Crime and Passion 7/10
Chapter Seven
Brendon hurt all over and he wasn’t sure how much blood he’d swallowed in the last few hours. Not enough to actually throw up, just enough to feel sticky from the inside out and vaguely ill. He’d been paid two more visits, once by Iero followed quickly by Thug One and Thug Two (Brendon actually knew their names now, Toro and Bryar; Iero had been nice enough to introduce them) and the second time by just the goons.
At this rate, even if he decided to go after his boss it wasn’t like it was going to be feasible. He could barely move. He’d been curled up on the floor for he didn’t even know how long; long enough to harbor the irrational fear of being stuck that way forever. He was trapped in the dark, couldn’t so much as make a fist without biting back a groan of pain. He was so very dead.
The door opened again and Brendon blinked into the shaft of light that hit his eyes.
“You don’t look so good,” Iero said, walking into the room.
Brendon coughed and bit back his retort of ‘no shit’. Iero’s unflappable cool was starting to get really annoying, but at least he’d left Mikey Way behind. That guy was just creepy. He didn’t look anything like the reputation that preceded him, not like his brother who at least looked like a mafia boss might. And at least Iero wasn’t Toro or Bryar or both, all steel-toed boots and hard knuckles.
“So,” Iero said, squatting next to Brendon’s body, a cigarette dangling between the fingers of his right hand. “Here’s the thing: Gerard wants an answer right fucking now. Are you going to help us or not?”
Brendon’s tongue darted out to touch his lips and it was gross, the blood that was sticky there and caking at the corners of his mouth. He looked up at Iero and could barely make out his features with the way the light had him backlit, but he imagined his expression was as serious as his tone.
“What happens if I say no?” Brendon asked.
Iero shrugged. “We kill you. And then we kill the girl, because it’s pretty much a guarantee that the feds are gonna want her back to testify against all of us. Or,” he added thoughtfully. “We kill the girl while you watch. And then we kill you. Either way, you both end up dead.”
Brendon let his eyes slide shut. The insides of his eyelids were lit in orange and yellow with starbursts of white on the edges and he couldn’t think rationally beyond the pain in his head and his chest and his legs and his arms and his hands and his everywhere. He wasn’t even so worried about dying himself, but Cassie. He didn’t want Cassie to die. He didn’t want to watch her die. He couldn’t go through that again.
“Okay,” he said. “What do I do?”
There was a hand, almost gentle, on his shoulder and he thought Iero might be smiling crookedly at him, but when Brendon cracked his eyes open he couldn’t quite tell.
“That’s not up to me, Little Bit,” he said, an edge to his teasing tone. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
He rose fluidly to his feet and looked down at Brendon. “Can you get up?”
Probably not, Brendon knew, but he wasn’t going to act weak in front of this guy. Not if he didn’t have to. He sank his teeth into his bruised lip when he shifted from his shoulder to his elbow and then his hand. Pushing himself into a kneeling position was hard enough. Standing up sent spasms of pain up his legs and torso, made his head throb and his vision swim. But he managed and he looked at Iero as evenly as he could.
“Yeah,” he said, voice steady but breathless.
Iero nodded shortly and turned on his heel, expecting Brendon to follow. He walked so fast Brendon could barely keep up, but Iero wasn’t that tall so Brendon was only a few steps behind. They walked down a bare hallway and to a set of stairs that there was no way in hell Brendon could make it up.
“This way,” Iero said, climbing the stairs with an ease that Brendon envied.
The first lift of his left leg onto the staircase was almost exquisitely painful. The next made him want to vomit. Halfway up the stairs, Brendon was swallowing down bile and pained noises simultaneously. By the time he reached the top of the stairs he could barely keep his legs from buckling and he collapsed against the nearest wall two steps into a sizeable kitchen. Iero paused and stared at him before sighing and raking a hand through his hair.
“Ray’ll kill me if I let you bleed all over the kitchen floor. Stay there.”
