I thought about Nic again—the way he spoke and carried himself—so different from the other Reapers. Something in his voice and stride clearly communicated how tough and sure of himself he was without the need to be obvious about it.
I took a deep breath and said the line the way I thought Nic would say it. It wasn't quite there yet, but it was definitely a step in the right direction. Confident, straightforward, with a hint of dry humor that was almost self-effacing.
“Hi, I'm Nic. As the Sergeant-at-Arms for the War Reapers, I know how important it is to kick ass and fuck shit up without things getting all bunched up on me. So when I'm on my period, I reach for the pad that'll keep the blood off my bike.”
I fell to the floor, cackling hysterically. My neighbors probably thought I was some kind of loon, but I didn't care. My emotions had been zig-zagging a lot over the past month, which was certainly to be expected after everything I'd been through—Jared, Nic, and now waiting to learn whether I'd have a chance to act on a real TV show instead of holding up coffee mugs and posing in ugly sweaters.
The intensity of my laughter was making me feel flushed, and my head started to throb. Suddenly, my stomach lurched, and I realized I had to throw up. I pushed myself off the floor and ran to the bathroom, barely lifting the toilet seat cover in time to release the contents of my stomach in a watery gush. Once I was done, I rested my sweating forehead against the cold porcelain of my bath tub for a moment, then got up and splashed cold water on my face.
Where did that come from? I had one glass of wine last night, so it's not like I'm hung over. And I almost never get sick.
I figured it was probably just stress, or maybe I'd picked up some kind of bug while riding the CTA. Those trains were basically petri dishes, especially in the winter months when cold and flu epidemics flourished. And just because I had a better-than-average immune system didn't mean I wasn't due to catch something now and then.
“Well, you'd better pull yourself together and get down to business, girlie,” I told the reflection in the mirror, gritting my teeth and attempting a steely gaze like Clint Eastwood's. “Because no self-respecting 'bodyguard to the stars' is gonna lie around in bed sippin' chicken soup—not when there's panty-pads that need sellin'.”
I chuckled, then went into the next room and picked up the script, saying the line out loud again. Whatever was rattling around in my body, I hoped it wouldn't stick around too long.
I had no idea how wrong I was.
Chapter Twelve
Nic
We'd gotten more packages delivered to us over the past six weeks. Over a dozen of them. Each one of them was worse than the last. I couldn’t think about them. Opening each box had been horrible. Even when I knew what would be inside, I still had to go into the back alley and retch until there was nothing but bile strung between my lips.
There were notes, too.
“Turn over Nic while this asshole still has another hand left to wipe with.”
“Give us Nic, or Growler will no longer have any ears to hear his own screams.”
“Surrender Nic before we run out of pieces to send.”
We were losing Growler, bit by bit. Time was growing short.
Unlike the first time, Giovanni's men didn't drive by to drop off these packages. They'd been mailed from false addresses that led to other false addresses, to the point where they were completely untraceable. Maybe the cops could have successfully tracked them to their source, but that's the drawback to being an outlaw. We couldn't exactly go asking the cops for help when we were in a bind. And even if we could, no self-respecting criminal would ever do a deal with us again.
And meanwhile, in the days between packages, the bloody war raged, spreading past the borders of the city and out into the rest of the state.
A car was firebombed outside of a Bonaccorso-owned nightclub, leaving one of their capos badly burned and on life support.
A couple of Giovanni's guys caught a Reaper named Bedbug coming out of a bar on the west side and beat him with baseball bats, shattering his spine so he'd never walk or ride again.
A brawl between bikers and gangsters broke out in a casino in the suburbs, putting two of our guys in the hospital and one of theirs in a coma.
Giovanni's younger brother Benito was shot three times in the parking lot of a massage parlor and was in critical condition.
Even up in Joliet, things were jumping off—two Reapers got shanked in the yard and a Bonaccorso got gang-fucked in the showers, forcing the warden to put the whole place on lockdown before the retaliation led to a riot.
