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I knew this meant she’d had a rough day, and this was further solidified when I spotted Mei in the dispersin’ crowd. She stood still in the surgin’ bodies watchin’ us with a sort of pained smile on her face. Dressed all in black, one dark lipstick application away from full-blown goth, Cleo’s best friend watched over her as she always did. It was a kind of hand-off we had. I had Cleo before and after school, and Mei had her durin’ the daytime hours.
In ways that might have been unhealthy but explainable given the tragedy we’d lived through together, we were fiercely bonded together. Mei and I parentheses around Cleo and her tender heart. Between the two of us, we wouldn’t let anythin’ bad happen to our girl ever again. We’d never spoken of it, but we didn’t have to. Cleo was smart about people, but Mei was plain fuckin’ smart.
Beyond that, Mei and me, we got each other.
she was our Rocky. The girl with chipped black polish on her nails and bruises on her knuckles from almost daily bouts at the martial arts gym downtown. The girl who, since Kate’s death, only wore black as if she was in perpetual mournin’.
Our fighter.
Somethin’ in my chest constricted watchin’ Mei standin’ alone in that group of happily oblivious students. She didn’t fit in, and she didn’t want to. I got that. She was content bein’ Cleo’s watchdog, but what did that leave her?
Anger flared in my belly at the mention of Florent Marchand, Mei’s father in name only. At least in my opinion. The bastard never made time for his daughter, even now that his wife and her mother, Daiyu, was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. Helplessness fanned the flames of my anger.
Daiyu was dyin’, and Mei was gonna lose another mother.
“Take it easy on Mei, okay?”
“You make it worth my while, maybe I’ll tell you.” A snot-nosed teen was leerin’ down at a dark-haired girl, his expression filled with teenage lecherous intent. One of his hands was perched on the girl’s ass, squeezin’ like he’d never touched a woman before. “I can do that.” The purr was practiced, breathy and filled with sexual promise.
“What’s a girl like you doing dealing anyway, huh?” “Maybe I need to make some extra cash.”
That breathy little bimbo was Mei. Before I could curb my baser instincts, I stalked toward the kid and moved her away from him with one palm curled around her shoulder. She spun into me, a snarl marrin’ her small red mouth ’til she saw it was me. And then she went white as a ghost. Which was fittin’ ’cause I was about to kill her.
Usin’ the hand still curled around her shoulder, I pushed her with controlled force up against the lockers and planted my other hand just under her throat between her delicate clavicles. She was so slight, I could’ve pinned her entire body there for hours without tirin’. Realizin’ that just made me even angrier. She was so delicate, so young. Didn’t she understand how fragile that was? How fuckin’ precious? “I’ll scare you whenever I damn well please,” I growled,
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “What you really are is a man with a white knight complex. I don’t need saving, Henning, so why don’t you back off?” “Like hell you don’t.” “I can handle Brian.” “You need savin’ from your own damn self,” I snapped,
“Hey,” I said, softenin’ like butter in a pan, reachin’ out to cup the back of Mei’s head and shake it a little. “You used to talk to me. I’m still here. What’s goin’ on in that madly brilliant brain?”
“Nothing I can do to help Ma, but I can still help figure out who killed Kate.” Contrary emotions attacked me simultaneously. A reluctant sense of pride in her, that this young woman would be so loyal to Kate, to Cleo and me, that she’d risk herself in the pursuit of justice.
“You listen to me, Mei Zhen. There is nothin’ you can do to bring Kate back, and I’m sorrier than you’ll ever fuckin’ know that you gotta lose two mothers at the age of seventeen. But under absolutely no fuckin’ circumstances are you gettin’ involved in anythin’ to do with Kate’s death. The sheer stupidity of you thinkin’ you can take on a group of murderers makes me seriously rethink your IQ. Do you get me?”
“Enough!” The word barked out of me, and Mei flinched, not with fear, but somethin’ that was somehow worse. Rejection.
“You used The Fallen MC to help you get information about Kate and about some of the women who showed up at the hospital abused and broken,” she pointed out. “Now you’re one of them. Should I avoid you, using that very same logic?”
“You’re just a kid. You wanna get yourself killed too?” “No one would even care!” she cried, that sadness lurkin’ in her eyes suffusin’ her entire face ’til it was almost grotesque with agony. “Ma is dying, and Dad doesn’t give a flying fuck I’m alive.”
“What about Old Dragon?” I demanded,
“You think that old geezer wouldn’t miss you like crazy? What about Cleo? That girl loves you more than she loves anyone else in this world apart from me. She wouldn’t know how to live without you.” Mei blinked at me, her slim nose wrinkled with the effort not to cry. “You think I wouldn’t care?” I asked softly, the words scourin’ up my throat like knives. “What do I have to do to prove to you that you’re loved, Mei?”
I was still standin’ there like a bastard tryin’ to figure out how to love a girl who desperately needed love when it was socially unacceptable for me to love her any more than I already did.
Canada’s boogeyman. The Fallen’s weapon. Hence my biker name. Axe.
He hated me, my president, and I hated him right back. But I was too valuable to him to excommunicate, and he had too much on me now for me to break away clean.
“War,” Cedar murmured to me under the low hum of bike pipes as the men in front of us peeled out of the lot. “Mark this, brother. Rooster just bought war for us all.”
“I don’t like this, brother,” Cedar said as he put on his night goggles. “I didn’t sign up for this shit. When Bat used to talk about MC life, it wasn’t like this.” “What’re you gonna do?” I demanded. “The only way outta this life is through death or excommunication. You want your tatt cut outta your flesh?” “Maybe,” he snapped back. “I’d rather have an ugly scar than a Chinese bullet through my fuckin’ skull.
