Page 209 of White Wolf

Lanny never wanted to be a cop. In his big, boisterous, loving, crazy family, he’d always felt a half-step out of place. He was bigger than his brothers, more aggressive, more energetic. Always juiced and spoiling for a fight.

When he was fourteen, he broke a boy’s nose in the locker room at school. It wasn’t his fault, not at first – he at least hadn’t started it.

Timmy Riggs had been the kind of skinny, nervous boy who would probably grow up to be six-five and two-eighty, cosmic revenge for his tiny childhood, but always the sort to keep to himself and not bother anyone else. Unfortunately, though, he’d been the target of all the douchebag idiots too stupid and slow to make the football team, all those angry meatheads looking to take it out on someone smaller. Timmy was a popular target.

On the day of the nose-breaking, Lanny walked into the locker room after gym to change back into his school clothes and found Joseph Petri and Andy Rudolph holding Timmy up by his shoulders and hips over a toilet, laughing manically, threatening to dunk him while Timmy held his breath and refused to beg.

Lanny could have let it go. Walked away and not incurred the other boys’ wrath. But he’d been incensed, and impressed: little Timmy with his teeth gritted and his eyes shut, determined not to scream. Lanny had to admire that.

“Hey, fuckfaces,” he called, slamming an open locker shut to get their attention.

Both boys turned to him, almost dropping Timmy, who caught himself with both hands on the toilet seat.

Lanny proceeded to taunt them, suggest they had tiny dicks, and ended up fist-fighting both of them. At the end, Lanny had a few bruises, Andy was unconscious, and Joseph was slurping blood from his broken nose.

It was after that – once his mother was done chewing him out twice over – that his father pulled him aside, into his study that smelled of books and expensive cigars, and explained to him that some men had more violence in them that others. Dad was the one to take him to the gym for the first time. To encourage his boxing dreams while Mom clutched her rosary and fretted.

Early on, Lanny knew he wanted to box for a living. To be in Pay-Per-View fights and appear on commercials, and expend all his violent energy in the ring.

He’d never wanted to be a cop, but he’d convinced himself it was just temporary. A part of him had always thought he’d have time to heal, to get whole, to maybe have another surgery, and get back into the ring.

The cancer had hit him like a Mack truck. Maybe he wasn’t a fighter like he’d always wanted to be, but he hadn’t counted on death coming for him like this, now, with smiling jaws and laughing eyes.

Nothing to be done, the doctors had said.

Just buying time.

Tell his family he loved them.

One last chance for goodbyes.

No.

No, no, no.

Fuck that.

Trina was so tired that it was easy to slip away from her and out the door. Sasha must have been awake, because he answered his call immediately, gave him an address of a building only a few blocks away.

The whole walk there, Lanny waited for some sense of self-preservation to kick in, but it never did. In the middle of the night, exhausted beyond belief, counting the minutes left of his life, he couldn’t find a reason to turn back.

When he knocked, Sasha opened the door, smiled at him. “Come in.”

That was when his breath caught and his heart started hammering. Shit. What was he doing?

But it was too late for those thoughts, because he was standing in the middle of a surprisingly cozy living room, Nikita seated with a glass of vodka and a cigarette in a battered corduroy recliner just this side of well-loved. He wore gray sweatpants and an often-washed AC/DC t-shirt, his hair soft and messy like he’d been running his hands through it, or sleeping. Lanny saw Trina in the shape of his face, the assessment in his eyes, and shivered.

The door closed softly behind him, and that was that. He was trapped.

Nikita exhaled a stream of smoke and said, “To be honest, I thought you’d turn up sooner.”

Lanny scowled out of reflex. “This ain’t the kind of thing you decide on a whim.”

“No. It’s not. Have a seat.” He gestured to the worn-out sofa with his cigarette, and Lanny sat.

And that was when the enormity of what he’d done hit him. He wasn’t visiting a friend. Hell, he wasn’t even interrogating a suspect of walking alone through a bad neighborhood. He’d walked right into the proverbial lion’s den, and he had the distinct feeling that the department-issue gun on his hip wouldn’t do him a bit of good if one or both of them decided to rescind their hospitality.

“This’ll help,” Sasha’s voice said, and a cool glass was pressing into his hand.

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