Brendon didn’t have any problem obeying orders. His legs also didn’t have any problem deciding that after being still for more than ten seconds, they were going to give out completely. Brendon slid, painfully boneless, to the floor where he sat and watched Iero putter around the kitchen. It was weirdly domestic. Iero knew where everything was and went from place to place with the kind of surety that came from having done the same thing more than a few times. Things just kept getting weirder and weirder and Brendon wanted to sleep for a million years maybe, but mostly he just wanted this to be over.
Iero ran a cloth under the sink’s running faucet and, after he turned it off, walked over to Brendon who flinched away when he knelt next to him.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, I’m just gonna clean you up, okay?”
Brendon stared at Iero warily. Up close, he was just a guy. A good looking one who was even smaller than Brendon, if that was possible, and his eyes were human. Which Brendon should have known but after all the stories and after having the shit kicked out of him while Iero just stared down at him had given him the impression that he was dealing with some kind of devil. Iero looked strangely sincere and Brendon went still and tried to calm his pounding heart when a hand cupped his chin and tilted his face up.
The warm, damp cloth moved over his face, mopping up the blood and the grimy tear tracks and whatever else had been filling Brendon’s mouth for the last few hours. Iero cleaned over Brendon’s neck and jaw and then lifted his hands and wiped off his knuckles and palms. He was efficient and careful, mostly gentle and Brendon wasn’t sure what to think. This was probably some kind of Stockholm Syndrome thing, right? Like, he was going to end up all fucked up and unwilling to rat out Iero and the Ways when this was all over, just because Iero had wiped his face and been nice about it.
Brendon couldn’t bring himself to care. He couldn’t bring himself to care about much of anything. He felt cleaner, but he still couldn’t so much as breathe without feeling his muscles pull painfully.
“That’s better,” Iero said. “You’re a little bruised but Gerard won’t mind that and at least you’re not bleeding all over the place now.”
His fingers brushed over a cut on Brendon’s cheek and Brendon hissed and shied away.
“I don’t think that needs stitches.” Iero eyed him closely. “You should be fine.”
He stood up and Brendon closed his eyes and exhaled sharply while the other man moved around the kitchen again. He stayed that way for a while, didn’t even bother to look when he felt Iero staring down at him.
“What?” Brendon asked.
“Nothing,” Iero said, and then, “You’re pretty. I think Gerard’ll like you. I think we’re gonna keep you.”
Brendon’s eyes snapped open at that and Iero was smirking at him. “Get up. Now that you’re presentable, you’ve got somewhere to be.”
_._
Way said, “I need you to kill him.”
Not ‘I want you to kill him’. Not even, ‘in case this doesn’t work, you’ll have to kill him’. There was no room for argument in the words or in the tone and all of this from a guy who looked more like someone’s creepy cousin than a mob boss. He was almost pretty, soft looking with dark hair and pale skin like he hadn’t seen a Vegas midday in years. He looked more threatening in the newspaper than he did in person, but it wasn’t the look of him that made Brendon’s spine chill.
The same where there was something manic lurking behind the quiet Mikey and the same way Iero seemed as quick to hurt as he was to heal, Gerard Way exuded something that was both charismatic and deadly. Brendon knew, he just knew, that there was no way he was making it out of this alive if he didn’t do exactly as he was told. And it didn’t matter if Brendon had never so much as punched anybody in anything other than self-defense, it didn’t matter if he wasn’t cut out for what Gerard wanted him to do, he had to do it.
Brendon stared at him and Way was probably waiting for him to argue or freak out but these kinds of decisions always seemed to fall on Brendon when he was in no real mental state to think things through. What he knew was that if he wanted to live and if he wanted Cassie to live, he was going to have to do this.
“What happens if I get caught?” Brendon asked and Way and Iero exchanged a look.
“Don’t worry,” Iero said. “We’ve got it taken care of. Mikey’s got a friend on the force who’ll cover for you if it comes to that.”
Brendon blinked and Iero’s lips curved into that wicked, sadistic smirk he had. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot to tell you. Your buddy Wentz? Is the other half of the reason you’re even here. See, he and Mikey go way back and he owes us more than a few favors.”
