Better When He's Bad

CHAPTER 11 Bax

I DIDN’T WANT TO know what Dovie thought about the place that I called home, but really it was just a place to store all my stuff and catch a few z’s in between all the stuff I usually had going on. It was a crap hole. A studio in an apartment complex that was only half a step up from her own. I actually had a security door that worked, but other than that, between the dirty hallways and loud, disruptive neighbors, the two places could’ve been on the same block.

I didn’t have much. Just a bed that hadn’t been made, ever, a flat screen that I was always amazed to see when I opened the door, a black leather chair that had rips in the arms, and posters on the walls that were of mostly naked chicks and badass cars. I liked the cars better than the girls most of the time. It was dirty, musty, and I felt like she was seeing inside of who I really was as she followed me in the door, those wide green eyes taking it all in. This was where I belonged; not that bungalow so far out of the city.

“Have a seat. You want a beer or something?”

She shook her head, those red curls slipping and sliding across her pale face. She surprised me by sitting on the edge of the bed instead of taking the worn-out chair.

“Who paid for this place while you were in prison?”

I looked at her over my shoulder and got myself a beer out of the tiny fridge. I didn’t like her here. She didn’t fit in, just like she deserved something better than that shithole she lived in at the Skylark.

“My mom.”

She made a noise in her throat and caught all of her hair in one hand and pulled it off of her neck. She looked so young, so lost. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t just let her go when I knew I was going to end up taking all of that shine off of her.

“What?”

She lifted her eyebrows at me and bit her lip. I wasn’t going to like what she had to say. I was starting to recognize that as her tell.

“Your mom . . . who can’t even pull it together enough to get sober and live in that amazing house you bought her somehow managed, for five years, to make sure the rent was paid on this place? And what about your car? That thing had to have been somewhere secure, somewhere expensive. You really think she was the one paying the bills, staying on top of things when you couldn’t?”

I glared at her and flopped down in the chair. It groaned under my weight as she continued to watch me unwaveringly.

“Who then? Race?”

She gave her head a tiny shake and fiddled with her hair. “No. He didn’t have any extra money and we were laying pretty low after he first came and got me. I don’t think he would’ve risked drawing Novak’s attention by taking care of your car.”

My eyes narrowed even more as she verbally led me to the only possible conclusion, which she was drawing.

“You think it was Titus?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Titus doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself. He dropped out of sight before I could figure out how to survive on my own and all he’s done since is make my life hell because I didn’t end up all perfect and law-abiding like he did. We didn’t have the same opportunities, and I think it’s bullshit that he thinks he can judge me for making do the only way I know how.”

She looked at me with emerald shadows drifting over questioning eyes. Just like always, she was trying to paint me in a better light than I deserved. The reality was much darker and uglier than I think she could handle.

“That’s not exactly true, Bax. Parents are supposed to love their kids, provide for them and guide them into adulthood. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen across the board anymore. Titus made the choice to let your mom go and build a life for himself; you made the choice to stick with her and provide for the two of you the only way you could. You could have let her go, just like she did the two of you. You could have given yourself other opportunities. It wasn’t entirely Titus’s fault.”

“I was a kid, Dovie. What were my options? Starve? End up in the system? Find some nice, rich family to take me under their wing like a charity case while my mom drank herself to death? You tell me how any of that would have been better than becoming a thief.”

She cleared her throat and I could have sworn there was a sheen of tears in her gaze when she looked back up at me.

“You wouldn’t have ended up in jail. You would have never had to sell your soul to Novak. You wouldn’t have to fight for Nassir and end up getting stabbed. I don’t know what the exact answer is, Bax, but I do know you made the choice to be a bad guy and you can make the choice not to be.”

I thought her point was moot. I had only ever been this way. It was how I survived, how I lived, and aside from getting out from under Novak’s thumb, it was a life I made work for me. It wasn’t my problem that she not only wanted but deserved someone better than me. I was going to have to exist here long after she was gone. She didn’t get to come in and dismantle my entire world for the short time she was a visitor in it, even though that was exactly what she was doing.

I needed a cigarette but she always gave me a look when I lit up inside, so I chugged back the rest of the beer and changed the subject to why we were here in the first place.

“Hartman wanted Novak to kill you. Your mom got locked up for intent to sell and blackmailed him. She wanted him to bail her out and get the charges dropped, which of course he had no control over. When he told her that, she lost it and told him she would tell the wife, that she would plaster it all over the society pages because that junk still mattered to people on the Hill. Hartman freaked out, tried to put a contract on you, only Novak is smart and has plenty of money. A rich man in his pocket was a much better tool.” I shook my head at her. “I don’t know how you feel about looking into where your mom is at, but I would bet good money she’s not breathing anymore or that Novak somehow arranged to keep her locked up and quiet in order to keep Hartman under his thumb.”

