Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series (8 page)

Dismounting from his own electric blue Ducati, Kellan Vaughn
removed his helmet and let a cool gust of prairie air push through his damp
locks. He shook his head to and fro, sweaty from the drive. He squinted up the
half a mile's worth of dirt road that unspooled before him.

A ways up the trail, two fusty cacti bent from the waist to
create a kind of archway. Across their touching tops, someone had—long
ago—draped a tin box sign, inscribed with faded wood block letters. What
remained of this dubious “Welcome mat” spelled out
DE IL'S A E'S—LLC.

It had been a long time since his last visit home.

Shaking highway grime from his motorcycle boots as he
strode, Kellan took in more of his childhood home. Coming up the bend, he could
see the sagging wraparound porch, covered with its typical film of detritus:
rusty bike parts, card tables, spent propane tanks. Dirt began to give way to
granite pebbles, and the sun dipped behind a shadow of the old house. Now he
could see the corrugated rooftop, coppery with age and water's influence. The
filthy, cheap windows. Now that same dry wind carried his way an old Charley
Pride tune, which seemed to be sifting out of what he took to be the kitchen
window. Not long after, he heard the twanging echo of his mother's voice,
singing along to the radio.

Kellan paused when he reached the first step of the porch. A
feral cat took the opportunity to scurry out from behind a dilapidated red
pick-up truck towards the briar-y tundra he'd actually mistaken for a yard in
his youth. Tallying quickly, Kellan realized: six years. Six years since he'd
sat on this porch from dusk until dawn, nervously pacing until he heard the
comfort of his brother's revving bike. Six years since he'd last entertained
the scratchy voice of Valerie Vaughn (or, “V”), his mother and the de facto
matriarch of every Devil's Ace. So many evenings had he spent forcing down her
sinful cooking, or listening to her bawdy stories of the old days while she
smoked in her rocking chair, affixed rhinestones and doodads to all the club
members' leather jackets. It had taken two year's worth of a tour with The
Prattle for Kellan to fully realize how strange his own upbringing had
been—other members of the band spoke of estranged parents, boring
parents—whereas his were all but the leaders of a cult.

When he was a kid, this porch had been lousy with the
comings and goings of frightening men—loud men, bearded men, and all were heavy
drinkers. He'd grown accustomed to falling asleep through the sounds of
dust-ups, either verbal or physical. He'd seen his first naked women at the
tender age of nine, when he walked in on the aftermath of a rowdy orgy in the
early morning. His parents were permissive with drugs (to a degree), sex,
booze, loud talk of any kind—their jurisdiction began and ended only with their
vague “enemies,” to which they swore swift and fast retribution. Or, of course,
the law.

Bryson had once tried to describe to his kid brother just
what the motorcycle club represented, how it operated. While strumming his
Stratocaster knock-off, Kellan had strained to understand a story filled with
the stuff of gangster movies: his parents had been painted as benevolent Robin
Hoods, content to usurp and extort vehicles of organized crime for the benefit
of an anonymous public good and...of course...the Devil's Aces themselves.
Money was made (or, laundered) through several venues—among these, four or five
Reno body shops; a dry-cleaner's on the main road, and—most bizarrely—a
McDonald's out by the airport. All of these places were staffed by club
members, all of whom drove Harleys and loved to celebrate almost everything on
the crowded expanse of his childhood lawn.

And Bryson had looked at the family legacy with a glow of
pride in his eyes from high school on. It had been easy to see that Kellan's
older brother wasn't suited to a typical education; classes bored him. The
girls at their school he'd found tedious, if only because they were so willing,
so gullible and expectant of his cool-guy persona. Kellan supposed his brother
might have craved a meaningful connection all this time, but that didn't make
the I'm-in-love-with-Romy news any easier to swallow—especially since Bryson's
journey away from regular school and regular friends and regular women had lead
him to a fast, loose, unknowable life on the road. His main function as a
badass had consolidated, and blossomed him into the official club muscle.
Loneliness notwithstanding, his brother didn't seem to be afraid of anything.
Which of course Kellan always admired, if he couldn't understand.

