Boots Read online

  “I’m Mrs. Romano.”

  The man stood up and offered his hand. “Mike Spicer, Loss Prevention. Have a seat, Mrs. Romano.”

  She shook his hand and sat down, giving Matteo another glance before turning back to the man and saying, “They told me on the phone that he took something?” The big man reached down beside his chair and seconds later produced a pair of shoes. It was Walmart, so they weren’t the fancy name-brand shoes that Matteo would have loved to have…but he was still small to make it alone to the mall without someone noticing him on the bus, or subway. He watched his mother’s face fall into a frown and she stared at those shoes for a long time before turning to him and saying, “Why?” In her defense, Matteo never told her about Samuel, or the fact that as he was being pushed off the monkey bars or knocked in the face with a baseball on purpose, or the “charity case” chant that quickly followed. If she noticed his bumps and bruises when she happened to really notice him, he always just told her he fell down, and she was always too busy to question it.

  “I wanted them,” Matteo said, crossing his arms and doing his eight-year-old best to look defiant.

  “You know better than to steal. I’ve taught you better than that!” Matteo knew that wasn’t true, and he was sure she had to as well. He’d never seen her steal, but she’d never actually told him not to. And, most importantly of all in his young mind, was the fact that he’d had a front row seat for many arguments that she and his father had about the old man going into her purse or her jewelry box or their checking account, and taking things that weren’t his. She was always mad at first, she yelled a lot…but almost as quickly she calmed down, usually because he promised never to go it again. The next thing he knew she’d be making the old man a lasagna, and letting him kiss her or grab her butt, and the argument was over. Day after day, year after year, she forgave him…so maybe stealing wasn’t so bad, as long as you said you were sorry. Of course, Matteo was smart enough to sense that right then and there wasn’t the time to tell her any of that. Instead he stayed silent and when she was finally finished waiting for an answer, she turned back to the man behind the desk and said, “He’s only eight years old—you’re not arresting him, are you?”

  “No,” the man said, placing his piercing blue-eyed gaze on Matteo’s face. “But I am concerned that an eight-year-old was here on his own. He told me you live six blocks over on 110th. Six blocks is a long way for an eight-year-old to walk alone in this city.” The “city” was in New York, the neighborhood was Queens, and Matteo had lived there and roamed the streets at will for his entire life. Well, at least for as long as he could remember, which was back to the summer before he started kindergarten at PS 101. The old lady that lived in the walk-up above them and was tasked with keeping an eye on him was about one hundred years old in Matteo’s estimate, and she took really long naps. Most days he could time his excursions just right and be back before her old bladder woke her and she made her way down the stairs, leaning on her cane, to check on him.

  “He took off on his babysitter,” was his mother’s reply. “He’s not just free to roam the city.” Her righteously indignant tone almost made Matteo smile. He knew Queens like the back of his hand, but again, in her defense, she probably had no idea.

  The bald man stared at his face for a while, like he was thinking there was something else he should say or do…finally with a heavy sigh he said, “I don’t want to see you here again without one of your parents. If I do, your family will be banned from the store. If you ever steal from here again, I will call the police and you will be arrested. Do you understand, son?”

  “Yep.” A nudge from his mother prompted him to change that to “Yes sir.” Matteo stood up before the grown-ups did and had to wait while his mother thanked the man profusely. Then, she gripped her son’s shoulder and dragged him out to the street, where she proceeded to tell him and everyone in the borough of Queens how humiliated she was, and how she was going to tell his father as soon as he came home. Matteo actually laughed when she said that. Who knew when or if the old man would come home? And when he did, they both knew he wouldn’t care. His laughter only served to piss his mother off more, however and she dug her fingers into his arm as she pulled him down the street, screaming at him half in English and half in Italian, all the way home. Matteo wasn’t bothered by it too much. She yelled a lot, and he was used to it. He wasn’t bothered much by his first brush with the law either…at least not bothered enough to ensure it was his last.

  2

  Nine Years Later

  School never got better for Matteo. Samuel Kent moved away in 7th grade, but there was always another tormentor to take his place. Over the years Matteo did make friends, but they were like him, the lost, forgotten souls who wandered aimlessly from one day to the next with the hope that someday adulthood would save them from their dull existence. He went home less and less, not that anyone seemed to notice, most of the time. He’d gotten a job with a construction company on the weekends and what money he didn’t spend on shoes was spent out drinking with his friends, or on the weed he’d started smoking to dull the pain by the time he was fourteen. For the most part he managed to live off the radar of school authorities, and the law. He’d been locked up for two weeks when he was twelve for stealing two pairs of shoes and a baseball jersey. His mom refused to bail him out, but thanks to overcrowding in juvenile hall, he was cut loose early. Of course he had to do community service, but even picking up trash along the side of the road beat the hell out of sitting at home and listening to his parents fight.

