by M. N. Forgy
We both head out of the office and back out into the strip club. The music is loud, the lights dimmed, and the smell of the girls making my dick twitch with excitement, or maybe it’s the fact I’m going to beat down on a scumbag tonight that has my cock hard. I get off on bringing people pain, it’s as if my own problems and burdens drip from my own wounds and into theirs. When I’m done, they’re the ones in pain and I feel better, even if it’s just for a minute. If being a member of the place I was at up north taught me anything, it’s how to delegate my own torment.
Jinx and I sit in a booth watching Star do her routine. She never goes very far up the pole because of her big ass tits. She says they throw off her balance or some shit.
Ariel slides two beers across the table for Jinx and I, and I slip some cash onto her tray for coming right over and taking care of my boy. She winks and heads to some men in the far corner.
Some commotion to the right catches my eyes while I gulp foam down my throat. A guy with curled hair sits in a booth, the way his shoulders are tense and head cocked to the side, I can tell he’s in a defensive posture and giving Bad Bunny a hard time.
Feeling me staring at her, she glances up, and I wave her over. She walks away from the guy without another word.
A pissed off look on her face, she reaches the table and adjusts her rabbit ears, she’s the Kings’ little playboy bunny, and hot as hell.
“What’s going on over there?” I ask her, trying to be heard over the music.
“He keeps asking for Aspen. I told him she’s not working tonight and he’s not having it.”
I stare at the guy. That must be him. Kace.
“I’ll take care of it, but don’t go far,” I state. She huffs and walks away. Leaning in close to Jinx, I point to the man.
“That’s gotta be him, I knew he’d come looking for her.” Jinx slides his glasses down the bridge of his nose to get a good look at the man. Rarely does the man expose his eyes.
“Let’s do this.” He growls and stands from the booth. Yup, shit’s about to go down.
Climbing out myself, not forgetting my beer, I head over to the mysterious guy and slide into the booth with him.
His eyes widen with surprise as Jinx and I box him in, one of us on each side of him.
“I hear you’re looking for Aspen tonight?” I ask, then take a pull from my beer.
“Yeah, she ain’t at home, so I know her bitch ass is here with my daughter, now tell her to cut the shit and get out here!” he hollers, the smell of booze coming off of him. He’s not drunk like Aspen said he was, so he must be sobering up, I assume. Which isn’t good for me. I need him pissed drunk so I can slip him out of here without incident. He plays with his fingers anxiously, the knuckles on his hands caked with dried blood like he hit something or someone. I can’t help but wonder how many times he’s hit Aspen with those knuckles, my fingers twitch wanting to harm this motherfucker now.
I shake my head as if I’m disappointed in Aspen and look at Jinx.
“Can you believe that? That bitch called in saying she was sick and she straight up lied to us,” I state. Jinx plays along, scoffing as if Aspen is just another pain in the ass.
Kace looks to me, his body relaxing when he realizes we’re on his side.
“Yeah, that’s about all she’s fucking worth is causing trouble.” He grunts. I can’t help but take him in, he’s a fucking mess and I can’t see him ever being a cop. I guess that’s why he isn’t anymore.
“How about I fix you up with a private dance in our champagne room with one of our other girls, and I’ll see if I can get ahold of Aspen in the meantime, hmm?”
His spine straightens, and he runs his hand through his hair.
“I think that would be the best for everyone,” he accepts. Looking up, I find Bad Bunny talking to Ariel by the bar, I wave her over.
“This is Bad Bunny, my best and naughtiest girl. She likes to break a lot of rules back there in the VIP room.” I grin, and Kace chuckles like any horny man would. I give her a knowing looking to let her know this customer is special, my eyes staying on hers for a moment longer than necessary.
“Come on baby, let me take care of you.” She winks, sliding her hands down her curves.
I slide out of the booth to allow Kace to climb out behind me.
I lean into Bunny. “I want him drunk.” She nods, knowing the game.
Stepping back, I cross my arms and drink the rest of my beer while Bad Bunny takes Aspen’s ex-husband to our champagne room for a night of entertainment.