His own allegiance to the “family business” was dappled by
the fact of his parents' early loss of faith in him. Hughie and V had taken to
calling their younger son a “wimp,” and a “yellowbelly,” as early as he could
remember. He hadn't been able to master a bike until sometime around his
eighteenth birthday, preferring to spend his days inside, practicing guitar.
Their ribbing had been mostly affectionate—they were affectionate people—but
he'd felt their disappointment, deep down. So when he graduated high school and
was offered only the meager position of “Club Bookkeeper,” he'd taken it only
on the condition that he could leave whenever he found something he preferred
to do. A year later, The Prattle was born.

He listened to his mother crooning in the kitchen, and made
out the shadow of an old, familiar mop; she was cleaning and singing, something
he remembered her doing often when he was young. Had his parents been mad—or
even miffed—when their youngest son had refused to come home for holidays?
Surely Bryson, despite his loyalty, wasn't around much. Kellan wondered what
his parent's life was like out here on the prairie, by their present lonesome.
Did they still entertain drifters, transients, troubadours? Or had they...in
some unusual way...come to settle down?

There was an abrupt sound of the wooden mop flopping against
a linoleum floor, and before Kellan knew what was happening he was bound up in
the smoky embrace of his mother, V.

“BABY!” She shrieked, her voice like a sick toad. “MY BABY'S
HERE! LET ME LOOK AT YOU!”

V leaned back and surveyed her son; he took the opportunity
to paint his own picture. She looked mostly the same—ever sun-kissed, brown as
the earth she hewed. Her crackly bottle-red hair still had the texture of
Brillo, though it now hung past her shoulders. What looked like fistfuls of turquoise
jewelry dangled from her ears and rested atop the flared collar of her denim
vest, which was itself decorated with beads, decals, stones for days. Her
tattooed blue eyeliner had slid farther still from the corners of her eyes,
lending her face the slight air of a perpetually sad clown. But despite all
this, he saw his mother as he'd always managed to see her: beautiful, in her
way.

V was skinny and taut from a grisly lifetime, but he still
felt the warmth of flesh against him when she encircled him in her arms. She
seemed equally pleased with what she saw in Kellan, and hugged him the tighter.

“I heard you singing in there. Got some nice pipes, Ma.”

“Oh, you BASTARD,” V said, cuffing him sharply on the
shoulder. “When we all know who the Elvis is around here. Get your patootie off
the porch, mister! Made three loaves of zucchini bread when I heard you was
coming.”

Suppressing a premature gag (oh, how he remembered his
mother's infamous
zucchini bread...
), Kellan followed V over the
threshold and into the house. She bustled towards the kitchen, but he took a
moment to consider the inside of his childhood home.

It smelled the same. Sharply musty, like old potpourri, a
thousand stale cigarettes, and new plastic. Some of the furniture had been swapped
out for newer, somehow uglier replications of the originals—the old Admiral
Console TV had at last succumbed to a mounted flat-screen, it seemed—but just
like his mother, the world inside seemed essentially undisturbed by a long
absence.
Perhaps six years wasn't so long after all
, Kellan thought.
This was comforting and disturbing both.

When V returned and shoved her son into the best loved
armchair in the living room (a high honor), she seemed at an unusual loss for
words. She rubbed her waxy lips together and watched Kellan expectantly.

“So.”

“So!”

“I hear that the music thing is treatin ya alright.”

“It is, kinda. Yeah.”

“Oh, don't let me interrupt. Eat the zucchini bread!” If he
knew his mother at all, this was less goad than direct command. She watched him
like a hawk. Accordingly, Kellan took a timid bite from the corner of
his...loaf.

“Any pretty girls?” she demanded, as soon as he'd managed to
swallow a shred of the product. Her cooking hadn't improved at all.

“What's that?”

