by Gail McHugh
Jaw clenched, Dom stares long and hard at me before jutting his chin toward a corner. “You heard him.”
“This is insane, Dom!” Bobby stomps toward some random corner. “Complete bullshit!”
My smirk explodes as the fucktard does as told. “Looks like it’s your turn, Dom,” I point out with a casual shrug, well aware—but not giving a single fuck—that I pushed my luck past its limit several minutes ago. “Let’s see if you’re as responsive as your buddy is. Drop your shit or end up the reason we’ll all get to experience rigor mortis tonight.”
“I’ve got cameras all over this bitch, Ashcroft,” Dom warns, his voice disturbingly calm. He lowers his gun from Brock’s forehead and tosses it to the ground. He kicks it, the weapon joining Bobby’s across the warehouse. Staring into my eyes—the evilness pouring from him fisting my balls—he grins and points at the four corners of the ceiling. “Say hello, prick. You’re on television.”
I don’t lift my gaze from his. I don’t have to. I know he’s telling the truth. The asshole’s as paranoid as a prison escapee. From motion detectors to an arsenal of weapons stockpiled in his stables, the dick has every acre he owns covered.
“You pull anything shady,” Dom continues, “it won’t take long for Derick to figure out it was you and Brock. You’ll be begging for the cops to come get ya’s after he finishes what ya’s started here. Bet on that.”
Older than Dom by five years, Derick Lawrence—if at all possible—makes Dom look like an altar boy. After their mother died from an overdose when they were in high school, and their father took his last breaths in prison for murdering an innocent family during a home invasion, Derick raised Dom. Having no other living relatives, and knowing nothing but violence, Derick dragged Dom into the lifestyle he currently leads.
It’s safe to say Dom’s threat’s not a threat but indeed a fact.
Dom swings his attention to Brock, a sardonic smile resting on his lips. “But I can do better than that. I know where ya live, Cunningham. Never forget this, motherfucker. It was just the other day me and Derick took a trip out to Annapolis for a little get-together. I might’ve had a few too many beers in me when we passed your complex, but I could’ve sworn I saw a tight piece of ass getting out of your ride. Dark, wavy, long hair. Tits you could suck on for days.” He licks his lips, his smile vanishing. “It’d be a shame to hurt such a cute little thing. But no worries, my friend. I’d make sure to fuck her pussy real good before I made her pay for your disrespect.”
I automatically react, my fist connecting with Dom’s rib cage.
Hunched over like a cripple, Dom curls his arms around his stomach, a wheeze of pain slipping from his mouth. “Guess I hit a soft spot.” He lets out a scornful laugh and straightens. “I’ll keep that in mind when I’m scrubbing her bloodstains off my clothing.”
Bobby lunges for his gun, but I lift mine, halting his forward motion.
“Too slow.” I aim it at his head. “You tryin’ to piss me off, dick?”
His hands shoot heaven-bound in surrender as I approach him. “Fine! I ain’t doin’ nothing, man! Just calm down, okay?”
I scratch my jaw, wondering if I should kill him or scar his mental state a little more than it already is. Not about to take any risks, my fist graces the side of his skull, knocking him clear the fuck out.
After watching all two hundred and fifty–plus pounds of his fat ass slither to the ground, I walk back over to Brock and rest my hand on his shoulder. “Wanna add a few colorful bruises to Dom’s face before we get back to business?”
“Yeah,” Brock answers, his voice eerily cold. A chill of unease shoots down my spine as he steps into Dom’s face, revenge lighting his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
It takes me a second to realize what’s about to happen, but by the time I’ve gathered my thoughts, Brock has his gun shoved in Dom’s mouth, his free hand gripping the psycho’s collar as he whispers, “You threatened my girl’s life. Say good night, motherfucker.”
Adrenaline expands my veins as Brock pulls the trigger, blowing Dom’s brains straight out the back of his head.
Blondie screams, her deafening cries slicing through my ears as I try to process what’s happened. Fuck. Frozen, I can’t breathe, can’t think. The only thing I’m capable of doing is watching a tidal wave demolish my dreams, wiping out my future as Dom drops to the ground. Lifeless body twitching, blood pools around what’s left of Dom’s head, his eyes wide open as his last garbled breath evaporates into the air.