I was doing my best to help the Reapers hold our own, but the truth was that I'd never been so depressed and ashamed in my life. I felt like all of this was my own damn fault. If I hadn't taken Lauren back to my place—if Growler hadn't been watching my back—then the Bonaccorsos could have just waited for Lauren to leave and settled up with me directly. Maybe I'd be dead, but Growler would be safe and in one piece, and the whole fucking club wouldn't be fighting every Mafia goon in the city.
When we got the package with Growler's cock, I couldn't take it anymore. I begged Bard to let me turn myself in to the Bonaccorsos and end this before any more Reapers got hurt. He refused. He put his hands on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Folding under intimidation isn't how the Reapers do business, and never has been. Once other crews know we'll negotiate with a gun to our heads, it'll paint a target on every Reaper's back, and those targets might never quite come off again.”
“That's a good speech,” I answered, “and it makes sense, but only to a point. It's a goddamn meat grinder out there. Reapers can't even wear their cuts in public without the risk of catching a bullet. They've got more guys, they've got more firepower, and eventually, they're gonna take us all down. I don't see any other way out of this shit for us, do you?”
“I'm working on it,” Bard answered tersely. “Every problem has a solution, even this one. And handing over our Sergeant-at-Arms isn't a valid move.”
“Yeah, well, while you're making chess moves in your head or whatever the hell you're doing, Growler is slowly being turned into a slab of fucking hamburger, and it's all because I won't step forward and take what's coming to me,” I answered sharply. “Is that what we mean when we talk about loyalty? What am I supposed to say to the other Reapers? 'Sorry, guys, but some of us are just more valuable than others? If you get caught and cut to pieces over someone else's gripe, you're on your own?'”
“You know this isn't just about a quick death for them,” Bard said. “Everything they've done to Growler, they'll probably do to you, too. I can't let that happen to a Reaper.”
“You saw the packages, Bard. It already is. This is the right thing for me to do, and you can't stop me.”
“I can stop you,” Bard said, his voice hardening. “As long as I'm the president, it's my call to make, not yours. This isn't just about you. I've got a whole club to consider.”
He took a deep breath and held it in, trying to calm himself. I could see the anguish in his eyes, and I knew how hard it was for him to disagree with me on this. He knew I was right, and I knew that for him, this wasn't about the future of the Reapers or their reputation. It was about how much he cared about me and even saw me as a son, although we'd never talked about it. We never had to.
Finally, he exhaled. “Okay, here's what's going to happen. You're right—we can't go on like this. I'm going to set up a meeting with Giovanni to try to work this out. Maybe we can come to some agreement that won't involve you being tortured to death.”
“I'm coming with you,” I insisted.
“No, you're not,” he snapped. “Think it through. Right now, he doesn't know where you are. We've kept you hidden, and we've kept you moving around. If he finds out you'll be there, he'll have his people grab you coming to or from the meeting, and it'll be game over. We'll have no leverage and nothing left to negotiate.”
“But if I'm turning myself in...”
“We'll see,” Bard said. “It might not come to that. I still have a few things I can try.”
“But if those don't work...”
“We'll see,” Bard answered through gritted teeth. “Until then, you just keep your head down. Let me try to handle this.”
Chapter Thirteen
Bard
I reached out to Giovanni through a neutral party—the head of the Almighty Stone Disciples, a gang on the South Side that also did business with the Bonaccorso family. They set it up so that I'd meet with Big G at the zoo, just the two of us, with no guns or bodyguards.
But when I went to the zoo, I saw that Giovanni hadn't shown up alone after all. There was a pale woman in her late thirties with him, wearing a black pantsuit. The two of them were standing in front of the tiger pit, watching the keepers toss raw meat to the animal.
“This wasn't what we agreed on,” I pointed out, nodding in her direction.
Giovanni shrugged mildly. “This is Marie Cuoco. She's Paulie's widow.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for the thought, but I'm not dating anyone right now.” I knew I shouldn't have been making jokes, but I was pretty sore about Giovanni breaking his word immediately. The threat it implied was all too clear—he could easily be armed, and there could be Bonaccorso wiseguys hiding all around us.