Chapter Text
To say Beth's night had not gone as planned is a bit of an understatement.
It started out simple enough. Beth found herself alone for the first evening in longer than she could remember. Dean independently decided to be an active parent for the first time in his life and had taken the kids to the Mall of America with someone he worked with, tacking himself onto their family vacation. Ruby and Annie were both working, so Beth wasn't expecting either of them to drop by.
If she were smarter, she'd go to the Paper Porcupine and make some money, but after the other night, when Rio watched her make her money at gunpoint and Beth oscillated wildly between pride and terror and-
And nothing.
Anyway, she just can't.
She wants a break. She needs a break. She's been running on fear and adrenaline for so long she doesn't remember what calm feels like.
So, instead, Beth poured herself a drink, already thinking about her next one. She thought maybe, just maybe, two bourbons in she could turn off...everything and take a bath. An all the way bath. Break out the candles and the bubbles and the oils and her good towels—the unreasonably fluffy ones she saves for special guests—and make a night of it.
Obviously, right as she decides to go for it, Rio appears in the doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen, making Beth jump enough that she pours bourbon all over the island as well as in her glass.
But it isn't until he's there in front of her—she hadn't even heard the door open, how does he do that—that she realizes he hasn't been in her house since that day, when she- when they'd-
He leans back against her counter, crossing his arms tightly over his chest, and all Beth can see is how different he'd been that last time: loose, open, and cautiously affectionate, versus now: tense, closed off, and cold.
They stare at each other for one long moment. Beth is a live wire, an exposed nerve. She throws back at least half her drink in one gulp.
"Bottoms up," Rio says. "We're goin' out."
"What? Why?" Beth grabs a sponge and starts wiping off the counter, "I was-"
"Yeah, so, I don't really care." His tone's light, but the kind of light Beth knows is a facade, "I need you to go out, so now you're goin' out."
"I haven't eaten yet." She doesn't even know why she says it, it's not like he cares. It's not even true- well, sort of- she'd had a Lean Cuisine.
"Get in the car, Elizabeth." The faux pleasant veneer drops out of his voice like a brick, and without waiting for a response, he pushes off the counter and walks back out of the kitchen.
"Bring your passport," he calls over his shoulder as he goes out the door, leaving Beth to decide which is the stupider choice: go with him willingly or stay here knowing full well he'll drag her out of the house by the hair, just to feel like she hadn't gone willingly to the slaughter.
She sighs and goes to collect her bag.
Personally, Beth feels like she'd dug up her passport, changed her shoes, and brushed her teeth in record time. She'd hesitated for a long moment with her phone, trying to decide if she should text Annie and Ruby, before ultimately deciding it would worry them more than it would help. But from the look Rio gives her when she hurries down the front walk, you'd think he'd been waiting for hours.
Beth slows as she approaches, noticing Rio isn't alone. There's Mick, and his car—no surprise, Beth's honestly starting to forget he's there some of the time, he's becoming part of the increasingly dissonant wallpaper of her life—but also one of the other ones- Dags, maybe? And she can see the shadowy silhouettes of at least two, maybe three, more guys in the car she assumes is Dags'.
She vaguely remembers a time when she'd worried about what the neighbors would think of gangbangers parking outside her house, but now it seems so trivial. Hell, Mrs. Karpinski was probably starting a book club with them.
As she walks up, Rio does that complicated handshake guys do with Mick and Dags before they get in their cars.
"What's going on?" Beth asks, the relief of knowing he isn't taking her somewhere to kill her—right? He wouldn't bring a two-car audience just for that?—making her bold. It mixes with the adrenaline and fear, and her nervous system feels like it's on the edge of overload.
"Yeah, you don't need to know that," Rio says with that pettily jovial tone, thoroughly mocking even the idea that he'd consider telling her anything, that there's so much she doesn't know, and turns, opening the driver's side door. "Get in the car."
But Beth plants her feet in the middle of the street. The problem with drawing things out, playing the same games over and over, is she's starting to get numb to it, "It's 10:30 at night, you showed up out of the blue and told me to grab my passport . I'm going to need a little more-"
Her protest cuts off with a squawk because he's suddenly up in her face, so close she can feel his breath on her cheeks, her nose, her lips. The sudden, abruptly up close and personal exposure to all of the coiled and ruthlessly tamped down violent energy radiating off of him makes her heart speed up to triple time.