I blink, oxygen rushing into my depleted lungs as Bobby comes to and reaches for his gun. “No!” I yell, snagging Brock’s attention. He swings around and pops off a shot, the bullet hitting Bobby in the center of his chest. The impact knocks him back, his body coiled into a ball.
Brock crosses the warehouse and stands over him, the tip of his boot pressed to his throat. “What’s the code to the room holding the blow?”
“Fuck you!” Bobby wails in pain. “You ki-killed Dom.” Another hiss of pain follows a measured smile stretching his lips. “Derick’s gonna ea-eat you alive.”
Brock digs his boot harder against Bobby’s esophagus. “Answer me now, motherfucker, and I won’t kill you. What’s. The. Code. To. The. Room?”
A glimmer of hope sparks in Bobby’s eyes as blood bubbles up from his mouth, oozing down the side of his cheekbone. He coughs, gurgling out, “The code spells ‘die pig.’ 343744.”
Brock tilts his head, not a hint of remorse on his face. “Thanks for the information, but I changed my mind, asshole.” Before I can take a breath, Brock sends a second bullet into Bobby’s chest, this one tearing through his heart.
God help us . . .
Hysteria riffles through me as I sink my fingers into my hair, gripping the sweaty strands. Brock’s lost it and I’m right behind him, my sanity splintering by the second. Muscles strung taut with anxiety, I hunch over, my stomach threatening to hurl. The whore’s hiccupped cries knife at my ears, her howls drowning out the sound of my dry heaves as Brock steps over Bobby’s body and stomps across the warehouse, his piece aimed at the girl’s head.
Raw fear dilates her pupils, her lips quivering as Brock kneels beside her.
“No, Brock! Listen to me!” My voice cracks midsentence as I come up behind him, resting my hand on the back of his neck. “Don’t do this, bro. She didn’t do anything.”
“She has to die,” Brock says flatly, his tone hollow as he shoves the gun under her chin. “She saw everything. Knows what we look like, our names. We gotta get rid of her.” He tucks his hand under her armpit, dragging her up off the floor. “Wrong place, wrong time. That’s all.”
A cry drops from her mouth, tears swallowing her pale face. “God, please don’t. I—I won’t say a word.” Rivulets of mascara darken her cheeks, her frail, naked body shaking as her stare bounces between me and Brock. “Please. I’ll leave here, and you’ll never hear from me again. I . . . I’ve seen men kill other men. Seen Dom do it a coup-couple of times, and I never said a word. I swear on my son I won’t tell anyone.”
Christ. The whore’s a mother. I can’t let this happen. Though she’s a risk, I’d never be able to live with myself.
I hit the place I know will hurt Brock the most. The only place that might stop him from taking her out. “Think of Brandon, bro. If you do this, you won’t be around when they find the kid.” I cringe, knowing I’m spewing false hope—but fuck—it’s all I got. Hope that my words will penetrate somewhere inside him in a way that not even the mention of Amber can. “He’s gonna need his older brother to teach him shit about life. Shit he’s not gonna wanna learn from behind a partition when you’re serving a life sentence for killing anyone else.”
The second I see a flash of sanity in his eyes, I lay my hand on his, guiding the gun away from the girl’s face.
She grabs her stomach and pukes, her dinner splattering
the cement.
“We don’t have to kill her,” I continue, cautiously taking the gun from him. “There’s other ways of doing this.” For the sake of the whore’s kid, I’m about to do something that’d never normally cross my mind. But in this very moment, I’m not who I used to be. My mind, along with my morals, fucked off the second Brock killed Dom. I fist the back of her greasy hair, my voice a fiery whisper as I pin the gun to her cheek. “You have a purse here with you?”
She nods, a sob on the heels of the shaky movement. “It’s under Dom’s de-desk.”
“Grab her purse, Brock.” I pull her into my chest, the stench of her vomit-tinged breath curdling my stomach. “We’re about to play another game.”
Brock cuts his eyes to mine and—with little hesitation—fetches her purse.