  When he was fifteen he got locked up again, this time for fighting. He was big enough by then, and mean enough, that he rarely got picked on anymore. But, when he saw some big guy kicking the little guy’s ass or heard someone making fun of a kid whose parents couldn’t afford to buy him the latest fashions, it pissed him off, and he had a short fuse. Most of the time he just got in trouble at school, but that time he’d been really pissed and he’d put the kid in the hospital. Juvenile hall sucked because he hated the feeling of being closed in, but again…six months out of his house and school both wasn’t so bad. He’d met a few of his best friends while he was there, so now the trick was not getting so caught up in their shenanigans that he had to go back. He was deep into his junior year of high school, and his plan was to take whatever he could carry and get as far away from Queens as he could by the end of that summer as soon as he turned eighteen. He didn’t figure he needed another full year of English, science, and math for anything. He’d learned how to drive on the construction job so all he needed was to pass the driver’s test and find something to drive. He could have gotten his license when he was sixteen if his mother would have signed the papers and paid for his test, but her excuse was that there was no reason to pay all that money when the family didn’t even have a car. It just gave him another reason to want to get the hell out of that house. He was ready to set out on his own and find a better way to get through this fucked-up thing called life.

  He was making his way down the stairs that morning, between second and third period, planning in his head how he would ask his Uncle Joe to use his car to take his driver’s test when he heard a commotion down near the freshman lockers. He glanced toward it and all he could see was a broad back covered in a white t-shirt, and a full head of blond hair. The big guy pulled his fist back and Matteo knew that what he couldn’t see was the smaller, younger, scared kid that Bobby Gramercy was about to knock out.

  “Hey! Fucking coward!” Bobby turned at the sound of Matteo’s voice as he made his way up behind him. The distraction allowed the tiny red-haired, freckle-faced freshman to twist out of Bobby’s grasp and take off running down the hallway.

  “You talking to me?” Bobby bellowed, freshman forgotten, and all attention focused on Matteo. Bobby was high school’s version of Samuel. So far all Matteo knew of the other boy was that he was a bully, and constantly in the dean’s office. Matteo had actually met him there and decided right away that he didn’t like the 6′2″ 190-pound bruiser. All that meat on his bones couldn’t possibly include balls, Matteo thought, judging by the way he was always targeting the younger, smaller kids.

  “Yeah, fuck-face, I’m talking to you. What the fuck is your problem? Does it make you feel like a man to pick on people smaller than you?”

  Matteo was in good shape, thanks to his job and the fact that he rarely ever just sat still. But he was only about 5′8″ and his muscles were wiry, and well-hidden underneath his clothes. He had also been fighting since he was six years old, and he was skilled in ways that most teens his age weren’t, but obviously, Gramercy didn’t know that…or maybe he was just really stupid. Bobby stepped up so that his chest was in Matteo’s face, pushed it out like a fucking peacock, and said, “You’re about to find out, you fucking midget.”

  Matteo smiled up at him, just before bringing his knee up and letting it connect with what was…surprisingly…a large set of balls. Matteo assumed they must be defective but judging by Bobby’s howl and the way Matteo had to step back to keep the big lug from falling right into him like a felled tree, they did feel pain. Matteo ignored the cheers of the other kids who had gathered and turned to walk away. Unfortunately the wall he hit when he turned around happened to be Mr. Davis…the Dean of Students and someone Matteo was intimately familiar with.

  “Mr. Romano, in my office! Now!” Matteo thought about defending himself, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he closed it. It wouldn’t do any good. The school had a zero-tolerance policy about fighting and all involved parties ended up with detention, suspension, or expulsion. Expulsion was the only thing Matteo hadn’t really experienced, unless you counted his stint in juvie. But in all honesty, if he got expelled this time, he’d just work more and sav
e faster and get the hell out of Dodge a little earlier.

  While Mr. Davis attended to Bobby, who was still clutching his balls and writhing on the floor, Matteo stuffed his hands in his pockets and headed for the office. When he got there, he pushed the door open and was face to face with a goddess. She caught him off-guard, and while he wasn’t usually one to openly salivate over the girls he knew were way out of his league, he was captivated, and he stood there, dumbfounded, for way too long. “You get a good enough look or would you like me to do a twirl?”

  “Uh, sorry…” Matteo took a step to the side so the girl could pass, but she surprised him when she stood in her place instead and slowly looked him over.

  When her eyes got to his feet she made a “Tsk” noise.

  Taking instant offense to her scoffing at the Nike running shoes he’d spent an entire paycheck on, he folded his arms and said, “What?”

  Those blue-green eyes came back up to his face and she smiled and said, “I was just thinking maybe I was hungry, but I only snack on real men. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

  “Real men? What the fuck does that mean?”

  She looked down again, only this time she was looking at her own boots. Matteo had been so focused on the top half of her body before that he hadn’t noticed the black boots on her feet with thick soles and silver chains hanging off them. When she brought her face back up again he followed it and she said, “Real men wear boots, and ride Harleys.”

  Matteo frowned. He owned a lot of shoes, but no boots, and he didn’t know anyone who drove a Harley. “Yeah, well maybe you’ve been hanging around the wrong men.”

  She laughed and tossed her soft brown hair back over her shoulder. “I doubt that. Now, if you’ll move, please.” He wasn’t ready to let it go…mostly because he’d never seen her before and was afraid he might never see her again. He opened his mouth just in time for it to seem almost as if Mr. Davis’ voice came out of it. The Dean was standing behind him, but instead of addressing Matteo, he was talking to the girl.