Her eyes darted away and then came back to me. She looked a little paler than normal, but she just waited patiently for me to keep going even though her chest was now rapidly rising and falling.

“Hartman wanted you dead, but turns out Novak wanted to keep me on the leash even more. I guess he knew I was getting ready to bail, so he told Race about you and the contract on your life. He also oh-so-generously gave Race a recording of the old man trying to arrange for your death. That’s how Race blackmailed your dad into claiming his parental rights and pulling you out of foster care. It’s also how he got control of his college fund, which he used to support you guys while you finished high school.”

I saw her shiver. I wanted to go wrap her up in a hug, but this was ugly, and offering her comfort wouldn’t make any of it easier to swallow. “What did Race have to give Novak in return?”

“My undying loyalty and some kind of guarantee that I would behave and follow the rules from here until eternity. The old guy Race pulled out of the house that night was in business with Novak. He was some retail giant, worth more money than you and I will ever see in our lifetime. He took Novak’s dirty money and made it clean. I guess he was getting ready to go to the feds because he was tired of being owned by a gangster. Novak wanted him out of the way and wanted me to be the one to do it. Race was supposed to grab the old guy, we were supposed to meet up at the spot, and I was somehow supposed to end up putting a bullet in his head. Novak was gonna tape it, use that as leverage to keep me tied to him or face serious jail time for murder and kidnapping, only Titus and the heat showed up and things went to hell.”

“Why did Novak think you would shoot the guy? What could he have done to make you go that far?” Her voice was quiet, like she was scared of my answer.

I sighed and threw my head back and closed my eyes.

“Because if I didn’t do it, he would’ve made Race do it, and he knew there was no way I would’ve let it go down like that. He had you as leverage to work Race like a puppet, and he had Race to pull my strings. The asshole didn’t get to be king of the city by being stupid.”

I had to say she was taking the news that she had narrowly escaped being the target of a murder-for-hire contract pretty well.

“So when you went away and Race was of no use anymore, why would he come back? What is this all about? Why is Race so sure he can take Novak down and why is he flashing pictures of Lord Hartman around?”

“The old bastard had no clue about any of that, but if I can read between the lines, I think I know.”

“So?”

“I told you a rich guy on the hook is better for a guy like Novak than money any day, and his launderer died the night I got busted. Not in the way he intended, but the guy still got smoked. That means Novak was in the market for someone else to spit shine all his dough, and nobody is better for that than someone he already has a bunch of dirt on.”

“You think Novak is blackmailing Lord Hartman to launder his money?”

“I do.”

“And you think Race figured that out and that’s why he brought us here, why he threatened Novak, and why he was asking all those criminals if his dad had been around?”

She was quick. “I do,” I said again.

I lowered my head so I could look her in the eye. She was messing with her hair and worrying her bottom lip.

“Just ask, Dovie.”

I saw her chest rise and fall under the thin material of her T-shirt. I had to admit, she always impressed me with her self-reliance. She never just folded.

“What does that mean for me, Bax? How does it all end for us?”

For me, it ended in blood or more time behind bars. For her, I would like to promise that it ended with her back at her crappy apartment, waiting tables and finishing school so that she could help kids like she wanted, but I wasn’t going to lie to her like that.

“Your brother has always been the smartest guy I have ever known. He not only blackmailed the old man for his college fund, he made him set up a trust with you as the beneficiary on it. There’s over a million dollars in it, and if anything—and I do mean anything—happens to you, the money in the trust gets donated to that halfway house you work at.”

Dovie blinked at me in stunned shock and whispered, “But what good is that? Lord Hartman can just change the terms anytime he wants.”

I shook my head. “No. Race made sure it was rock solid. The only person that can add or subtract anything to the trust is Lady Hartman, and for her to do that someone would have to tell her not only about the old man’s wandering dick, but about you too. Race has it locked down. He firmly has your piece-of-shit father by the balls.”

As for where that left us and the rest of the mess trying to suck us under, I told her as honestly as I could. “Everything else depends on what Race has. The only reason they haven’t snatched you and dragged you in to draw him out is because I’m in the way. He knew I wouldn’t let them use you to get to him. As for Hartman, if your mom is out of the way, and with me and Race circling around you, I can’t imagine he would be dumb enough to try anything with you. Plus Novak is the only guy he could ask and look how that turned out for him last time. Novak isn’t big on favors and right now you are far more useful in terms of him getting to Race and whatever Race has. That’s the threat we have to worry about.”

“Are you using me to get to him, Bax? Is that what all this is really about?”