Because he's dangerous .
Beth refuses to acknowledge any other possible reason.
"Here's how we're gonna do this," Rio's voice is soft, intimate, sending a shiver up Beth's spine. "You're gonna get in the car, and I'm not gonna shoot you in the leg."
That's when Beth realizes his gun is out, suddenly feeling it pressed to her thigh, "Then you're gonna stop fuckin' testing me because one of these days, I'm not gonna give you a warning, yeah?"
"You- you can't-" Beth's trembling, and she knows it's obvious because he smiles, and it isn't a nice smile, "You need me alive, remember?"
"There are all kinds of ways you can shoot someone so they don't die," Rio chucks her chin, a glancing touch that barely connects, and backs up a step. "You should know, darlin'."
And that- oh , that burns. The bile rises in Beth's throat so suddenly, a burning boiling mass of rage, fear, shame, and something else she can't identify, that she's barely able to choke it back before it comes spewing out all over the street.
She swallows hard once, twice, pulling herself together—she doesn’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of him, not anymore—then she gets in the car.
Rio peels out with a squeal of his tires and his boys fall in line behind them. The tension inside the car is so thick Beth's practically able to taste it, but every time she opens her mouth to say anything—what, she has no idea—one look at his locked jaw and white knuckles clenched around the steering wheel has her snapping it shut.
They ride in loaded, awful silence until they pass the border crossing in a quarter-mile sign, and Rio finally snaps, "Spit it out."
"Where are we going?" Beth asks immediately. He won't answer, but at least she tried.
"A meeting."
"With who?"
"You ain't gotta know that."
"What's it about?"
"Business."
"Why am I even here?" Beth asks, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "You obviously don't want me to be."
"You're the moneymaker, ain't you?" The for now is so heavily implied, he may as well have said it aloud.
Rio falls silent for a long moment, and Beth tries to decide what question he won’t answer next when he surprises her.
"Because of our little- incident," he bites off the word with no small amount of disgust, "And all of the bullshit it kicked off, I'm in a position where I have to make some allowances. And one of them is introducing you to someone."
Beth is still rolling that veritable mountain of information around in her head when Rio hits the brakes, and Beth realizes they're already at the border checkpoint.
"What do I say?" she hisses.
Rio smirks. "Why don't you try keepin' your mouth shut for a change."
She hates him, she really does.
"Be smart," he advises her.
When the border patrol officer comes up to the window, Beth turns on her nice white lady smile, and Rio puts on his unthreatening, polite society mask. It's fascinating to witness. Beth's been the recipient of it, but she's never had the chance to watch him turn it on.
His whole posture changes, going from leaned back but tense as hell around the edges to sitting up straight, his shoulders loose. A wide, easy smile spreads across his face, and something around his eyes and mouth softens. The combined effect makes him seem younger, sweeter, nothing like the man Beth's come to know. She wonders how much of it is fake and how much is actually inside him somewhere.
Rio's shirt is buttoned all the way up, coat collar popped, hiding his tattoo. He sets both hands in plain sight, relaxed and comfortable on the wheel. He waits until the officer is at the window before rolling it down, keeping his movements smooth and steady. Beth flashes back to her own trip across the border, remembering how tense she'd been, how obviously uptight and nervous. It's no wonder she'd been pulled aside, she'd practically been screaming I am up to something.
It seems so funny now, so innocent. Beth had been so far in over her head without even a passing concept of the depth below her.
"Evening, officer," Rio says, still smiling that pleasant smile. Beth doesn't know how he does it, how he's so convincing in every mask he wears. Not thirty minutes ago, he'd had a gun on her—the gun she knows he still has on him, the gun she knows he won't hesitate to use—and now he's grinning at the officer like an overgrown boy scout.
She needs to remember that. How good Rio is at making the world see what he wants them to see.
"Where're you two headed tonight?" the officer asks, studying their passports. Beth wonders what Rio's says.
"I'm taking my girl out to a place in Windsor," Rio says, resting an arm along the top of her headrest. Beth leans into him, almost but not quite to the point that her head rests on his arm, but close enough that she can feel his muscles jump at the proximity. She does her best to look like she wants to climb him, not strangle him.