His last night of enjoyment.
Aspen
Sitting on North’s couch, Halle and I watch TV together. I cleaned all the bottles off the coffee table and washed some dishes, but I promised myself I’d stop there. I don’t want him to come home and feel any type of way from me straightening up. I only did it because I’m panicking inside and can’t sit still.
Halle sits on her knees and draws on a piece of paper with a pen I found, looking up every so often to watch Spongebob.
I wiggle my foot and bite at my nails anxiously. I know Kace is going to go to the club looking for me and my mind is racing wondering what North is going to do. I stand, needing to move. I should be at the club, I shouldn’t have involved North because now he’s going to involve the MC and it’s just a mess.
Walking past the kitchen I decide to get nosy and walk into the first room I come to, flipping the light on, I find it’s just a bathroom, a small one. It has a tub and shower, a sink across from it with a razor and shaving cream, a toothbrush sitting in a wooden holder attached to the wall.
There’s a window up high, but it’s not covered with anything like the other windows in the house.
Turning the light off, I continue down the hall and walk into the next dark room. I turn the lights on and find a king-size bed disheveled with blue plaid blankets and white pillows. I can’t help but wonder how many women he’s had on that bed. Probably more than I want to know. I clench my eyes shut. Why do I care? I can’t care, I need to focus on Halle and not some sexy biker. I have enough man problems. Clearing my mind, I take note of his clothes thrown all over the floor and the dresser with a TV on it across the room with some scattered change underneath it. I come into the room and open the top drawer of the dresser. A gun sits next to a bottle of Calvin Klein cologne. My heart skips a beat seeing the weapon, but instead of shutting the drawer back with fear, I reach inside and run my finger along the barrel. The dip in my back beading with sweat as I wonder if this gun has ever been fired. I grab his cologne and point it at myself, spritzing it on my shirt. Pulling the material to my nose, I inhale it and close my eyes. It’s as if North is right here in this room with me. I’ve smelled a lot of different man smells working at the club, but North has his own scent. One that does things to me.
“Mommy?” I jump at Halle’s voice and slam the drawer shut.
“Yeah, baby?” My voice cracks with surprise.
“I’m hungry.”
Clearing my throat, I head toward her, turning off the light.
“Let’s go see what we can find.” I usher her out of North’s room and back down the hall.
“What’s that smell?” Halle scrunches up her nose and looks over her shoulder at me.
I give a tight-lipped smile and ignore her.
Because there’s no way I can describe the scent of North to a child and keep it PG.
In the kitchen, I find some crackers and peanut butter and hand it to her.
“Ooh!” She lights up, excited to be having peanut butter for dinner, and runs off back to the living room. Leaning against the counter, I cross my arms and begin to tap my foot again. My eyes darting to the clock on the wall.
“When will you be home, North?” I mutter nervously. It’s weird, I was married to a cop and never felt the security I do when North is around me. I wish he was here right now as I’m a nervous wreck.
Did he find Kace or did Kace find him? Is one of them hurt? Are the poli
ce involved? Are they looking for me? And if they are, what would North tell them?
Six
North
Kace has been in the room with Bad Bunny for about an hour and a half now, and if I know my girl she has him wasted and eating out of the palm of her hand by now. Which is good because I’m anxious as fuck to get my hands bloody. It’s been too long since I’ve got to show my darker side, the one that thrives on violence and fucks on bad memories. I may not look like an outlaw to some people as I don’t have the rugged looks or the hard personality but piss me off and I will show you why you shouldn’t trust a pretty boy with a sexy smirk. Not all monsters wear scars on the outside, motherfucker. I’m one package that comes with good looks and hidden gun.
I flick my hand against Jinx’s arm to grab his attention.
“Let’s go see where we are,” I tell him, and he stands up.
I take the back way to the champagne room, a corridor we take high profile clients to help keep them from the public eye.