I sighed and felt the vein in my temple throb. I looked down at the broken chains circling my wrists and then back up at her. I didn’t know the answer to that anymore.

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“I need to find Race. I like you, like getting you naked even more, maybe more than I’ve liked anything in my life up to this point, but at the end of the day, whoever is responsible for taking five years from me is going down. I know that won’t jive with you if it ends up being Race, and after I’m done with Novak, there won’t be anything left, so I don’t know what this is, Copper-Top.”

She got up off the bed and walked over to where I was sprawled in the chair. I just watched her until she was standing in front of me. Her hands hung loosely at her sides and her eyes were wild and full of fear and something else I couldn’t name. She was the epitome of everything good that came from bad people and a bad place. She was like a flower that grew out of the impenetrable face of a cliff wall. How she maintained that softness, that care, was a mystery to me and I hoped to God she found someone willing to kill for her in order to protect it after I was long gone.

She sighed so hard I felt the depth of it from the space that separated us. She bent over so her hands were on each of my knees and we were eye-to-eye. I couldn’t help but let my gaze wander down the now gaping neck of her shirt, but when I jerked it back up to hers, it was almost impossible not to get lost in that dense forest of green.

“Titus didn’t just happen to be there that night, Bax. Put the pieces together. Race was stuck between his loyalty to you and Novak holding me over his head. Call your brother.”

“Half brother.” The correction was automatic, which made her roll her eyes at me.

“Ask him about that night. I bet you anything that Race was the reason he was there. Race did set you up, Bax, but he did it to save you.”

I felt my heart rate drop and then thunder right back up so that blood and something else was rushing in my ears. “What do you mean?”

Her hands slid up my thighs and she leaned even farther over, so that her full lips, that mouth I wanted to just let make everything better, was a breath away from my own.

“He was always looking out for you, trying to save you. You don’t think in Race’s mind the option of sending his best friend to jail for five years versus watching you commit murder and forcing you to be Novak’s dog for eternity was the lesser of two evils? He was stuck. Maybe he asked Titus for help and that’s how the meet-up got busted. You made it worse by running, but that doesn’t surprise me.”

I wanted to recoil, to let the fury that had simmered under the surface of my skin for the last five years loose, but she was the only one close enough for it to land on, and I knew she deserved better than that from me. I was going to push out of the chair, I needed a minute to process this, to get my brain to stop spinning, but she didn’t give it to me. She closed the last fraction of space between her mouth and mine. Her lips, soft and welcoming, made everything else screaming at me go quiet. She always somehow managed to do that to me.

It was just a featherlight touch, so brief and delicate I could have imagined it had she not pulled away and lifted her hands to either side of my face. She held me in place while we watched each other. Her thumbs brushed under each of my eyes and her mouth kicked up in a sad half grin.

“The first time I saw you, I thought these eyes were empty. That there was nothing in there. I couldn’t understand why Race thought you were so trustworthy, so worth coming back to this awful place for. Now when I look into them, I can see everything he was trying so desperately to save.”

Something felt like it was squeezing me alive from the inside out. I couldn’t breathe, and suddenly this dingy apartment was the last place on earth I wanted to be.

“And what’s that, Copper-Top? What’s in there that you think makes me different from any other two-bit criminal you’re going to run into in the Point?”

She let go of my face and took a step back. She absently rubbed her arms as she considered me with a heartbreaking expression on her lovely face.

“We’re more than the sum of our parts, Bax. If we weren’t, I would be a cold-blooded murderer or a junkie. You talk about making the hard choice and living with the outcome . . . why don’t you try it? Try to live beyond the scared kid who had to steal so he could feed himself and his mom. Try to look past the bitter young man who is mad at his brother for leaving him behind and purposely doing the opposite of what he does to prove a point. There is more to who you are than the bad things you have done.”

I felt her words crawling all over me like angry ants. I shoved out of the chair so hard, I thought I heard a snap. She was just watching me and I had to get away from her for a second.

“I need a smoke. I’ll be back.”

I wanted to think I was smooth enough, had a tough enough shell, that she couldn’t see me running, but the truth of it was reflected in those leafy eyes. She turned her back on me as I stormed out of the door.

I had the cigarette lit before my feet touched the sidewalk out in front of the apartment building. I flipped my phone around and stared at the darkened screen for a long minute while the smoke filled my lungs. For the second time that night, I called Titus. Just like the first call, he answered on the first ring.

“Shane.”

I didn’t bother to correct him. “The night I got busted, did you know what was going down? Did Race tell you Novak was trying to put me on the hook for murder?”