She must be a better actress than she thought because the officer gives them a long, considering look and then hands their passports back, wishing them a pleasant evening. Rio very nearly jerks his arm away from Beth when he goes to take them back—he slides both of them into his pocket, effectively tethering Beth to him for the duration of their trip—but plays it off enough that the officer doesn't blink.
Then they're pulling through the checkpoint and driving for a few minutes in silence. The thick, horrible tension from before is back, and it makes Beth want to crawl out of her skin.
"How long until we're there?" She doesn't actually expect him to tell her, but figures it never hurts to try.
"Three hours."
Great.
***
The loft is dark; the shadows are deep and sinister and stretch across the floor towards her, skeletal fingers grasping, clinging, tugging, pulling her towards something on the floor. Something she doesn't want to see, can't look at. Beth can hear a sputtering, coughing, choking sound, and it echoes, echoes, echoes all around her, and it's the worst, most helpless, most broken noise she's ever heard. It opens a gaping, bottomless black pit inside her and it hurts, it aches because it's so broken, so pained, and she knows it's her fault and there's nothing she can do to fix it.
Then Rio's beside her, dressed all in black, feet planted and hands clasped behind him, looking down toward the thing on the floor. The something she can't, won't look at.
"I don't want it," Beth tells him.
"It's on you, though," he replies.
Then Beth realizes there's a gun in her hand. She looks down at it, not sure where it came from, and there's just enough light to see the gold finish, and she flings it away from her, fast like it burns.
"That ain't enough," Rio tells her.
"Nothing is," she replies.
And now the thing on the floor is at her feet, and the sputtering, coughing, choking sound is all she can hear. Her own breathing is speeding up, stuttering, breaking, and she looks down. It's Rio, of course it's Rio, lying on the floor, blood pouring from his mouth, dark shirt going darker as more blood spreads out in a pool beneath him like wings.
Beth drops to her knees and leans forward, slowly, every bone in her body aching in protest. She reaches a trembling hand towards his chest, and right before she makes contact, a bag's yanked over her head. Everything goes dark, and it's suffocating her—the musty dryness filling her nose, her mouth, creeping down her throat into her lungs and she can't breathe, she can't breathe, she can't breathe-
Beth jerks awake, fingers flying to her throat, grasping for a bag that isn't there. And it's dark, so dark, and everything's moving, and she's going to be sick, she needs-
She fumbles along the car door, rolling down the window, gulping for air. The wind rushes through the car, and she forces herself to take a long, slow breath. Then another. Then a third.
Beth can feel each muscle in her body start to unlock.
"You throw up in my car, we're gonna have problems." Beth looks over, and Rio's focused on the road, not looking at her, jaw clenched so tight she can see the muscle jumping.
She wonders how much of her nightmare he caught from the outside.
"Add it to my tab."
He starts like his first instinct was to laugh, but he holds it back.
"How far out are we?" Beth asks, rolling up the window and smoothing back her hair. The clock on the dash beams out into the dark car, telling her it's a little after 1:30 in the morning.
"We got some ground rules to go over," he says, ignoring her question.
"First, you don't say shit," Rio cuts off Beth's protest before she can get out more than a single sputter, turning to look at her, eyes cold, mouth a thin, hard slash across his face. "You'll keep your mouth shut, Elizabeth. You say one fuckin' word, and I will shoot you myself."
Beth swallows hard, "What happens if someone talks to me?"
"You let me fuckin' handle it."
This is the side of Rio she's only just getting to know: so severe, so hard, so cold. The spark she used to always see in him—no matter how angry he was—completely stamped out now.
"Fine. What else?"
"Stay behind me. They're gonna wanna get a look at you, but you just step to the side, not forward. There's gonna be a real clear our side, their side, and you keep your lily-white ass deep on ours."
That's fine, Beth has absolutely no intention of getting any closer to a rival gang faction than she absolutely has to.
"Okay."
Rio raises his eyebrows at the lack of argument.
"Better the devil you know, right?" This time the laugh nearly makes it out, and for a split second, his mask cracks, and Beth can see a tiny piece of the Rio she knows and- well, sort of knows. A little bit. Is familiar with, at least.