Bad Bunny and Kace are in one of the smaller VIP rooms. Curtains swoop around the section with silk ribbons laced in to give it an erotic feel. Pulling apart the material, a leopard print chair sits proudly in the middle of the area with a stripper pole right in front. Kace can’t see me as I stand from the back of the room, so I stand there for a moment to observe what I just walked in on.
Sweat, sex, and shitfaced. This room smells of a shitfaced fucker who’s sweating while hoping he’s going to get some.
He’s wrong.
Dead wrong.
Bad Bunny is sitting on Kace’s lap, his arms lying flat on the hand rests. I watch him struggle to keep control of himself and not touch the merchandise.
“Come on baby, I’m worth it. Can’t you feel that?” Kace slurs, thrusting his hips upward so Bad Bunny can feel his cock.
“Oh yeah, I can feel that. You’re so big, baby.” She feeds into his ego, slides her hands all over his shoulders and chest. Her eyes pop over Kace’s head spotting us and she nods, giving us the sign that he’s fucked up.
Strutting into the room, she climbs off him in a hurry and I grab the empty champagne bottle by the neck and slam the bottom of the bottle over his head. You can’t hear the thud over the music, but I fucking felt the vibration all the way through my hand.
He falls forward, landing face-first on the floor.
“That guy is a piece of work!” Bad Bunny sneers, hands on her hips, her face twisted with disgust.
Bending down, I grab his wallet and pull out all the cash he has, which is just a couple of ones.
“Really?” I mutter under my breath. Pulling some cards out, I find the “emergency fund” folded up and hand the one-hundred-dollar bill to Bad Bunny. She deserves more, not just because the guy is scum but because I involved her in what is going to be a murder.
“Next time we have a guest come to the club, I’ll make it up to you and put you in double rotation, babe.”
She takes the money and nods, accepting my offer.
“Oh, you want these?” She dangles a pair of keys in front of me.
“Shit, yeah I’mma need those,” I mutter, taking them. I can’t have this fucker’s car left in the parking lot.
Pulling my phone out, I text Bash.
“Now get out of here,” I tell her coldly, needing her as far away from this guy and what just happened.
“You brought your truck, right?” I ask Jinx. “You know, the one Talia stole?” I give him shit and he smiles proudly as he nods. Talia is his woman, and she’s full of fire, the little sprite.
“Are you doing all this for some pussy?” he finally asks, and I instantly scowl.
“I mean…” I don’t know what to say, the answer is yes. I’m doing this for Aspen and I don’t really have a good reason as to why I’m fucking doing all this for her. “Yeah.” I shrug, gaining a chuckle from Jinx. He doesn’t question me further.
Glaring down at Kace, I know there are a ton of reasons why this piece of shit doesn’t need to be on this earth, but I took it upon myself to judge him as unworthy of Halle and Aspen out of his sins and now that Jinx has pointed out to me just how far I’ve gone for Aspen, I’m realizing I’m more than attracted to the new girl than I want to admit.
I’m killing her ex-husband just so she can see what a real man is, and the lengths they will go to protect what is theirs.
Jinx goes to pull his truck around the back of the club and comes back inside to help me move the body. I grab the arms, and Jinx grabs the feet. With the music and all the curtains, nobody can see us, this back entrance is for celebrities and shit. Outside, the muffler of Jinx’s black lifted Chevy rumbles.
Using my knees, I toss the body over the side and do a horrible job because Kace’s head bounces off the side and the front of his torso falls to the ground.
“Fuck!” I growl, grabbing his limp ass and trying again. I’m off my game and I don’t fucking like it. This time making it, his body fumbles into the back of the bed.
Bash suddenly walks out the back doors and my heart skips a beat.
“Goddamn it, fucker, you scared me.” I hold my chest.
He looks over the scene, his eyes wide.
“What the fuck?”
I hand him the keys I just found. Bash is just the man I need tonight. He’s the vice president of our club and if anyone else likes to get their hands dirty, it’s him.
“I need you to follow us in whatever car these keys belong to,” I tell him. Taking them, he looks them over.
