a shiver zips down my spine. Most women strut or shrink around me. I’m rich, but I’m also intimidating. Ugly. Brutish. Dina was curious. Gawking at my cock. Showing me her tight little body while she snuck peeks with those big blue eyes.

My dick jerks in my jeans. I was hard until I picked up the gun, harder than I’ve ever been. Right now, my balls are aching. I have to shake it off. At the moment, I need the blood flow to my brain.

“What’s got you out of sorts?” Harper says, breaking the silence.

I raise my eyebrows. I didn’t say anything. I’m stompin’ along in the mud, thinkin’ my own thoughts. “Who says I’m out of sorts?”

“Your face does. It looks weird. We got a big problem? Bigger than usual?”

“My face looks ‘weird’?” I scowl at her in all seriousness and wiggle my ears.

She snort-squeals.

I still got it.

She shoves my shoulder. “Yes, your face is always weird, but right now, it’s weirder than usual.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know, Heavy. Like you’re thinking.”

“I’m always thinking.” It’s true. I can’t turn it off. Never could.

“Yeah, well, maybe you should think less.” She pokes my chest with a long red nail. “Do you ever think that?” When she’s drunk, she gets handsy.

“All the fuckin’ time.”

“’Cause you’re always thinking.” She tries to dig her bony elbow in my ribs, cackling and chugging her wine. Then she hits a slick patch, slides, and nearly does a split in the mud. I’ve got her, though. Again. I hoist her right back to her feet.

She tugs down her blouse. It’s come loose from her waistband. “I love you, too, little brother.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but she knows where we stand. I got her. Always.

I quit dickin’ around and get to the point. “We have a problem. Bigger than usual.”

“So I gathered.”

“I had a visitor this morning. She propositioned me.”

“Heavy, that’s not a problem. That’s a solution. Seize the day. When’s the last time you got your dick wet?”

I ignore her. “She asked me if I’d seen Strangers on a Train.”

“That TV show with the eighties kids playing dice games in a basement? With the upside down?”

“No. That’s—” I shake my head. “She wants me to help her kill a man.”

“As your lawyer, I advise you to decline.” She swallows a hiccup, and it comes out a belch. “Well, how hot is she?”

She’s not hot. She’s boyish. Short black hair, not much meat on her bones. Little apple-sized titties with puffy pink nipples.

Well, not boyish, exactly. She’s got hips and an ass, but they’re—proportionally small.

“So, pretty hot,” Harper muses.

It’s immaterial.

“She knows about Half Stack Mountain. And she claims she has evidence proving Watts and Wade were behind the blown job.”

“Get the fuck out of town.” Harper shoves my shoulder again, misses, and stumbles. Her eyes flicker. She’s considering the angles.

The blown job has so many goddamn angles.

“The blown job” is what we call the debacle that tore the club in two back in the day. It should have been a simple run across state lines. A few crates of black-market cigarettes. Low risk, low reward. I was a kid at the time. My father was supposed to be behind the wheel, but at the last minute, he had to bail. Dad’s VP, Stones Johnson, and one of his sons, Knocker, took the job.

That was the end of the club I was born into.

The cops pulled the truck over at the county line. There were guns under the cigarettes. Stones and Knocker went to jail. Stones died there. His other sons—Inch and Dutchy—founded the Rebel Raiders. And in time, they went hunting for revenge.

When Stones passed, Dutchy worked out his grief by taking a baseball bat to my brother Hobs’ head. We buried Dutchy under a maple tree. Inch retaliated, attacked Pig Iron’s daughter. Scrap beat Inch to an unrecognizable pulp and spent a decade upstate for it.

So much horror and death, loss and pain. And all the while, Des Wade’s star rose. He’s businessman of the year, and last election cycle, Anderson Watts’ name got floated for Vice President of the United States.

It’s not to be borne.

“Now your face looks normal,” Harper says.

“Pissed?”

“Homicidal.” She smirks and picks her way toward a felled tree on the side of the path. “Let’s sit.”

I lower myself beside her on the mossy log. It’s a good height for me. Harper’s legs dangle a half foot above the ground.

She drains her bottle and chucks it behind her. I’m gonna have to remember to get that before we leave. If she threw it in poison ivy, I’m rubbing her face in it.

“What’s the evidence?” All of a sudden, she’s miraculously sober.

“An affidavit from the dealer who sold Wade and Watts the guns.”

“Why haven’t we heard about it?”

“The story is that the guy was extradited to Russia. From what my visitor says, I’m thinking the feds could have made a deal. A prisoner exchange with the Kremlin. Something like that. Maybe they buried the allegations to preserve the deal. Or they were protecting Watts. Or using the info for leverage. Lots of possibilities.”

“Did she show you the affidavit?”

“Nope.”

“So, it could also be bullshit?”

“Lots of possibilities,” I repeat.

“She knows where the bodies are buried?”

“Yeah.”

“Who does she want you to kill?”