"Third," he says, changing lanes towards the upcoming exit, "I'm gonna need you to play up that dumb bitch thing you do."
"Excuse you?"
"You know, twirling your hair, batting your big ol' blue eyes, swingin' your hips and shit. Actin' like you don't got a single fuckin' brain cell in that pretty li'l head of yours."
"I have never in my life-"
"Right, right." He's pulling off the highway now onto a long, dark, country road. There aren't any streetlights, so Beth can't see much at all, but she's pretty sure they're surrounded by fields on all sides. "Then fuckin' wing it, whatever you gotta' do. Just make sure they underestimate the hell out of you."
That makes Beth feel a little bit better.
"If they figure out what kind of a treacherous, conniving bitch you are, it's gonna make my life a hell of a lot harder."
Beth hates him.
They must be getting close to their destination because Rio slows and lets Mick and Dags pass him. Then they're turning onto a dirt track Beth cannot fathom how any of them found without any kind of signs or landmarks. It's so overgrown it's barely distinguishable from the field around it.
As they bump down the path, Beth stares out the window, amazed by how bright the darkness is now that they're away from the lights along the highway.
They're driving past a field, and it looks like there's a line of trees up ahead. The sky is an enormous, deep, midnight blue expanse over their heads. It's dotted with what seems like a billion stars, twinkling around and behind a few of the faintest wisps of gossamer cloud cover. The moon is hanging low, heavy and full, casting a bright, silvery light across the tops of the trees and spiky overgrowth in the field.
It's a beautiful night. If Beth were at home, she'd definitely be sitting at the picnic table in the yard with a drink, appreciating it, trying to put all of the death and danger out of her mind for just a moment.
Instead, she's stuck in a car in a foreign country, with a guy who would murder her in an instant if he had no more use for her, on her way to meet with some people who'd probably hesitate even less, with—Beth checks her phone, no service, figures—with no way to call for help.
It's enough to make a girl briefly reconsider all of the choices she's made over the last two years.
They pass through the trees and into a clearing lit brightly by the moon, and Rio makes a quiet, angry noise when he sees there are already four cars waiting. Beth can see a cluster of dark shapes standing around or leaning up against the cars, and they all straighten when Rio's crew pulls up. She does a quick headcount; it looks like there are eight people on the other side, so they're outnumbered too.
Fantastic .
She glances over at Rio, and it's so dark in the car she can barely make him out, but the ambient star and moonlight are just enough that she can see the tight, hard line of his mouth and furrow of his brow and the way his hands are clenched tight around the wheel.
Mick and Dags pull up and park, leaving ample space in the middle but slightly behind their cars. Without warning, Rio guns the engine and pulls the handbrake, whipping them into a spin and throwing Beth hard up against the window.
The car jumps and rocks, and Beth's not any kind of a stunt driver, but even she's pretty sure trying to do a donut on uneven ground is a terrible idea. Rio pulls it off, though, sliding to a halt neatly in the space Mick and Dags had left him, facing the other way and spraying dirt and dust all over the assembled group.
Right, so, that's the kind of meeting this is going to be.
Rio swings out of the car without waiting for her and pulls his phone out as he ambles up to the group, his boys falling into formation behind him. Beth climbs out of the car, brushing herself off, doing her best not to attract any attention.
"'Ey," Rio's making a show of texting, taking his time "If I'd known you were plannin' a party, I would've brought a cake or some shit."
Beth's phone lights up, and she glances down at it. She's got a new text from an unknown number.
keep ur fckn mouth shut
Lovely.
She schools her face as she crosses around the car, putting a little extra swing in her hips as she high steps over the uneven ground. As she approaches the group, Mick shifts a little closer to her and, remembering Rio's advice- well, demand, she stops just behind him.
"You seem to have turned up some extra guests even without the invitation," the person at the front of the other group says. Beth's surprised to realize she's a woman. Not that- Obviously Beth doesn't think women can't be criminal masterminds, she's just surprised because up until this point her exposure to the crime scene made it seem like a pretty uniformly boys club.
"You forget how to tell time?" the woman asks.
"Got caught up," Rio puts his phone away and rolls his shoulders back, taking a wide stance with his hands crossed in front of him and his boys close in, forming an unsubtle wall behind him. Mick hangs back slightly, blocking Beth from getting closer.