“Find her license and read out her name and address.” Gaze stuck on hers, I hear Brock shuffling through her belongings, my heart surging at the lines I’m about to cross. To keep Brock from killing her, I need to turn into an animal, erasing everything I was taught never to do to a woman.
“Cindy Lewis,” Brock announces. “Four eighty-three Culvert Road, apartment B, Matoaka, West Virginia, two four seven three six.”
“Repeat what he said.” I clench her hair tighter. “Now.”
“Cin-Cindy Lewis,” she cries, her lips trembling, “Fo . . . four eighty-three Culvert Road, apartment B, Matoaka, West Virginia, two four seven three six.”
“Very good, Cindy. You wanna live?” I question, sick at what I’m doing. “Wanna wake up to your kid tomorrow? See him grow up?”
Another nod, snot dripping from her nose.
“Answer me!” I untangle my fingers from her hair, the back of my hand singeing her cheek in a ruthless smack. She loses her footing, but I catch her by the nape, dragging her flush to my chest. “Don’t just fucking nod! This is serious! Do. You. Want. To. Live?”
“Yes!” she sobs, her naked body falling limp against mine. “I want to live!”
“That’s what I thought.” Though I’m anything but, my words come out calmly. I grip her chin, digging my fingers into her flesh. “I want you to listen very carefully, Cindy Lewis from Matoaka, West Virginia. You ready?”
“Ye-yes.”
“I’m gonna let you walk outta here alive so you can see that kid of yours grow up. But I’m keeping your license—as insurance, if you will. Understand?”
Relief loosens her muscles as she sniffles. “Mm-hmm. I—I do.”
“Again, very good, Cindy. Now, do you have a vehicle here or did Dom pick you up?”
“I drove here in mine,” she whispers, her sobs quieting. “Dom wanted to pick me up, but I ju-just got it for my sixteenth birthday, so I wa-wanted to drive it.”
Jesus. She’s only a kid. Nausea roils through me as I glance at Brock. After looking at her license he nods, confirming her age. The pig wasn’t just fucking around behind his wife’s back, but he was banging a minor. Another piece of my morals disintegrates, flames igniting any guilt I had over Brock killing Dom into ashes. If I could, I’d resurrect the asshole, take a dump in his mouth, and stick a bullet in his crusty thirty-five-year-old balls.
“Perfect,” I say, sliding back into character. “You’re gonna get in your car, drive home to that kid who needs you, and forget what my and my buddy’s faces look like. You’re especially gonna forget what happened here tonight.” I suck in an uneven breath, feeling like scum. I’ve never hit, threatened, or fucked with a girl like this, but I push through, knowing my hideous acts are saving her from Brock making her his next target.
I bring the gun to her head. “If you don’t do what I said—and decide to call the cops—once I get out of prison, I will hunt your coke-sniffing ass down, and knife your body open from your dirty cunt all the way up to your chapped lips. Ya hearing me?”
Whimpering, she nods. “I—I am. God, I am.”
“Good.” I stare into her dark, chocolate eyes, hoping she can see I’m not the monster she thinks I am. I release her chin and, with the gun still pinned to her head, I glance at my watch. “You have one minute to get dressed and disappear. Your time begins . . . now.”
She snatches her purse from Brock, gathers her clothing, and—without getting dressed—scurries out of the warehouse, her sobs piercing my ears as the door slams closed behind her.
“Fuuuuck,” Brock groans, swinging his fist through the air. “I should’ve had you test the code before I killed Bobby. Come on.” He starts for the room harboring the coke. “We have to yank up the shit and get the hell outta here.”
Numb, I stare at him, unsure of what either of us has morphed into. Willing my body to move, to react, to do something, I follow Brock, my heart thumping at dangerous levels as he punches the code into a security panel flanking a metal door.
A long beep, a red light turns green, and bam: I’m staring at enough pearl to keep the entire Eastern Seaboard geeked up for months, if not years.
On top of accessory to murder and threatening the shit out of a minor, I’m about to add theft to my growing list of immoral acts. No amount of visits to the confessional booth is gonna get me outta this one . . .