  “Miss Hall, aren’t you late for class? Not a good way to start your senior year at a new school.”

  The aqua-eyed goddess smiled at the Dean with as much contempt on her face as she’d had when she looked at Matteo. “Of course,” she said to the older man. “I want to be the best possible student I can be.” Matteo stepped out of her way and with a smirk at both him and the Dean, she walked out of the office. Dean Davis stepped around Matteo as the boy watched the girl leave. The back of her looked every bit as good as the front, but what Matteo was really focused on was the round patch on the back of her leather jacket. In the center of it was a picture of a skeleton on the back of a horse. The horse had its front legs raised and the skeleton held a sword in his hands. The word stitched at the top of the circle said, “Steel” and the one underneath, “Horsemen.” At the bottom was another long, rectangular patch that said, “Brooklyn Chapter.” She was a new transfer, and possibly from Brooklyn. He committed that to memory as he heard the Dean say:

  “Mr. Romano, can we get this over with so that I can alleviate the headache I’m sure you’ll leave me with?”

  Matteo chuckled and followed the older man into the office, but his mind was still on the girl with the aqua blue/green eyes, silky brown hair, and the motorcycle jacket. He wondered if she’d still be hungry if somehow he managed to score himself a pair of those boots…

  3

  All kids, without scientific intervention, are made the same. How they’re raised, however, and by whom, varies in an almost infinite way. The truth about that, though, is that most kids have no real clue until they’re older. By that time, they’ve been taught, or learned through the examples around them, the essentials of life. Sometimes, those kids are lucky, and their parents know exactly what it is a kid needs to learn in order to not only survive in the world but thrive.

  Celeste Hall’s mother chose death over the lifesaving chemotherapy that would have killed her child and spared her life. In doing so, she gave her daughter life…but that life was in the hands of a fifty-year-old, rough, hard, sometimes scary man. Celeste’s father, Joseph “Reaper” Hall was the vice president of the Brooklyn chapter of the Steel Horsemen when she was born, and although her departed mother had only been twenty-four at the time of her death, Joseph had already lived a half a century of an extremely rough, often violent life. By the time Celeste started school she knew how to say “Fuck” in three languages thanks to the versatility of the Steel Horsemen MC. The men in the club were impressed, her teacher was not.

  Celeste learned a lot from her father, most of it not good as far as society was concerned. She also learned from the other rough men that were around every day of her life, as well as the club girls and the old ladies. She had actually been surprised when she was old enough to realize that her life…her upbringing…was not only not the same as everyone else’s, but looked down upon by most people. Her only real saving grace had been the fact that even at his age, and the fact that he spent at least two-thirds of his life by that time abusing every substance known to man, her father’s looks never faltered. He was one of those men who seemed to look better with age, and it didn’t escape the notice of women…even women that no one would ever dream would get hooked up with the VP of a 1% MC. Celeste had three “stepmothers” growing up, and all three of them were, she would have to assume from her limited knowledge, “real ladies.” She knew that partly thanks to how badly the other old ladies, and the club girls, despised them, and partly thanks to the fact that at some point they all just up and disappeared. Celeste’s favorite had been the last one. Her name was Susan, and, thankfully, she’d been there through Celeste’s pre-adolescence and adolescence to guide her. Sadly, even though Susan seemed to be the toughest of the three, she hadn’t lasted either. When Celeste was sixteen, she came home from school one day and the woman she’d come to love was gone. She hadn’t dared ask her father about her but did take solace in the fact that the other old ladies whispered things about her going out west with a new identity…some place Reaper’s long reach couldn’t touch her. By that time Celeste knew even old ladies weren’t free to just walk away. The secrets the women knew were few, but history had shown them to be enough in some cases to bring down an entire organization, and Reaper would never have let that happen, especially since the former club president was currently serving a life sentence in Federal prison, and Reaper had assumed the position.

  Before Susan left, Celeste was dating a boy at school. He was a soccer player and his family immigrated to the US when he was a little boy from Venezuela. He was someone Reaper wouldn’t have let within a mile of his daughter…if he’d known. Susan arranged everything for her and after she left, Celeste continued to see him…but she got sloppy. They’d gone out for hamburgers one day, to a place where some of Reaper’s men sometimes hung out. It was less than fifteen minutes before her phone was ringing and Reaper was telling her to get her ass home. It was less than twenty-four hours later when her boyfriend, Miguel, and his family went missing. The story at school was that immigration had scooped them up in the middle of the night. Celeste wished that she believed that.

  For six months after Miguel, she avoided the boys at school. The men at the club wouldn’t dare look at her, much less touch her…but as lonely as she was, she wasn’t willing to ruin anyone else’s life…and then Reaper called her into his office one day and simply announced that he’d found her an old man.

  “You did what?”

  “The Death Dwellers are looking to get into business with us. They have something we need, but I had nothing to offer them…or so I thought. Turns out their VP lost his old lady recently and is looking for another.”