Falling for Colton (Falling #5) (15 page)

He places his hands on the pile of cash stacks, eyes cold and hard on me. “Take a break, Colt. Coupla weeks, maybe.” His eyes roam over my face, and even he winces. “Man, you are fucked up. Took some of the pretty outta you.”
 

“Thanks.” I say it drily.
 

Eli ignores my sarcastic jab, extends a palm to me, and I slap it with mine. No shoulder bump here. “I’m out, man.” He turns to Rhino and they thug-hug. “Take care of my boy. Get him back on his feet.”
 

“I am on my feet,” I protest.
 

Eli just laughs. “A six-year-old could knock you down, dog.”
 

I’m angry. At myself, at him. I wonder how much I’ve made him over the last two-plus years that I’ve been fighting for him. I’m angry that it took me so long to realize he feels no loyalty to me. Eli carries his cash to his Buick, and the engine catches with that gorgeous throaty rumble. He’s gone in a cloud of exhaust and a receding trail of red taillights.

“Let’s get out of here, Colt. You need some stitches, at least.” Rhino scoops up his money and tosses it carelessly onto the backseat, then hops into the driver’s seat.
 

I’m slowly, gingerly, climbing into the passenger seat when a figure lopes out of the warehouse, heading for me. At first I think it’s Raquel or one of the other girls, and in my current condition I’m not sure I can physically handle anything, as much as it pains me to admit.

“Yo, hold up.” Turns out to be a black guy, maybe five-eight, five-nine, slim, lean, razor-sharp. Skin like ink, like unfiltered shadows.
 

“What up, Split?” Rhino says. Sounds…almost apprehensive.
 

“Can I get a minute with ya boy Colt?”
 

“Real quick.”
 

They’re trading me around like I’m a kid, or a possession. Irritating. Split walks away and stands with his back to the cinderblock wall of the warehouse, waiting for me. He establishes authority by making me come to him. I hobble over, hurt, irritated, tired, ready to crash.
 

“What’s going on?” I ask.
 

Split pulls out a pre-rolled joint, lights it, and passes it to me. This is business, then. “I’m with the Five-One Bishops.”

We pass the joint back and forth as we talk.

“Okay.”

“You want out of the ring.” It’s not a question.

“I might.”

“Quit playin’. I seen that shit. You won that fight by the skin of your teeth. I think there’s a better use for your skills.”

“Which would be what?”

“Helping me out. I need someone at my back who ain’t…familiar. Push people around who ain’t steppin’ up the way they should.”

“Enforcer, basically.”

“I need a soldier.” He indicates Rhino with a subtle gesture only I can see. “You quit fighting, he’s gonna find someone else. No hard feelings, but it’s what he does. Eli? Man, you lose once, you’re done. You all alone out here. You got no friends. Rhino ain’t your friend. Eli sure as hell ain’t your friend.”

“And you are?”

“Could be. My boys could be.” I meet his gaze, finally, and what I see scares me.
 

He’s not cold; there’s a life in his eyes, but it’s that of a true warrior. He’s seen shit. He’s known death and violence, and bloodshed, and loss. His eyes are piercing. There’s a razor-sharp intelligence in his eyes, a trust-your-gut ability to assess someone with a single glance. His eyes are light, light brown, almost khaki. Fierce, piercing, penetrating.
 

“I ain’t offerin’ you a job, man. I’m offering you a
life
.” He jerks a thumb backward, at the interior of the warehouse and the fights still happening within. “That ain’t a life.”

“Why me?”

“Cause you’re a survivor. A winner. I watched that fight, man, and you was done. You was
done
. But you pulled it out. That’s a quality wasted in there.”
 

And it’s not wasted running in a gang? I don’t say this, but I think it. And yet… he presents a temptation.
 

I hate fighting. I like winning, and I like the money, but it’s taking a toll. And the beating I just took…I don’t know if I have it in me to do it again. It brought me money but, like Split says, I barely pulled it off. And if I hadn’t, I’d be in debt to Eli and Rhino. Debt I’d never pay off. I’d never get ahead. I’m making killer bank, fighting for Eli and Rhino, but it’s a losing game. Eventually someone will take me down, and I’ll be done. Maybe it’s time to get out of the game while I’m ahead. I could have friends, somebody to watch my back. A life where I’m not waking up in pain, with bruised ribs and bloody saliva and a broken nose. Won’t make as much money, might take longer to get my shop, but I’m starting to realize that maybe there’s a better way, a better life out there for me than pounding faces and getting my ass kicked week after week.
 