I heard him swear, heard some background noise as he obviously excused himself from whatever cop business he was doing. I squinted into the night and tried to figure out how I had gone, in the blink of an eye, from thinking I had all the answers to being so clueless.

“I didn’t know the whole story. Race told me if I didn’t have a SWAT team at the warehouse that night that you were going to be fucked, that Novak was going to own you forever. He said you were both trying to get out, and that Novak didn’t want to let you go. I didn’t know about the kidnapping or the murder. It was all just a shit show. I think Race was trying to mitigate the damage, but he didn’t do anyone any favors by keeping us all in the dark. If you hadn’t run and got caught in the Aston Martin, chances are you would’ve never seen the inside of a cell.”

He sighed and swore again. Apparently foul language ran in the family.

“We tried to pin the murder on Novak, but there were too many people there and too many conflicting stories. He has too many people indebted to him, willing to do time for him, for us to make a case.”

“Race was trying to protect his sister. That’s why he kept it all quiet. Novak was holding her over his head, but he didn’t plan on Race going to you because he knew how I felt about you.”

“Well, you’re a grown-ass man now, Bax. Get over it. We’re family, and whether I agree with your choices or you with mine, we are all the other has.”

I snorted again and that tightness in my chest started to spread.

“Now you want to be family? What about when I was too young to take care of myself and actually needed you to give a shit?”

A long-drawn-out silence met my outburst and I could almost feel regret and something else coming across the phone connection.

“I was just a kid, too, Bax. I was bound to make mistakes. I was only trying to survive.”

I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe in and out steadily before I chucked my phone into the street. I didn’t want to relate, but here, in the Point, survival was the only language we all spoke fluently.

“Did you take care of the Runner while I was locked up?”

He gave a dry little laugh that held anything but humor. “No, Gus did. I just made sure I paid the storage fees on it.”

“And the apartment?”

“Jesus, Bax. I know you hate my guts, but did you really think I was going to throw your ass behind bars and not make sure you had a place to go when you got out?”

I didn’t know what to say to any of that. Titus and I had never seemed to be on the same block, let alone the same side of the street. I didn’t know how to process all this new information.

“You need to be careful. All of this stuff with Race and Novak isn’t over, and for now they’re leaving the girl alone because they don’t want to tip their hand. But if Race doesn’t show soon, all bets will be off.”

“She stays out of it. Novak can come after me anytime he wants. I welcome the opportunity to let him know what I think of his plans.”

There was another sigh. “Bax, I don’t want to put you back in jail, or worse yet, have to identify you in the morgue.”

Now it was my turn to laugh without any kind of humor. “Funny how those are the same options I see. I never thought we would agree on anything.”

“That girl cares about you, Shane. You really gonna just keep living your life like it doesn’t matter?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut like I could black out all the new insights I was forced to take in tonight.

“I don’t know, Titus, I’m just going to keep living it the only way I know how.”

“Learn from your mistakes, little brother. That’s all you can do. I gotta go, there was an armed robbery at a bar in the District.”

I didn’t bother to say good-bye, I just put the phone back in my pocket and meandered back upstairs. Now I didn’t want her here. Dovie saw too much, got too close to the heart of things. When I pushed open the door, I had to do a double take. In the fifteen minutes I had been outside, she had stripped and remade the bed, vacuumed the floor, wiped down the TV, straightened up the little kitchenette, and piled all the discarded clothes and junk on the floor into one pile by the closet. It looked like a normal person lived there, not like a place that was used primarily for sex and sleep.

I scraped my hands roughly across my head and made my way over to where she was lying on the bed. I sat down on the edge and looked down at her. She shrugged her shoulders and gave me an “oh well” look. I reached out a finger and moved one of her curls away from her face.

“You can clean it up, but that doesn’t change what it is, Dovie.”

“Are we talking about the apartment or you, Bax?”

I moved my finger down so I could run it across the plush pout of her bottom lip. “Either or. I’m not going to ever be a good guy, Copper-Top.”

She caught my hand in her own and it made my blood go hot when she put a soft kiss right in the center of my palm. “No, you’re not, but that doesn’t mean you always have to be a bad guy either. Why can’t you just be a little bit of both?”

Because for me it had always been all or nothing. Just like this situation with her. I could keep tabs on her, make sure everyone knew that I would jack them up if they messed with her and that they’d better not lay a finger on her, but no. Instead I was having a hard time figuring out where she started and I ended, and she was starting to look like a reward for all that I had missed in the last five years. Just like everything else in my life, going all in meant when it went bad, and when it was all over, there was a good chance it would leave me wrecked. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, didn’t want her to keep looking at me like she saw more to me than there was, so l leaned down and kissed her. I didn’t have to think about right or wrong when she made everything better.