“Any pretty—?”

Just then, the very fabric of the living room seemed to
shudder with the anticipation of a new body. The screen door clattered shut,
and a shadow filled the foyer. Judging by its girth, Kellan took this
interloper to be his father. An impulse deep within compelled him to sit up
straighter in the armchair.

“VALERIE? THAT YOU?”

“HUGHIE! IN HERE!” His parents had also not outgrown their
habitual shouting to one another from close proximity.

“SOMEONE SPECIAL TO SEE YOU!” V chirped. Her voice cracked
at the top of her taunt with barely suppressed glee.

Hughie followed his shadow into the room. As he remembered,
his father was a hefty man—if anything, the article in front of him was bigger
than memory. He wore his customary driving goggles and black-topped helmet. The
walrus drapes of his moustache were perfectly manicured, and curled at the
edges of his chin. His wet-looking stubble remained the same. At once, he
cracked a grin filled with gold teeth in his younger son's direction.

“The youngest Vaughn returns. As I live and breathe.”

“Pop.”

Kellan rose and hugged his father, who smelled —as usual—of
Evan Williams, spearmint and a freshly extinguished Black n' Mild. He was
surprised at how sentimental he was finding this encounter; for a moment,
Kellan could even feel the wells behind his eyes start to produce tears. He
stifled these. If Hughie and V couldn't abide anything, it was crying.

“Valerie, get that shit out of his hand,” Hughie instructed,
on seeing the zucchini bread. “Baby boy's in town, we go out. Get your bike.”

His mother didn't even look briefly hurt; she was surely
used to this sort of casual cruelty by now. Instead, she followed her already
retreating husband back outside the house and onto the lawn. Kellan scrambled
to follow only when he heard the whirring of two motorcycles, already prepped
to make tracks.

Over a heavy dinner at the local pub Flanagan's, Hughie and
V began to speak with the same fluidity Kellan remembered from childhood. The
club was doing well, they informed him. Various business pursuits were being
managed by top men and women, to the extent that the king and queen of the
castle had been allowed to sit back and relax for the past few years. Bryson
was doing a great job of intimidating the unsavory. Various promising lost
women had wormed their way under V's wing, and if Kellan was willing to stick
around through the weekend she'd be all too happy to introduce him...

“I want to talk about Bryson some more,” Kellan said at
last. Several beers and a hot bowl of chili had booned him the courage to speak
to his parents about why he'd come back in the first place.

“What about 'em?” Hughie asked. It was difficult to make eye
contact with his father—for, like Bryson, it was a rare day when the leader of
the Devil's Aces took off his motorcycle helmet and dark glasses, indoors be
damned.

“He came out to my show the other weekend and mentioned a
long con you're all working. On the
mob
.”

With many fanning gestures of her long red nails, V urged
her son to be quiet.

“You can't talk about that in a place like this!” she
whispered.

“Well, is it true?”

Hughie chewed thoughtfully, taking his time. “Yeah. Yeah,
it's true. What do you care?”

“Sounds awful dangerous is all, Pop.”

His father's eyes sparked. For a moment, Kellan felt the
same fear he'd known whenever Hughie would get angry. Though his father wasn't
a recklessly violent man, the way he could raise his voice and dole out an
insult had historically been enough to shut up some very big men.

“Bryson knows what he's doing.”

“Well, won't you tell me about it?”

“What do you care, Kelly?” his mother pleaded. She put a dry
palm on his hand. “You've got your music, your brother has this. We're proud of
both of you.”

“He asked me to come in on it,” Kellan said. He took a
little satisfaction from his parent's faces when they saw this news. For why
should they think he wasn't tough enough for Bryson's line of work? “He said he
needed me.” The table remained shell-shocked, and Kellan found himself grasping
for reasons—had he really come all the way to Reno to boast to his parents? Was
he craving not only their validation, but also their shock?
“I guess I wanted to know...from your end...what it is...I should know.”