It wasn’t . . . surprising exactly. Brendon wasn’t really fit to be surprised by much of anything anymore and he knew it wasn’t a lie because when he shot a glance over at Cassie who was lurking near Toro and Bryar, she caught his eyes and looked away, quick and guilty. Brendon felt stupid for trusting anyone in that moment, for getting himself where he was, for allowing himself to be used.
“What happens if I can’t do it?” Brendon asked this time, using less discretion than was probably advisable.
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem either,” Way said, leaning forward. “Flowers is the one who ordered the hit on you and the girls. He’s the reason your friend Audrey died. If that’s not incentive, I don’t know what is.”
Brendon blinked and yeah, that was incentive. It probably wasn’t healthy, but Brendon could at least transfer all of his emotion onto Brandon for this, Brandon who had used Cassie and Audrey, who was the real reason for all of this. Brandon who was more expendable, in Brendon’s mind, than Brendon himself and Cassie were. He bit his lip and then squared his shoulders.
“Okay. When?”
Way’s smile was crooked and strange and Brendon imagined it could be infectious under any other circumstance. “Tomorrow night. Frank will tell you how everything’s going to go and that should give you enough time to get some rest. You look like shit.”
The finality in Way’s words, in his tone, was enough to pull Brendon up short and slap him hard with the reality of what he was agreeing to. He glanced over at Cassie and remembered that he had no choice, not really. It was sell his soul now or cost lives later. He nodded curtly, feeling both lightheaded and more grounded than he had since he’d been kidnaped. Way nodded back and then looked over at Iero.
“Get him settled,” he said and Iero nodded and moved forward, touching Brendon’s elbow briefly to direct him out of the room.
Iero led the way down one hall and then up yet another staircase. It was amazing to Brendon, who was focusing his mind on anything except for the pain, the difference being in the basement versus being in the actual house made. Here everything was decorated. Not necessarily tastefully; Way seemed to have a thing for dark colors, deep reds and blacks and grays that, although handled well still made the halls and rooms look more like something out of a horror movie than an actual house. Still, it was a far cry from the cold, bare concrete of the basement.
Brendon’s legs were just starting to shake beneath him, every step an uphill battle, when Iero unlocked a door and led him inside. It was a small bedroom, sparsely decorated in more reds and deep creams than the darker, gloomier colors of the rest of the house. Not that Brendon really noticed or cared. All he saw when he stepped inside was a bed. A bed that looked soft and that was complete with pillows and a comforter and his bones ached so bad, his muscles were killing him and he just wanted to sleep. Just for a little while.
“Okay,” Iero said. “Shirt off, Little Bit, I need to assess the damage.”
Brendon pulled his lip between his teeth but did as he’d been told, wincing as he lifted the hem in both hands and tugged the shirt over his head. He glanced down at his body, mottled with bruises. His chest was almost unrecognizable and it served as a harsh reminder of what these people were capable of when it came to making a convincing argument. Iero moved closer.
“Are you having trouble breathing?” he asked, touching the skin over Brendon’s ribs. “Any sharp pain here?”
Brendon shook his head. There was an ache everywhere, but nothing that stood out. Iero nodded, touched him clinically all over and then pronounced him bruised and battered but not broken or fractured.
“You’ll be fine. Sore,” he added with a wry grin. “But fine. I’ll get you some aspirin and you can sleep here.” He walked into an adjoining bathroom and kept talking. “When you wake up tomorrow, I’ll come get you. We’ll go practice shooting if we have time. I doubt you’ve so much as held a gun before so we’ll give you a crash course in how to put a bullet in somebody. Not that you need skill,” he said, coming back out of the bathroom with a small bottle of pills in one hand. “You just need to know what to hit.”
It was getting harder and harder to absorb what Iero was saying, but Brendon got the general idea. He was more concerned with the pills the man shook into his hand because any respite from the pain would be a good thing. Iero kept talking and Brendon kept listening, but most of it became a blur of words. He fell asleep with Iero’s voice in his ears, almost soothing.
