Page 41 of Volt
“So why are you doing it?”
“Because this guy needs to be put down. He took my brothers away from me,” he says, his voice tight. “Because he’s trying to take our town away from us. There’s nothing we can do to bring our brothers back, but we sure as hell aren’t going to surrender Blue Rock to Zavala’s thugs and drug runners.”
As crazy as it sounds, I find that admirable. That he’s willing to lay everything on the line for his town and the people in it—it’s nuts, but it’s also something I have to respect. There aren’t many people who would risk everything to protect people they don’t even know.
“What about the rest of what I’ve heard?” I ask. “The drugs, the guns, the prostitutes?”
He chuckles softly and shakes his head. “There are more stories out there about us that are flat-out wrong than there are stories that are true. I know it’s hard separating fact from fiction.”
“Then do it for me,” I say. “Tell me what’s fact and what’s fiction.”
“I’m hardly an unbiased source.”
I laugh softly. “Nobody is, it seems. But I trust you to tell me the truth. I don’t know everything about you right now, but I know enough to know that you’re an honorable man. You have a good heart, and I just have a feeling you wouldn’t lie to me.”
He shakes his head. “No, I most definitely wouldn’t lie to you. That much I can promise you, Fallon.”
“I know that,” I say. “So, tell me. What is the truth about the Dark Pharaohs and what isn’t true?”
He lets out a long breath and takes a deep swallow of his beer. I watch him closely, trying to figure out what he’s going to tell me. But then he gives himself a quick nod and looks up at me again.
“We run weed,” he says bluntly. “It’s legal in California, but not in the quantities we sell to guys out of state. We also dabble in selling guns now and then. Those also almost all go out of state too.”
“And the rest?”
He shakes his head. “We don’t even dabble in the harder shit,” he says. “And we sure as hell don’t get involved in trafficking women. That’s some bullshit and whenever we run across somebody who is involved with it we… send them a very stern warning to cease and desist.”
“And if they don’t?”
He shrugs. “Then we reinforce the point,” he says. “We’ve never had to warn somebody for a third time.”
“So, you like kill people?”
“We’ve never killed anybody when our own lives weren’t being threatened. It hasn’t happened often, I can tell you that,” he responds. “And the only time we’ve ever had to take a life was when we started tangling with the cartel. Yeah, we had to kill some of them. But they were bad guys, and it was either hit them, or let them hit us. It was us or them. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
I sit back and process his words. On the one hand, the thought of killing anybody is abhorrent to me. I despise violence. On the other hand though, knowing it was a case of their lives being threatened—I suppose that’s understandable. If it really did come down to these cartel guys or Blake and his friends, I can’t really fault him for choosing to fight to stay alive. It’s the same choice he had to make when he was overseas. As a soldier, he was trained to kill. He killed to keep his friends alive over there. The same as he’s doing here. This is just a different kind of war.
The whole outlaw lifestyle is still something I’m uneasy with. That they deal in weed and guns isn’t something I’m crazy about but it’s not nearly as horrible as it could be. He says his club doesn’t deal in hard drugs or human trafficking like some people I’ve talked to seem to think they do. And the thing is, I believe him. I see the honesty and sincerity in his eyes. Maybe I’m being naïve and foolish, but I really don’t think Blake would lie to me.
And that’s the crux of my problem. There’s so much about his lifestyle I find repellent, but there’s so much about him I find compelling. Blake is a good man with a good heart. There’s no question in my mind that he’s a decent man. I don’t believe some of the things that I’ve heard about his club, and I don’t believe he’d hurt anybody unless there was no choice.
I’ve gotten myself into trouble when I believed in a person’s better angels before. I’ve convinced myself that some of the guys I’ve dated are better than they were. But in the back of my mind, I always knew they were bad guys and that they weren’t ever going to be as good as I wanted them to be. I always managed to convince myself they could be though. That I could be the one who changed them. It obviously never panned out.
With Blake though, I see something entirely different. I’m not having to convince myself that he’s good. He just is. He’s gruff and a little rough around the edges, but at heart, he’s a good man who does the right thing. He’s that rare guy who actually is as good as I think he is—despite the lifestyle he leads.
“So, what are we going to do, Fallon?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Me? I thought it was obvious,” he says. “I want to see you. I want to spend time with you. I enjoy being around you.”
My heart turns a somersault inside of me, and I smile. “I want the same thing. But I’m scared. What if—”
“Life is all about what ifs. What if you walk outside and get hit by a bus? What if you’re driving along and get sideswiped by another car?” he presses. “Are you going to let the what ifs control your life? Or are you going to choose to live instead?”
His words hit me hard, and I let them sink in. He’s eloquent when he wants to be. The sentiment behind his words is as simple as it is obvious and they’re things I’ve told myself a million times. But something about hearing them coming from his mouth just hits differently. Maybe I’m just looking for reasons to believe. Looking for reasons to go against my instinct which is to run away from the bad boy. Looking for reasons to be with him when there are so many reasons I shouldn’t be.
I live such a tightly controlled life and never stray outside the box I’ve confined myself in for so many years. Ever since my folks died, I’ve let my own fear control my life. Control everything I do. I’ve lived by a strict set of rules, governed by logic rather than letting any part of my heart and emotion creep into the mix. I’ve shut my heart out of everything. It’s infected everything from my art to my relationships with people. And as I sit here staring into his sparkling green eyes, I’m seeing how much I’ve forced myself to miss out on.