“Let me talk to Old Dragon before we do anythin’ crazy. He’s got old connections with the triad. Maybe we can broker some kinda sit-down,” I grunted and kicked my bike into gear to follow the trail of dust into the rows of crops. “If not, I’ll call Zeus Garro. We’re dead if this war comes to a head anyway. I’d rather be dead for tryin’ to keep the peace than by divin’ into the chaos.”
“You might drive a Harley instead of riding a white horse, but that doesn’t make you any less noble. I don’t know many men who would raise another man’s daughter better than his own. Who would sacrifice everything again and again to give her the best life he could.” Her lips thinned in self-mockery. “A man who’d put up with his stepdaughter’s best friend, too.”
My hand landed heavily on top of hers, so much bigger I could have swallowed her entire hand in one palm. She seemed startled by the contact before settling. I made sure she was lookin’ me in the eye before I told her the truth, “Cleo and I couldn’t have survived losin’ Kate without you. Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I trust you,” she said softly, so softly I could barely hear the words. “I trust you, even if you don’t, Henning. I know you’ll always do the right thing.
When she only rolled her lips under her teeth, I gave her a vigorous shake. “You hear me, Rocky? Focus on bein’ a kid, for Christ’s sake.”
“Don’t leave,” I said, squeezin’ her shoulders before releasin’ her to grab a glass of water. Bleedin’ always made you thirsty. “Cleo sleeps better with you around and it’s late.”
And whatever Rocky was to me, it was sacred.
“It’s strange,” she whispered, almost to herself, and I held very still, suddenly afraid to startle her out of revealin’ her mysteries. “That you could look at me and see everything I’ve ever wanted to be.” She closed the book and hugged it to her chest, eyes dark and fathomless as they raised to me. “It feels just as good as it does bad. To be seen like that.” Her lips flattened. “Like being flayed alive.” “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“One hundred hearts would not be enough to carry the love I have for you,” I croaked out in Cantonese. Ma smiled. “One hundred hearts would never be enough to carry the love and pride I have for you, my Mei Zhen. Remember that always.”
“I love you more than one hundred hearts, Ma,” I whispered to her in Cantonese again before pressing a kiss to the middle of her forehead.
“I have In the Mood for Love cued up on the laptop if she wakes up,” I told him. “We already watched it today, but…” “It’s her favourite movie,” he finished on an anguished breath.
“You know I’m dying inside, too,” he whispered, the words constricted and breathy like he could barely speak through a too-tight throat. “You don’t know what it’s like to watch the love of your life just…” He flapped his hand ineloquently. He rarely showed emotion. Unfairly, I wondered if the meeting today had gone badly. Rationally, I knew he loved Ma to distraction. It was easy to forget that sometimes when he was so cold and distant with everyone else. Especially me.
“Mei Zhen Marchand,” he snapped, grabbing my arm almost painfully as I made to storm past him. “You do not speak to family so disrespectfully.” “You’re right,” I agreed, staring up at him with all the defiance I felt bristling across my skin. “I don’t speak to Ma like that. To Old Dragon or Henning and Cleo. Just you.” Dad’s eyes flashed. “Are you going to him now?” I didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. That kind of hatred was reserved for Henning alone.
“He’s our dai lo,” Brian corrected from across the table. “He arrives exactly on time.”
The dai lo was a term for “big brother,” which meant, in this case, the boss.
“You want to be a soldier,” he said in a way that should have been a question but wasn’t. I nodded anyway. “Well then.” He dropped my hair, turned on his heel, and collected his things from Kang Li. “So be it.”
It was the evening of our prom, the final dance of our high school careers. I would rather pluck out my own eyeballs with a hot poker than go, but Cleo had begged me, and of course, I couldn’t find the will to tell her no. She was a beautiful girl and popular, but she still had a shyness and an edge of fear from what had happened to her mum, making her hesitate about social situations. If it made her feel better to go with me, I’d happily go as her guard dog.
Henning’s stepmum stepped away to frown down at me, her finely creased face pretty even in its scowl. “You should try to be a girl sometimes, hmm? Maybe then you’d have a boyfriend.”
“No. I told you things are goin’ down with the club, and we’re bein’ vigilant, yeah? Not only that, I am not gonna let some punk kid drive two of my girls when he’s barely got his license, and I got no doubt he plans to drink tonight,
“Is Brian picking you up?” Cleo asked me, already reaching for her phone to text her date. Henning stopped mid-step on his way back to the studio. “You’ve got a date to this thing?” he asked me, rudely incredulous. I sniffed, staring down my nose at him. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Brian?” Henning growled the word, putting his beer down on the counter slowly. Still, it hit the surface with too much force and frothed over. “That motherfuckin’ drug dealer you were with at your locker?” “Drug dealer?” Cleo asked, eyes comically wide. “No way.” “Yes way,” Henning bit out, staring me down with those vivid blue-green eyes. “What the fuck, Mei? Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that kid?”
“Good thing you aren’t my father.” Henning’s jaw popped with strain. “Yeah, good thing, or I’d tan your ass.” “Dad!” Cleo exclaimed in surprise, then laughed. “You’ve never spanked me. Not even once.” “Yeah, well, you never deserved it,” he muttered darkly,
“Is Brian really a drug dealer? Because if so, I get why Dad’s mad, Mei. Why would you want to get caught up in that?” A pause, delicate and shivering with her anxiety and remembered pain. “Didn’t Mum’s death teach you anything?”