“They go to a Ford,” he states before turning and pressing buttons on the key fob. A truck out front starts to go off, and I smile knowing we found Kace’s car.
“Take me to the rails, one where a train is expected any minute,” I tell Jinx, and I climb inside of the passenger seat.
“Sweet Home Alabama” plays on the radio, and I lean over to turn the volume up. Jinx opens his door, the cab light illuminating just enough light that I realize I have some of Kace’s blood on my hands.
“Shit.” I rub it on my jeans and keep singing, all while Jinx looks at me like I’ve lost my fucking mind.
I have.
In fact, all of us Kings have gone mad. That’s why we’re fucking brothers. Pulling out of the parking lot of Centerfold, Bash right behind us in a small truck, we head to the tracks, Jinx making sure to keep off the main roads. It doesn’t take long before Jinx is driving off-road and pulling up to the tracks, I open the door and get out. It’s dead silent out here, not a person or house in sight. There’s a light breeze with the smell of dew thick in the air. If my adrenaline wasn’t pumping so profusely, I’d put on a leather jacket. We use the rails to move products and Jinx knows the schedule by heart. Since it’s a freight system, security is minimal when a train is in the station. Right now, no train means no peering eyes.
Jinx reaches over the bed of the truck and grabs the body, tossing it over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Kace slurs, trying to talk but is completely out of it from the booze or the whack to the head. Jinx drops him to the ground like a bag of trash, and I kneel down by Kace’s side. I grab him by the chin making him look at me. Blood spills down his forehead from the champagne bottle bashing him in the head.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of your girls for you.” A sly smile crosses my face, and I nail him in the face with my fist. His head slings back, and I hit him again. Over and over, I beat his ass for every time he ever made Aspen cry, for every dirty deed he ever committed behind the badge. I beat the fucking life out of him for every woman who ever endured a man hurting her. My vendetta now becoming personal, I hit him until my own knuckles almost break. The metal tracks start to vibrate, indicating a train coming, I pause.
“That bitch set me up!” he slurs to the starlit sky. Visions of my past echo in my head, and I grab the sides of my ears, wanting the noise to quiet. The old club, that night they broke their loyalty to me and left a scene to haunt me for the rest of my life plaguing my fucking mind. The
train rings, warning it’s coming and drowning out my insanity.
The strength of the train becomes stronger on the rails, so I step back and lean against the grill next to Jinx, making sure our dirty little pig doesn’t hobble off the tracks when I’m not looking. The spotlight of the train rounds the bend, and Kace cries out for help.
Biting my lip, I become anxious, ready for the train to do its fucking job and take this low life out. Jinx suddenly displays a pair of glasses and I take them and put them on.
“Thanks, man.” Don’t wanna get blood and shit in my eyes, do I? I check over my shoulder to see what Bash is doing and he’s wiping the car down, tossing beer around the seats and making the scene to fit the accident. The train wails out a warning, just as it chugs over Kace’s body. Jinx and I standing ten feet back isn’t enough as blood sprays across us, mostly me. The sound of bones crushing sending a shiver up my spine, I look to the moon with the urge to fucking howl like a bloodthirsty wolf. I hold my arms out and smell the metal and blood hot in the air.
“Goddamn, this never gets old!” I roar out to the night sky, my arms stretched out on both sides.
Dropping my head, I exhale a breath. As much as I live for the kill, it’s over just as quickly.
“Well, we better go,” I hesitantly tell Jinx, climbing back into his truck, and Bash gets in the back.
“Just a drunk on the train tracks at night. Tragic accident,” I mumble to Jinx who backs out of the open field.
“Yep,” Jinx states, looking over his shoulder to back out. Taking off my bloody glasses, I toss them on the dash.
“Thanks for the help, Bash.” I run my hands through my sticky hair, my face pulling into an expression of disgust.
“It’s what brothers do.” Bash kicks his feet up on the seat and rests his head on the side window.
Fucking right we do.
Rolling down my window, I hang my arm out, the smell of dew filling the truck. I need the air, the reminder I’m surviving.