Page 36 of Tesio
“Are you fucking serious?”
He groaned. “I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry. My mind was on my mum, and she was forgotten until, well, until I got backhere and heard you’d been arrested again, and then it was like a fucking light went on in my head.”
Pity there was no fucking light on in his head in general. But then, I was being an asshole, right? He’d had family stuff going on, and shouldn’t that be more important? Except for the fact that a certain defensive little pain in my ass probably thought I’d ditched her.
“Get out of my sight, man. I’m too pissed to be nice right now. No wonder she fucking arrested me again. You had one fucking job!”
He backed off, and practically legged it as soon as he got a few metres away, and I really couldn’t blame him for that, because he’d fucked up something for me, and not only did he lose me my chance with her, but maybe she wouldn’t even fuckingsurvivehis cock-up. I swear to god, if I couldn’t fix this, I was killing that little prick.
Jamie
Evers, sorry,Alex, was waiting for me after our shift, and insisted we went to the pub for a drink, and after all he’d said recently, I really couldn’t argue right now, because he’d been right, hadn’t he?
Once we had beers in hand, and were seated at a table in the corner of the fairly quiet pub, he spoke his mind. He was really making a habit of that lately, and I wasn’t sure it was a habit I wanted to encourage anymore.
“We need to talk, Jay. Shit’s getting out of hand, and you know it.” This would be about Grease and the club again, I already knew that.
“Alex-”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, so you’re getting better at that, but don’t try and distract me. This is important. You’re getting a reputation and not a good one. You keep pushing at that club, and you’re going to end up in trouble or worse.”
I watched him peeling at the label on his beer bottle, his eyes firmly focused there instead of letting me see into them. Maybe he was more worried than I’d realised.
“What could be worse than getting in trouble? If I get suspended again, maybe that means I’m getting to someone somewhere.”
“Oh my god. Listen to yourself, Jay. You’re talking about crooked police now. This isn’t some big organised crime business, this is a rough, dirty biker club, and I don’t care what they’re telling us, or what patches they’re wearing now. They’re bad news, and the kinda bad that could get you dead. I’m not just talking about a slapped wrist. One day you could just disappear, and I wouldn’t fucking know where to find you. I could start with them, but they’d have covered their tracks, and you… you’d just be gone.”
I caught his hand, halting the destruction of the label, and waiting until he finally looked at me. Maybe I’d been too hard on him, because this wasn’t a version of him I’d seen before. This was panic. I’d never seen it on him before, but I was seeing it now.
“Alex-”
“I’m saying that they’re dangerous, Jay. I’m saying that they made threats against a fucking child when I bothered one of them, one time. You’re routinely getting in their faces, repeatedly arresting one specific member of their club, andmaking a nuisance of yourself. At some point, it’ll stop being funny for him, and when that happens, they’ll find a way to silence you.”
I opened my mouth, but he shot me a glare and continued.
“Jay, there are worse ways they can hurt you, than just making threats. Maybe they don’t kill you, but maybe one or more of them tracks you down when you’re alone, and vulnerable. Maybe what they leave behind is a version of you that nobody would recognise. Are you getting what I’m saying here, without trying to say the fucking words?”
I swallowed hard. “You’re talking about rape. You’re saying they’re the kind of people who’d rape me to silence me? They’re just thugs, Alex. They’re just… that’s not…” I trailed off, because what was I about to say there? They wouldn’t do that? They’re not the kind of men to do something so abhorrent?
I didn’t know that for a fact. I didn’t know anything of the sort, and Grease had made enough sexual advances that I knew it could have crossed his mind, and others there had hit on me too. I mean, I’d already had sex with Grease, but what if I’d said no that night? What if I’d fought him? Would it still have happened, only without the satisfaction and good feelings? Would he have come inside me that night no matter what?
Alex caught my hand this time, and it made me flinch for the barest second, before I remembered it was him, and we were safe right now.
“They… it never occurred to me, I guess. Do they have form for that kind of thing?” He grimaced, his eyes darting around us before he met mine again.
“There’s been talk, not necessarily since whatever kind of takeover happened, but it was rumoured before that. Girls went in there to party with the old club, and they came out ruined. Silent, traumatised, and unwilling to talk about it. It had to besomething bad to leave them in that state, but they’d never speak against the club, and they never went near those guys again.”
Oh my god. How didn’t I know this before? How hadn’t I considered the fact that men in a club like that, in groups, drinking, and partying, would do such things? How hadn’t I used my fucking woman brain, at the very least, to consider that men were often more animal than person when it came to women, especially if alcohol or drugs were involved.
“I’ve been taking ridiculous risks, haven’t I?”
Alex nodded, freeing my hand, and taking a large gulp of his beer.
“I didn’t want to scare you, but I can’t keep letting you put yourself in danger, especially if you end up going there alone at some point, and end up cornered by the fucking wrong guys. Men can be monsters and men in groups, in packs? Fucking savage. You see why I backed off, rather than risk the females in my family, right?”
I nodded, downing about half of my beer in a rush, trying to shift the sudden cold numbness that had settled in my chest. Grease had said something along the lines of not having to force women, but what if that wasn’t the comfort I’d taken it as at that time. What if it was a hint that he’d use alcohol or drugs to make them compliant, so they just wouldn’t argue?
His strength, and his ability to manhandle me that night, had unnerved me, but I’d felt safe because we were both into each other. Picturing that much man with a woman who was less willing, or less able to stand up to him, had chilling pictures in my mind that made me feel ill.