“An uncle. Sounds like a personal vendetta.” I snort, remembering. “She says she’ll kill him. She only wants logistical support.”

“Well, isn’t that special.” Harper examines her nails. They’re fake, long, and sharp. Dina’s nails were bitten to the quick. No polish.

“The law doesn’t distinguish between murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Did she give you the name of the arms dealer?”

“Boris Stasevich.”

“Did you kill her?”

My gut cramps. “No.”

“Where is she?”

“My closet.”

Harper raises a sculpted brow, but then she shrugs. “We have to kill her.”

I tense, and all my little aches and pains make themselves known. I’m tired. I’m tired in my bones.

I crack my neck and roll my shoulders. I’ll pop an aspirin when we get back to the clubhouse. Drink some coffee. I don’t have time for rest. Never have.

“Heavy, she’s a liability.”

No one’s touching her. The thought is immediate. Loud.

I don’t look at it too closely. It’s not logical. It’s not even true—I’ll do what needs doing. I always have. But I don’t say any of that out loud.

“Her name is Dina Wall,” I say instead.

Harper lets out a long whistle. “Wall’s missing sister. I thought she was a kid?”

“I did, too, but she’s twenty-four. She’s some kind of shut in. Lives with her parents.”

Harper’s silent for a few beats. “We still have to kill her.”

“She’s Wall’s family.”

“She could put every last one of us behind bars for life. She could put a needle in your arm.”

“We don’t touch family.”

“We put a bullet in Ike Kobald.”

“If we hadn’t, Nickel would have. It’s not equivalent.”

“It’s precedence,” she argues.

“This isn’t a court of law.”

“Wall doesn’t have to know.” Harper shifts to face me. Her gray eyes are cold as ice. She was never soft, but these days, her hardness has petrified. It’s sharp enough to cut. “I can do her if you don’t have the stomach.”

My throat constricts. She’s deadly serious. She would, and I don’t think she’d lose a second of sleep.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I make the sacrifices. I carry the weight so the club can be whole. That’s the deal that makes it bearable.

“I should have never let you go after Des Wade.”

Fucking him is what’s done this to her. I never should have condoned it.

Her lips curve in a bitter smile. “It was our only move.”

We both know that’s not true. Harper has always advocated the direct approach. Snatch Wade one night in a parking lot. Beat the truth out of him. Record it and show Knocker Johnson. Bury Wade under a nice dogwood. Or an elm.

I’m the one who argued that Knocker wouldn’t believe a confession made under duress. That kidnapping a son of one of the state’s most highly regarded families would be too much exposure for the club.

I didn’t suggest that Harper seduce him. It was her choice, but I didn’t give her another one. I was working on it, but she’s impetuous. One night, she video calls me from his apartment. He’s asleep in his bed. She’s in her bra and panties, a kitchen knife in her hand, an eyebrow cocked.

If I had blinked, she would have done him, then and there. I convinced her that searching his place was the smarter move.

I should have let her slit his throat. She’s been Mata Hari for a long time now, and she’s breaking under the strain.

I made the wrong choice. One of dozens. That’s what a leader does.

You make the hard calls and then carry the guilt and regret when shit crashes and burns. If your shoulders aren’t strong enough to bear it, you don’t deserve the mantle.

“You can stop whenever you want.” I’ve said the words a dozen times.

“No, I can’t,” she says. She offers me a sad smile. “Not until we finish it.”

In one way or another, we’ve been trying to put this behind us for twelve years. Ever since Twitch passed.

Twitch, the old head with no kids who was a second father to all us little shits. The guy who had time for us—who taught us engines and how to throw a punch and that Page and Clapton ain’t shit next to Hendrix. He’d seen it all, and he showed us—or tried to—that there’s nothing better in life than the open road, cold beer, and banging your wife.

Harper and I had come home for the funeral. The wake was at the clubhouse. I hadn’t been to Petty’s Mill in four years. The rot was in the air. The men who’d raised us, who’d fought for their country and worked themselves to the bone—they were wasting away. Jobless. Leaning hard on the bottle and all but given up.

Harper and I made a pact. Rebuild. Restore. Revenge.

Steel Bones would rise from the ashes. The prodigal sons would return to the fold. And the fat cats who’d built their names on our broken backs would pay.

Everything had been taken from us, even our pride, but the fight was still there. In our blood.

That was so many long years ago.

“If Dina Wall really has the evidence, this could be over.” I lean back to take in the steel gray sky.

Harper sniffs. “We have a name. We can run the lead down ourselves.”

“She says she has access to the documents now.”

“Let’s get them from her and then kill her.”

“She’s not going to just hand it over. I—tipped my hand.”

Harper quirks an eyebrow.

“I held a gun on her, safety off.”

“Why didn’t you shoot?”

“Got interrupted.” I don’t mention the minute that ticked by before Wall banged on the door. Or her delicate ears. The bone deep reluctance that came out of nowhere. “There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to run down the affidavit on our own. It’s been a decade, and we haven’t yet.”