Hughie set his fork down, and peeled the goggles off his
face with much gravitas. “Well, well, well. Valerie?”

“Yes?”

“Looks like we have a new addition. A new Devil's Ace to
account for. You happen to have any spare leather cuts in the store room?”

“Dad, if you're yanking my chain...”

Hughie leaned across the table, which shifted distressingly
on receiving his weight. “I don't yank chains, kid. We're thrilled to have you
aboard.” He cracked the golden grin again, and then arched an eyebrow at his
son.

“This is a very dangerous assignment, baby,” V murmured.
She, unlike his father, seemed less than thrilled with her son's announcement.
“We have Bryson counting cards and casing a high-rolling VIP joint at a top
casino on The Strip. Trying to break up a big scandal...prostitution, serious
house cheating...I just want you to be prepared.”

“He's prepared, Valerie,” Hughie boomed. “He's a goddamn
Vaughn. He was born prepared.” At this, his father motioned for the check. His
mother chewed her lip.

Kellan slept uneasily that night, snug in his childhood bed.
Visions of Bryson's assignment drifted through his dreams—mobsters, guns, the
dark basement rooms in casinos where who knew what went on. Now that he had a
firmer grasp on the elusive Vegas plan—courtesy of a night session of elaborate
planning with Hughie—he was only the more afraid.

What's more, he hadn't elected to tell his parents about
Romy, fearing they'd further question his motives. Romy, who this room dredged
up. He remembered sitting on this very bed with her in high school, crooning
his terrible odes and trying desperately to get into her pants. It wasn't as if
he'd been pining for the girl all these years, but something about the way
Bryson had spoken her name in the Vegas club had ushered in a flood from his
memory, and thence his imagination.

She'd been a smart, slightly nerdy girl in high school—one
of those beauties who hid behind her glasses, fending off the attention of
creeps in the process. But regardless, Kellan had fallen for her personality.
She was simultaneously independent and warm; cynical, but trusting. A miserable
home-life had shaped her drive to leave Reno as quickly as possible (they'd had
that in common), but he likewise remembered the utterly pure, earnest look in
her eyes when she sat on his bed, listening to the song he'd written for her.
Romy Adelaide was the type of woman who hadn't let wound ruin her capacity to
love and believe. He hoped that much was still true.

Their courtship had dissolved almost before it began for the
usual reasons things had dissolved in high school: Kellan had grown shy and
distant, and Romy had probably connected Kellan and Bryson as brothers. Despite
the former's best efforts, Bryson—hangdog handsome man that he always was—had a
built-in knack for stealing the girl. And even if he hadn't known it then (and
didn't know it now), he had stolen Romy Adelaide from his younger brother, who
hadn't been able to measure up to the man his teenage girlfriend had glimpsed
on a motorbike weaving in and out of suburban Reno whenever was convenient for
him.

Of course, Kellan had moved on—there were many cities, many
women. He'd had girlfriends for short spells and long spells. He'd written
songs for plenty of beauties. But something about Romy had definitely stitched
its way under his skin. Imagining her now—as a soft, supple blackjack dealer
with the sexual power to render his own brother starry-eyed—was enough to pique
every curious bone in his body. Was her brilliant mind intact, improved? Would
she even remember him, and their fumbling kisses as children? No matter what
happened, he had to see her; and if she was in trouble the way Bryson implied
she was, he had to have some hand in her saving. And if he looked a little more
like her typical hero—in a leather cut and black sunglasses—well, so much the
better. Now besieged by new images of himself peeling away from the Strip on a
bike, his lady love harnessed to the back of him, his brother calling lamely
into their dust...Kellan bade his soul to calm down, to attempt sleep.

Yet he found that his body—humming with visions of Romy in a
snug casino girl's ensemble, but bearing the same deep intelligence behind her
kind eyes—was unwilling. Despite the nearing danger, despite the sounds of his
parent's snores across the hall...he'd gotten massively hard just thinking
about Romy Adelaide. There was nothing for it.