“Lemme tell you something,” Split says. “You earn my loyalty, I’ll have your back for life. You earn the loyalty of my boys, we got your back for life.”

“How do I earn your loyalty?”
 

“Have our backs. Never back down. Do what you gotta do. Loyalty to the Bishops before anything. Every single time.”

“I need to think about it.”

“Don’t think too long. Offer only stands for so long.” He pinches the cherry off the quarter-inch long roach.

“How do I find you?”

“I know where you at. I’ll stop by.”
 

“All right.”
 

Split ambles away, dropping the roach into the bottom of a pack of cigarettes. I watch him go, and when he’s out of sight, I head back to Rhino’s SUV. He’s leaning back in the driver’s seat, the flat brim of his Yankees ball cap pulled low over his eyes. When I climb in, slowly and with grunts of pain, he flicks the brim up and eyes me.

“So. Gonna run with the Bishops, huh?” He starts the truck and pulls away from the warehouse.

“Might.”
 

“Think getting clear of the ring is hard? The Bishops’ll never let you go.”

“Haven’t decided yet.” A few minutes pass in silence. And then I risk the question. “You know Split?”

“Seen him around. The Bishops’ turf is close by. As for Split? Just don’t make him your enemy. All’s I got to say about that.”
 

Coming from Rhino, that says something.
 

* * *
 

The decision is made for me, a few days later. Late at night, Rhino and I are pushing weight. Just him and me in the gym. Somewhere out on the street tires squeal. I don’t think anything of it. Rhino, though, hears something in the howling of burning rubber that I don’t. He drops the bar into the hooks, slides off the bench far faster than a man of his size should be capable of, and grabs my two-hundred-and-fifty pound barbell in his hands, settles it, and hauls me off the bench. All this takes less than fifteen seconds. Headlights flood the street beyond the plate glass window of the gym.

There’s a desk in one corner, with a big gray metal filing cabinet beside it. Rhino shoves me across the room, hard enough that I hit the wall with a thud. He tips over the desk, and then with one violent shove he knocks the filing cabinet over onto its side. He jerks me down, shoves my head down so I’m parallel with the floor, then rips open a drawer of the desk and pulls out a massive black semi-automatic pistol, a Magnum, maybe. I don’t know much about guns. Big as fuck, that’s all I can tell for sure.
 

“The hell is going on, Rhino?” I ask.

“Keep your fuckin’ head down and shut the fuck up.” He’s behind the desk, his enormous bulk hunkered down into as small a package as possible behind the battered metal of the desk.
 

In that moment, as I’m about to ask again what the fuck is happening, an old four-door sedan skids to a stop out front, nondescript, tan, maybe an early ’90s model Taurus or something similar. I duck down behind the filing cabinet as I realize what’s about to happen. A few feet away there’s a deafening blast, Rhino opening fire first. The plate glass shatters, and another thundering blast scuds through the air. And then it’s a war zone. Fully automatic gunfire rattles, a shotgun rips, handguns chatter. Rhino’s Magnum blasts slowly, methodically, and I hear a shout of pain, a second, a third.
 

I see a chunk of wall explode over my head, and then the filing cabinet is dinging and thunking from the impact of bullets. I stop breathing and can only hope the rounds don’t make it through the metal. I hear a grunt from Rhino, and then three rapid-fire blasts from his pistol, a silence, then a
thud-click
as he reloads.
 

There’s a fraught fraction of silence, and then I hear Rhino’s heavy footsteps thudding across the floor, boots crunching in the glass, and he’s blasting, blasting, shouting, and tires are squealing.

“Get gone, mothafuckas! Can’t take me! I’ll kill all y’all!”

Silence again.
 

I raise my head, and assess. The plaster of the wall above my head is shredded, studs showing through. A couple of the studs are blasted apart. The cabinet I hid behind is riddled with dents. The desk is, too.

Glass litters the floor and sidewalk around the window frame, and I see streetlights glinting off the glass, off the shells scattered on the pavement. Rhino is standing in the middle of the street, handgun dangling at his side. He’s wearing a wife-beater tank top; blood trickles down his arm, a gash in the bicep high up, near the shoulder. I step out into the street beside him.
 