_._
Brendon woke to a wide hand clamped firmly over his mouth and someone shushing him in the darkness of the room. Panic hit him low in the stomach and rose quickly to ice over his chest and he flailed out, smacking the wall behind his head with one hand and a solid body with the other.
“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “Hey, calm down. It’s okay, Brendon. Calm the fuck down.”
There was a click and the bedside lamp switched on. Brendon blinked up into the face of Travis and stopped fighting, going carefully still instead.
“You cool now?” Travis asked and Brendon nodded, sitting up with a groan when he backed away.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Brendon hissed, looking around and just waiting for Iero or Toro or Bryar to show up. “You’re going to get us both killed.”
Travis grinned. “Don’t worry about it. We’re here to rescue you.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Brendon asked, worried that Maja or someone else would pop out of the woodwork and complicate things even more.
The door opened and instead of Maja, Ryan Ross walked in. The relief that flooded Brendon’s body was almost enough to make him pass out.
“Oh God,” he whispered and Ryan flicked his eyes toward him before speaking to Travis.
“Think we can get back out as quietly as we got in?” he asked.
Travis shook his head. “Not a chance.”
Ryan nodded as if that was the answer he’d expected and then moved to Brendon’s side. His hands, when they touched the bruises on Brendon’s face and chest, were gentle.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
Brendon nodded. “I’m fine. I mean, they kicked the shit out of me but I’m fine.”
Ryan frowned but nodded and threw the blankets off of Brendon’s body, urging him up with soft tugs of his hands.
“Whatever you do, stay behind me and Travis. Come on.”
Brendon followed Ryan to the door and then whispered, “What about Cassie?”
The looks that both Ryan and Travis shot him were incredulous, but he couldn’t help it. He wasn’t just going to abandon her, not when she still needed saving.
“We don’t have time to look for her,” Ryan said, tone final.
Brendon bit down hard on his swollen lip. “But we can’t just leave her here. They’ll kill her.”
There was a moment of tense silence and Brendon caught Ryan’s gaze, hoping to implore him with his eyes not to leave, not yet. Ryan huffed out a sigh.
“Travis? Any idea where she might be?”
Travis thought for a second and then nodded. “Probably this way,” he said.
They made their way down the hall past several doors that looked the same and then they stopped. Travis pushed the door quietly open and they peered inside. There was a lamp on and Cassie was a visible ball on top of the comforter, curled up with her blonde hair obscuring her face from view. Travis and Brendon walked into the room with Ryan standing guard in the doorway. It took two shakes of her shoulder before Cassie opened her eyes. She caught sight of Brendon and then Travis.
“What’s going on?” she asked, voice breathy and high-pitched. “Brendon?”
“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, I can’t. They’ll kill me.”
“They’ll kill you if you stay,” Travis said. “Now shut up and get up, we’ve gotta go.”
Cassie hesitated for a split second before scrambling off the bed and latching onto Brendon’s arm as they crept toward Ryan.
“Brendon,” she whispered into his ear. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
Brendon bit his lip and looked down at her. She was peering at him worriedly, her black eye more livid now in the dim light than it had been hours before.
“Not now,” he said and then, because she’d asked. “I’m fine. I’ll be better when we get out of here.”
“Be quiet!” Ryan hissed over his shoulder, looking left and then right. “Come on. Stay close.”
They made their way into the hallway, Ryan setting a quick careful pace that Brendon was having a hard time keeping up with. His body still ached and every move he made was enough to make him want to whimper in pain. He just wanted to be out of this place and somewhere safe, somewhere with a bed and maybe something more powerful than the pills Iero had given him earlier.
“And where,” a voice said from behind them. “Do you think you’re going?”
They halted at the top of the stairs and Brendon and Cassie spun around. Iero was standing a few feet away, the almost pleasant tone of his voice a direct contrast to the angry set of his mouth.
“Cassie,” he said, and she cringed back and into Brendon’s body. “You didn’t answer me. Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
No one said anything and Frank sighed, gusty and harsh, and reached into the waistband of his pants to pull out a gun. He trained it on them, the aim somewhere between Cassie and Brendon, and said, “I’m going to start shooting if someone doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s pretty obvious they’re trying to escape, Frankie,” Mikey said.