The woman's standing tall, her back straight and hands on her hips. Beth can see a mass of long, dark, curling hair tumbling down her back, a strikingly feminine contrast to her welding jacket, work boots, and hard expression. She looks like she's almost the same height as Rio, but the sheer, looming mass of the men assembled behind her makes her look tiny, though no less in command.
It's an impressive picture, one that makes Beth straighten up a little, and the movement catches the woman's eye for a second before her attention snaps back to Rio.
"What'd you bring me?"
Dags tosses a duffle bag at her feet, and she tilts her chin, giving one of her boys the signal to grab it and dig through it. He passes her a stack of bills, and she absently thumbs the bills like a flipbook, never taking her eyes off of Rio, who watches her right back. They're frozen facing each other like two predators on the hunt, both poised to go for the kill and just waiting for their moment.
Beth is suddenly excruciatingly aware that she's all by herself, surrounded by people who don't care about her, who are all armed and, she presumes, violent. The clearing is still and quiet, the only sound of movement coming from the guy rummaging through the bag, stacking up bills. Beth swallows hard. She's so alone here.
One of the woman's crew pulls out a light and shines it over the bills—UV Beth assumes—and a flush of pride breaks through the terror when the guy says the cash checks out.
"That the forger?" the woman asks Rio, turning to Beth before he has a chance to answer. "You make this?"
Beth opens her mouth to reply and then stops, snapping it shut with a glance at Rio, who's not looking at her.
She nods, and the woman smirks at Rio, "Got her trained up like a good little bitch, huh?"
She might as well have slapped Beth across the face. She isn't anyone's dog.
"Yeah, I made it," Beth's voice rings out before she'd even fully decided to speak up, and she sees Rio's shoulders tighten as the woman's attention swings full force back to Beth. "It's a proprietary process. I figured it out myself."
The woman's grinning now, but it's more shark than pleasant, "That right? Maybe you want to branch out, huh? Come work for a real organization for a change?"
The patronizing tone puts Beth's back up even further, "I work for myself."
Now Rio looks at her, a fast, furious glance, and the woman throws her head back and laughs, a sparkling, bell-like sound that echoes around the clearing before focusing again on Rio, "You always bring me the best presents."
"Hey, now." He's using his honey trap voice. The one that always resonates at the base of Beth's spine and makes her knees a little weak, not that she would ever in a million years admit that to him.
Something in her twists because she knows the look that goes with that voice, and he's pointing it at this other woman, which is a stupid and insane thing to get hung up on for more reasons than she can count, and god , she really does have the worst instincts.
"You know that ain't how this works, Mia. You want a piece of the pie, you gotta go through me."
The woman, Mia, shrugs, "That up for negotiation at all? Word is you got a lot on your plate right now. Maybe you give her to me, and me and my boys figure out how to franchise her."
Beth really, really hates that she can't see Rio's expression. From her angle, she can only see a sliver of his face, and he's holding himself so still, it gives her nothing.
"Nah, nah," his voice is still smooth and easy, but Beth sees his boys come a little bit more to attention and notices Mia's boys do the same.
"Come on, Rio. Think about it," she steps closer to him, the fluid movement more like a dance step than anything so pedestrian as walking.
"It'll be like old times," her voice goes deeper, huskier as she says it, loaded with promise and history. Then she lays a hand on his chest, and Beth tastes bile at the back of her throat.
Rio reaches up and twines a lock of her hair around one finger, slowly pulling it out, letting the curl slide through his fingers. And that something in Beth twists so sharp and sudden she gasps loud enough that the corner of Mia's mouth quirks.
She must've given some sort of signal because one of Mia's boys takes a step in Beth's direction, and without even looking, so fast Beth can barely track the movement, Rio pulls his gun out of the waistband of his pants and shoots the guy in the knee.
The guy goes down with a hoarse cry, and Mick grabs Beth by the arm, hard enough that she cries out herself, and yanks her behind him. A ripple goes through the crowd, and Beth realizes everyone has their guns out—pointed at the ground, but clearly on high alert and ready to go—except Mia, who takes a step back, both hands in the air.
Beth blinks. Rio just shot someone. And now he's just over there bleeding on the ground. Because he was shot. By Rio.
