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"What?" he asked, and I could feel his eyes on my profile.
To that, I snorted. "I'm starting to really feel bad for stealing from you. You have a lot more going on than one would think for just some biker."
"Think you'll find most bikers are a bit more than they look like, mami," he told me, shrugging. "What made you get into arms dealing, Livvy?" he asked after a long moment.
"I can't claim it was intentional, really," I started, remembering those first few terrible months of nothing but hard work and uncertainty. And pain. There had been so, so much pain. "I sort of fell into this... group..."
"Gang?" he corrected, wanting clarity.
"They would like to call themselves that, yeah," I agreed. "They were certainly violent enough. But lacking the leadership and organization and planning necessary to really pull it off. But, yeah, I found myself with them."
"How?" he asked, making me stiffen a bit. "If you don't mind talking about it," he clarified.
Did I?
With general people, maybe.
People who were nice and normal, who didn't understand things like how one ends up wrapped up in criminal organizations.
But I was in a car with an arms dealing biker. If there ever was a person who might understand, he was it.
"I left home when I was sixteen. With no actual plan of course."
"Comes with the territory of being sixteen, I think."
"Yeah," I agreed, nodding.
Though, really, it was more that I couldn't take any more of the screaming, the slapping around, the unfairly restrictive rules. There were only so many times you could cover angry red finger and palm-print marks on your cheek or pick chunks of your hair off the floor before you decided you were done, that if you had to endure one more attack, you'd lose it, grab the knife out of the block on the counter, and go all patricide on the person who got some sick sort of pleasure in beating you down day in and day out.
So I followed that impulse, packed a bag full of what I thought were essentials - clothes, makeup, what little cash I had from birthdays or babysitting the kids on the block.
I didn't think, however, to snag some of the things of worth in the house to hock for money to buy food. I didn't even grab the sleeping bag from the back of my closet.
But once I was gone, there was no way I was going to go back.
"There was a lot of cold and hungry in those days," I admitted, remembering clearly the gnawing pangs that kept me from sleep for days on end.
And then I came across Eman.
Eman was a good ten years older - too old, predatory even - but attractive, driving a decent car, offering to get me off the streets.
Nothing - not even a full belly - was ever free in life, though. And there was not much kindness in Eman's heart to speak of.
And young, pretty homeless girls didn't have much to offer.
At the time, it didn't feel as wrong, as skeezy as it did looking back. It didn't occur to me that gratitude shouldn't have to involve spread legs or an open mouth whenever Eman wanted it, even if I didn't. I hadn't known enough about the world to know that he had been using me, grooming me.
I just knew I wasn't so cold.
I wasn't starving.
And so long as I did what Eman wanted, no one was slapping me around.
It was better than the streets.
Or so it seemed at first.
And Eman's friends and him got it in their heads to start dealing in guns.
They compiled a nice little arsenal stealing from other low-level bangers in the area, wanting a big supply before they started getting their name out there to other organizations.
Then it happened.
Eman decided I wasn't just his plaything anymore. He wanted me to welcome everyone else with spread legs too.
"Fucking bastard," Roderick hissed, knuckles going white on the wheel while I fed him the ugly details of my young life.
"It didn't get that far," I assured him. "I might have been young and naive, but I wasn't completely spineless."
I plied Eman with drink after drink, let him have me one last time, waited until the booze made him too tired to function, then I carefully packed my stuff. I learned my lesson from the last time though. I didn't just pack my clothes. I packed the stacks of cash Eman had sitting around, some of his prized watches and chains. Then I tiptoed down the halls, going into the garage, and grabbing a bag of his guns as well.
"I had no plans on dealing the guns," I told him, shaking my head. "I think I was just thinking of them as protection, knowing there was no way Eman would let me get away with stealing from him, making a fool of him."