He and Way were at the base of the stairs looking up. There was no sign of Toro or Bryar which Brendon counted a small blessing. Not that he was too happy to have to deal with these three.
“Well,” Way said. “That’s not going to happen.”
Brendon shifted, pushing Cassie behind him and catching sight of Way walking up the stairs.
“You’re Ryan Ross, right?” he said conversationally. “I know you were hired to protect Brendon and it’s noble and everything that you’re here trying to save him, but I’m sure Wentz has told you about our deal by now and the guarantee that there won’t be any interference from cops or feds includes you. So I suggest you leave before somebody gets hurt.”
“You do realize,” Ryan shot back, voice tightly controlled. “That this place is going to be crawling with federal agents sometime in the next twenty-four hours. Did you honestly think you could get away with kidnaping two key witnesses in the case against you?”
Iero was watching whatever was going on over Brendon’s shoulder with interest. Brendon chanced a glance back and saw that Way had finished climbing the steps and was standing a few feet away from Ryan.
“Cassie came to us willingly. And once we’re done with Flowers, the truth will come out and there won’t be a case against me period.”
He sounded sure of it and Brendon didn’t doubt that Way could make it happen. He’d gotten away with God only knew what since coming into power. This was probably small compared to some of the escape acts he’d participated in.
“Now take your friend and get the fuck out of my house, Ross, or I’ll let my friends put so many bullets in you there won’t be a body left to identify.”
Cassie was clinging so hard to Brendon’s arm that she was leaving bruises on top of his bruises and there was no way out of this that Brendon could see. It had been a good effort, though, and he realized when that thought crossed his mind that maybe he was in shock or going crazy or something.
“No,” Ryan said, and Brendon’s heart dropped. “No, what’s going to happen is, you’re going to let us go or I’m going to shoot your little brother. All it’ll take is one bullet to his gut and your family tree’s down to one.”
Cassie gasped and Brendon twisted at the torso to see that Ryan had drawn his gun and had it pointed at Mikey who had stopped on the middle of the wide staircase.
“Frankie-”
“Ah-ah,” Travis said, stepping out and leveling the barrel of his gun at Iero. “That’s two guns against one, Way, I don’t think you’ve got much of a choice.”
Iero didn’t lower his gun but his eyes were narrow and anxious. Mikey had his hands stretched out at his sides, palms up, in the universal gesture for harmlessness. That left Way who was staring at all of them and obviously weighing his options.
“Fine,” he said.
He didn’t say anything else and Brendon knew it couldn’t be that easy but nobody really wanted to take that chance. Travis grabbed Cassie by the arm and she grabbed Brendon’s wrist. They started down the stairs, moving as fast as they dared. Brendon chanced a glance back when they were almost halfway down and saw Iero’s finger squeeze the trigger of his gun. The shot was loud, louder than Brendon had ever thought a gunshot would be, and Ryan jerked when the bullet grazed his arm and lodged itself in the banister.
“Get down!” Travis yelled, aiming his gun over their heads and shooting at Iero. There was a loud groan and Way yelled Iero’s name.
“It’s just my leg,” Brendon heard him say. “Fuck.”
“Let’s go,” Travis said urgently.
Cassie and Brendon stood up and rushed down the stairs. There was no sign of Ryan and Brendon turned his head to look for him. Long fingers tangled themselves in his hair and yanked, pulling him out of Cassie’s grip. He yelped and reached up, trying to dislodge Mikey’s hand from his hair.
“Let him go!” Ryan yelled.
Mikey just pulled Brendon in tighter. Brendon struggled but he was too weak to be effective and Mikey was deceptively strong. Ryan yelled again and Brendon wanted to tell him to just get the fuck out and leave him behind because if he didn’t they’d all end up dead. He didn’t get the chance. There was another gunshot, the bullet slamming into Mikey’s shoulder. He made a pained sound and there was a shift of balance and then Brendon was being thrown backward down the stairs.
His head hit with a sound that would have scared him if he hadn’t lost consciousness immediately after.
Chapter Eight