Beth lurches to the side and loses her Lean Cuisine all over the grass.
One of Mia's guys steps forward and hauls the guy up and back towards their cars. The guy with the ruined knee lets out a pained whimper entirely at odds with the hulking, tattooed mass of him when he tries to walk, and it makes Beth's stomach lurch and head spin. She can see that the leg of his jeans has gone black with blood from the knee down, and she retches again, but there's nothing left to come up.
"Oh, so it's like that, huh?" Mia laughs that silver bell laugh again, and Beth wants to claw her eyes out.
Rio doesn't say anything, doesn't move at all as far as Beth can tell, but whatever Mia reads on his face has her laugh trailing off as she cocks her head and studies him, suddenly contemplative.
"Oh shit , well, isn't this interesting."
Mick swears so softly under his breath that Beth probably wouldn't have been able to hear it if she were even six inches farther away. Rio still has his gun out, hanging it deceptively loosely at his side, but Beth can see the tension radiating off of him in the way he's holding himself, the angle of his neck, the bend of his knees. He's ready to move at any moment.
"Alright, alright," Mia takes another step back, which, it seems to Beth like that should relax everyone, but instead, the tension gets thicker, and goosebumps erupt up and down Beth's arms. Her skin feels clammy, and her stomach's still roiling. A light breeze winds through the clearing and the leaves on the trees shush shush shush against each other. "I see I misread the situation. My bad."
"We gonna talk terms or we just wastin' each other's time?" Rio drawls.
The playful edge drops off of Mia's face like a stone, "What're you offering?"
"50/50."
"Now who's wastin' time?"
"You want to keep hagglin', or should we just settle on 70/30 because you know I ain't goin' lower than that?"
Mia thinks it over, jaw rocking back and forth, a gesture Beth recognizes, knows intimately.
"500g in biweekly drops?" Mia asks.
Beth nearly chokes, there is no way in hell she can make that much that fast.
"You can move it that fast?" Beth can hear the surprise in Rio's voice, the thread of respect and something spikes in her chest.
"Baby, you know I can move anything I put my mind to. The question is, can you keep up with me yet?"
No. Beth thinks.
"Yeah," Rio says. "You know stamina ain't a problem for me."
Mia smiles a slow, filthy smile, and Beth wonders if the entire reason she's here is to witness this show. It's a cruel new type of punishment, she'll give him that.
Beth's suddenly so, so tired. She doesn't know what the point of any of this was. She wants to go home, wants her bath, wants her bed, wants to forget this night ever happened.
Then Mia nods and spits in her hand, which is disgusting, holding it out to Rio, "We got ourselves a deal then."
Mick takes a small step back, shuffling Beth towards the cars, as Rio laughs and shakes Mia's hand.
They hold on for a long moment, and Beth tries to duck around Mick to see what's happening, but he's herding her a little more insistently now, trying to be subtle about it, but moving her definitively towards the cars.
Mia leans in and whispers something in Rio's ear, and whatever it is, it has his shoulders going tighter, whether in surprise, anger, desire, Beth couldn't say. Then Mia's stepping back and then back again, and her boys are closing in around her.
Then everything happens at once.
Rio swings around and meets Mick's eye, who gives up being subtle and shoves Beth hard towards the car. Beth trips over a rock and goes down on one knee right as she hears a firework go off and the rear window of Rio's car—the window she'd been headed straight for—shatters. Then there are a lot of fireworks, and Beth realizes they're gunshots right as Mick yanks her up by the back of her shirt, tearing it a little, not letting her stand all the way up and shoving her the rest of the way to the car.
Beth stumbles towards the driver's side door because it's closer, fumbling with the handle for an eternity as guns fire and glass shatters and metal pings all around her, and the realization that she might actually die tonight crystallizes in her mind.
She gets the door open and starts to duck in as a strong hand comes down on her back, shoving her forward and someone— Rio she realizes with a hot, sharp bolt of pure, concentrated relief—shouts at her to stay down as she clambers over the center console.
Then Rio turns on the car and slams the door and his foot all the way down on the grass simultaneously. The tires spin for a breathless moment before they're peeling out and flying through the trees and down the dirt track so fast they gain a little air with every rock and rivet they bounce over.