We fall silent. Somewhere in the thicket behind us, a stream babbles, swollen with melted snow from the mountain. It’ll be a dry gulch by summer.

It’s a beautiful day out here.

What’s Dina doing in the closet? I should have thrown in a water bottle before I nailed the door shut. What if she needs to piss? What if she hurts herself somehow? Panics in the dark or trips and breaks an arm?

It’s a closet. It hasn’t even been an hour. She’s fine.

She’s got grit, even if she’s naïve as hell. She’s the frog in the fable who gives the scorpion a ride across the river and wonders why when she gets stung.

She’s brave, though. In a reckless, oblivious way. Outside of the people in this club, it’s hard to find brave folks these days. 

“Well, as the club’s lawyer, I advise you to end the bitch. She’s a walking RICO charge.”

She widens her eyes, expecting me to argue. Or concede.

She’s not wrong. But how do I fucking argue that her eyes are blue and her ears are small? And I want to watch her. Like she watched me in bed. I want to see how she moves; I want to hear what she has to say when she’s not reading from a script in her head.

What is wrong with me? I’m not soft. Not any part of me.

RICO is a federal charge. And I’m not the only one who stands to lose. The stakes are as high as they come. It’s the future and freedom of every brother in Steel Bones. It’s their families. Their kids.

The weight bears down on me, compressing my lungs.

Dina Wall could destroy all the people I care about and everything I’ve built in one fell swoop.

I know this. But still—

I keep my mouth shut.

Harper raises an eyebrow. I look away, stare down at the moss on the log. She’s silent for a long moment, and then she says, “Well, if you prefer to roll the dice, I do have another idea.”

I twist my neck. Harper’s booze-bleary eyes are narrowed. Calculating.

“What’s your idea?”

Her lip quirks. “Spousal privilege.”

“Like when a mafia wife doesn’t have to testify against her husband if she doesn’t want to?”

“Like when a mafia don can bar his wife from testifying against him if he doesn’t want her to. In this state, the witness-spouse or the party-spouse can invoke privilege. Communication and testimony. In cases both civil and criminal.”

“No shit?”

“We take marital harmony very seriously in Pennsylvania.” She emits a dry laugh. “Of course, nothing would stop her from blabbing to the cops if she were so inclined. She could help them build a case and then disappear.”

“Right now, she has no motive. She wants our help.”

“Unless you pissed her off enough by holding that gun on her.”

She didn’t seem pissed. She seemed terrified. Her pupils ate up that shocking blue until her eyes matched her hair. She’d balled her fists and tightened her muscles, and she was shaking like a leaf on a tree.

I don’t mind scaring people. It’s useful, and I’m good at it. But I liked her better curious and sneaking peeks at my dick. I liked that a lot. Too much.

“You’re saying marry her?” I ask.

“Yeah. And then do what she wants. Help her to kill the uncle, but make sure she pulls the trigger. Get it on video. Then you’ll have leverage against her. Mutually assured destruction.”

“It’s risky.”

“Too risky,” Harper agrees.

“There has to be a simpler way.”

“Beat the information out of her. Then put a bullet in her brain.”

“I’m not doing that.” It’s out of my mouth before I realize it.

“Getting soft in your old age?” Harper smirks, toeing a shoe from her foot. She tries to scrape the mud off on the mossy log. “You owe me six hundred bucks.”

“For the shoes?”

“For the billable hour. The shoes are a thousand.”

“You could have pulled some rubber boots on before we left.”

“Regrets, I’ve had a few.” She gives up on the shoe with a huff. All she’s done is smear moss on it. “We done here?”

“We are.”

“So you gonna get hitched, little brother?” She’s enjoying this way too much.

“John Wall’s gonna fucking kill me.”

“He doesn’t have the heart.”

“Seems I don’t either.”

“I don’t know, Heavy. Your back’s not really to the wall, is it?” She pats my thigh. “I know you. If it really came down to the club or this woman, you wouldn’t hesitate.”

“Harper.” I wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but this is my partner in crime. Ever since she lured Dutchy Johnson out of Sawdust on the Floor and distracted him while I slashed his throat. My first kill. So long ago now. “I hesitated.”

“You don’t when it counts.”

She’s so certain; it has to be true. She’s the smartest woman I’ve ever met. Smarter than me.

This plan is insane.

But as we walk back to the clubhouse, there’s an easing in my chest.

I’m closer to my revenge than I’ve ever been before. And just in time. Knocker was released a few months back, and he’s been stirring the Raiders against us, baiting us into all-out war.

If Dina has what she says, Steel Bones has a real chance at brokering a lasting peace with Knocker and the Raiders. And destroying Des Wade and Anderson Watts. Making it right.

And I get to play with a cute little murder pixie while I do it. I almost have a spring in my step.

“You might want to wipe that shit-eating grin off your face before you propose to the blackmailer,” Harper says.

I laugh, and it echoes through the woods.