There’s three different pools of blood on the road, gleaming black.

“Fuckin’ punks. Thinkin’ they can shoot my shit up and get away with it. They just signed they’s death warrants. Can’t drive-by a OG, mothafuckas. I’ll kill ’em all.”

“You all right?” I ask.

He whirls on me, and his palm smacks against my chest, sending me stumbling backward. “NO! No, I’m not fuckin’ all right. I’m shot, and my gym is fucked up. And it’s all because your dumb ass couldn’t turn down a fight you had no business steppin’ into. Shoulda said no, stupid ass white boy. Stupid ass. Fuckin’ stupid ass. Lucky those punks couldn’t shoot for shit.”
 

“That was…what were their names…Irving and Jermaine?”

“Yeah, them and the rest of the Trey-Nines come after you. Started some shit they can’t finish. I’m retired from that shit, but now they done pissed me off.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Get you back for embarrassin’ them in the fight. You shouldn’t’a won. They cain’t allow that shit.”

“I’m sorry—”

“You got to get outta here. They’ll come back, and I’mma be gunnin’ for ’em.”

He stalks back toward his gym, steps through the window frame. I follow him, and when he opens a narrow closet and takes a broom, I take it from him and start sweeping up the glass.

He watches for a moment, and then stomps toward me, snatches it away. “Naw, man. My gym, I’ll clean it up. Get outta here.”

“Rhino—”

“I ain’t mad at you, kid. But if you step up with Split and them, this is your life. It’ll be you in a car like that, shootin’ up somebody’s house. Know that. You step up with the Bishops, that’s your life.”
 

“I don’t know where else to go. What else to do.”
 

He shrugs. “Welcome to the big leagues, dog.”
 

I leave him sweeping up glass and plaster, head upstairs, shove my clothes and my cash savings into my backpack. I’ve got almost two hundred grand in that backpack, this time. It’s all I’ve got, and it still fits in a backpack.
 

I unpack a stack of cash, a ten-G stack. I take it with me as I go back down to the gym, where Rhino is ripping the ruined plaster off the walls with his bare hands, tearing it down in angry jerks, hauling off huge sections of drywall and tossing it aside. I watch for a second, feeling a pang. I don’t want to leave here. I liked it here, working out, eating, smoking, just chillin’, safe, away from it all.
 

I set the cash on the desk, and Rhino sees.
 

“I don’t want your fuckin’ money, man.”

“But your gym—”

“It ain’t about money. I built this place with my own two hands. I put up the studs, put up the drywall. I hauled every piece of equipment in here. I built the ring. I hung the window. One stupid fuckin’ drive-by, and I gotta do it all over again. I got money. It’s just…it’s just the fact of having to do it all over again. Na’mean?” He tosses the stack of cash back at me, and I catch it, put it in my bag.

Headlights approach, but no squealing tires. Rhino feels for the huge pistol at the back of his waistband, but doesn’t seem worried. The headlights broaden until the front of a rusted 1970s Pontiac GTO slides into view. The engine rumbles nice and loud, but it’s got a catch in the burble, a piston gone bad. Needs a tune-up.
 

The headlights stay on, the engine keeps rumbling, but the driver’s door opens, and Split steps out, stretchy red do-rag tied at the back of his head. He eyes the pools of blood in the street, the window frame, the bullet holes in the desk and wall and cabinet. The passenger door opens, and another brother steps out. Shorter, stocky, black do-rag, baggy jeans hanging way low, white T-shirt hem hanging around his thighs. Walks with a deep swagger, doesn’t say anything, just stands next to Split.

“Lemme guess…Trey-Nines?” Split says, stepping through the window frame.

“You got it,” Rhino answers, glancing up and then returning his attention to piling the drywall in a corner.
 

“Think they know who they started beef with?”

Rhino shrugs. “They sure as hell gonna find out.”
 

“Want me to take the boys for a ride?” Split asks, and the question is fraught.

“Nah. I got this. Pull the Bishops into it, we’ll have us a four-way problem. Bishops, the Eighty-Eights, the Trey-Nines, and their boys the 113 Posse. Just take Colt and let me handle it.”

Split nods, then looks to me. “What about it, Colt?”

I let out a breath. “That, or try the streets again on my own. I guess I’m in.”