Page 46 of Vice
She smiles shyly, covering her mouth half-heartedly with one hand. Pressing her fingertips into her lips, she laughs quietly. “Okay. I suppose I will have to accept that as your answer. Do I go again?”
“Yes. Until you trick me into doing something Simon hasn’t told me to do.”
“I see. Okay.” She shifts, getting comfortable. “Now, Simon says, tell me about your life, Cade. I already know where you come from. Do you still live in Alabama? Do you work for your father, like Laura did?”
I look down at my hands, spreading my fingers. I laugh. “No. I don’t live in Alabama anymore. I live in New Mexico. And no, I don’t work for my father.”
“Then what do you do? Are you like my father? Do you sell drugs and guns to the highest bidder?”
“No. I belong to a…” God, this is going to sound ridiculous. How am I going to convince her that I’m not just another violent piece of shit when I explain my life to her? “I belong to a motorcycle club. But the Widow Makers are nothing like the other clubs you’ve probably met. We don’t treat women like shit. We do our best to help people, not hurt them. Most of the time. Jamie and I have spent every day since Laura disappeared using the resources available to us to try and find her. We’ve been able to help a lot of other women in the process.”
“How?”
“By removing them from circumstances of abuse. By finding them work, new names, new homes. New identities, when they’ve needed them.”
“So…this Widow Makers club of yours. You don’t fight? You don’t kill people?”
I crack my index finger, sighing. “We do fight. We do kill people. The world we’re involved in…there’s no escaping hatred and fear.” I wish I could tell her differently. I wish I could honestly say that the club stood for peace and non-violence. Maybe one day we might be able to. Ever since my sister was taken, both Jamie and myself have been single minded in our goal of bringing her home safely, so people have paid the price. Laws have been broken. Lives have been taken. Now I know for sure that Laura is gone, where will that leave the club? I’m not a violent man by nature. I am a man driven by need. I went to war to protect my country, and to protect my best friend, not because I enjoyed the thrill of pulling the trigger on a gun.
Natalia doesn’t seem shocked by my answer. “You’re honest, Cade. That’s all you can ever be.” We’re both silent, the seconds stretching out between us, filled with the quiet fervor of our thoughts. After a long time, Natalia reaches out, cautiously running her fingertips against the seam of my jeans. Her touch is light, but it’s grounding at the same time. It’s a small gesture—the gesture of someone unsure and nervous, yet desperate to make some form of physical contact.
“Were you marked, then?” she asks.
“Marked. Tattooed by your club. To show that you belong to them.”
“Oh. Yeah. It’s kind of a requirement.”
Natalia props herself up on one elbow, looking at me. “Show me.”
“You want to see?” Of course, I never turned my back on her the other day when we fucked in her tree house. I know she noticed the parts of my tattoo that were visible over the tops of my shoulders, but she never saw the full piece. Would it have freaked her out then, if she had seen it?
“Yes,” she tells me softly. “Please. I’m…interested.”
She sure as hell looks like she is as well. “All right. If you insist.” I take off my shirt in a smooth, fluid movement, grabbing the material behind my head and pulling it off in one go. Natalia’s unashamed as she studies my body. She tentatively reaches out and runs her hand over my chest, her lower lip fastened tightly between her teeth. She likes what she sees. She likes the fact that I’m ripped. She likes the fact that I’m strong, and powerful. I don’t think this because I’m an asshole, and I’m vain as fuck. I can just see the appreciation on her face, and for the first time it matters to me.
I’m not jacked for the sake of looking good. I work out and I train hard because I need to know I’m going to be the better man in a fight. I always need to know that I’m going to be able to overpower an assailant, and I can’t do that if I have a fucking beer gut. But now, with Natalia’s eyes roving over my stomach and my chest, her hand skating over my skin, I’m pretty fucking stoked that I look the way I do, because she seems to be into it. Really fucking into it.
Slowly, I turn around, so she can see my back. She breathes steadily, apparently calm enough, but I can feel her shock. It’s a big tattoo. A really big fucking tattoo. From between my shoulder blades, down to the base of my spine, the black ink spikes and curls, forming the Widow Makers’ club badge. A skull, mouth open, with two guns crossed behind it. The top rocker says Widow Makers; the bottom rocker reads New Mexico. Above the bottom rocker, in small, bold lettering: Vice President. My skin feels electrified while Natalia begins to trace her fingers over the lines and shapes of the ink.
“Did it hurt?” she whispers.
“Not really, no.” I’m sure she noticed the scars on my chest and on my side. I’ve taken two bullets before. A knife once, when I was in Chino. Those hurt way more than being tattooed, but I don’t need to emphasize the fact that I lead a dangerous life to her. For some reason, I don’t want her to think I’m that kind of guy. I want her to feel safe with me, I want to take her away from nightmares and heartbreak, not introduce her to even more.
“You’re lucky,” she whispers. “Mine hurt a lot.”
I spin around. “You have a tattoo?” I never noticed it before. She was completely naked the other day. How could I have missed something like that on her? Natalia nods. Slowly, she pushes back her sleeve, and there, on the inside of her forearm, is a brand. The exact same brand I noticed on Plato, the very first time I met him: A wolf’s head, and underneath it, a large, bold V for Villalobos.
“He had you branded? Like you’re his fucking property?” Anger seems to be a constant these days. It pollutes me from the inside out, and I can’t seem to get the taste out of my mouth.
“Of course I am his property. I am his most prized possession.” Natalia rolls her sleeve back down, holding her hand over the brand like it still hurts her. “He wanted to do it on the inside of my thigh. So any man who dared to try and sleep with me would know he was trespassing. I managed to convince him it would be better to have it here, where it was visible, though.”
Jesus. On the inside of her thigh? Sick motherfucker. I’m sure he would have wanted to administer the brand himself. Just the thought of it makes me want to throw up.
“I was only fourteen,” she continues. “I was changing. I started to get breasts,” she explains miserably. “And my father decided a deterrent was in order.”
“God damn it.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”