I enter, my eyes landing on endless stacks of kilo bricks lining a room the size of a small office. If I had to estimate the street value on the shit, it’d be somewhere around fifteen to twenty million.
“Grab that.” Brock points to a black duffel bag cushioned against a filing cabinet as he starts swiping the coke from the shelves.
I walk over to the bag and lift it, my bicep getting a workout from its weight. Other than a small body, there’s only one thing that can be inside it. I set it on top of a wooden table and unzip it, my intuition proving right as a slew of AK-47s, a shiny twelve-gauge shotgun, and at least twenty pistols hit my line of sight.
I dump everything onto the table and lean against the wall, my arms crossed as I watch Brock fill the bag. Nerves mounting, my head begins to fully digest what’s gone down. What started as a normal pickup ended in complete chaos, two assholes losing their pathetic lives because of us. I didn’t pull the trigger, but Bobby and Dom’s blood is on my hands as much as Brock’s.
Movements carried out with quick precision, and stare narrowed on mine, Brock continues to stack out the bag. “We should’ve gotten rid of her.”
“I wasn’t gonna let you kill an innocent kid,” I mutter under my breath. “I get that you snapped when Dom threatened Amber—so did I—but that’s where it needed to end.”
Having nothing more to say, I turn and walk out. Barely stepping foot into the open warehouse, a pang of nausea razors through me as my gaze lands on Bobby and Dom’s bodies. I clamp my eyes shut, nightmares of what I’ve turned into—what I have yet to become—seeping into my thoughts.
I snag a breath, aware with everything in me that I’m never gonna be able to look at my mother or grandmother without fearing they’ll smell the stench of my lies, see the demon hiding beneath my flesh.
My heart trips, knowing I’ll never hold Casey the way I used to without feeling diseased, the warmth my arms once brought to her turning into icicles.
I exhale, my conscience screaming out that if I ever touch, taste, or take Amber, I’d spread nothing but poison over her beautiful body, not an ounce of me capable of giving her what she needs, what she deserves.
Taken by the evilness ravishing the air around me, the last remnants of who I was finally disappears, leaving me tainted, broken beyond repair.
I open my eyes, blinking my vision into focus. Another pang rips through me—this one rocking my skull—as the realization hits me that there are cameras all over us. Close to cracking, I head for the main office and locate the surveillance equipment. After ripping the cables from the control module, recovering the disks, and snatching up the monitor, I haul ass back into the warehouse, everything tight in my grip.
“Chris
t. I forgot about that shit.” Brock slings the duffel bag over his shoulder, his attention frozen on the cameras watching us from above. “I’m not worried about our prints because neither of us has a record. And, besides taking Dom and Bobby’s guns, mounds of other fuckers’ prints are all over this place. But the cops gotta have some kind of technology that can hone in on our profiles, right?” His eyes shoot to mine, concern lining his face. “Don’t you have to destroy the cameras or at least bring them with us? We can’t just leave them here.”
“They don’t need to be destroyed.” I brush past him, making for the back door. “And yes, we can leave them here. The video feed’s stored on the computer’s hard drive, not the cameras.”
“Are you positive?” he asks, his tone itching with doubt. “I know you’re a computer whiz, but you gotta be sure. This is our fucking lives, bro.”
I spin, fury hardening my jaw. “Yeah. I know this is our lives. I remembered that minor detail the second we stepped foot into this motherfucker. You’re the asshole who let that slip your mind. Not me.” A showdown of glares ensues between us before I start for the door again. “Let’s go. We’ve wasted too much time. There’s no reason to clean up anything because—as you pointed out—the cops couldn’t trace shit back to us if they tried. We’ve got everything we need, so now the only thing we have left to do is get the fuck outta here. Fast.”
I don’t wait for him to respond. No. Instead, I step out into the chilled night air, my nerves rocked as I open the van, tossing everything inside it. Mentally wasted, I turn and Brock’s standing behind me, his expression depleted of emotion as he pitches the duffel bag into the back of the van and closes the doors.
“I’m gonna be honest with you, bro, and you might not like it.” Brock wets his lips, any compassion he owned before tonight vaporizing as he shakes his head. “They were dying the second Dom pulled his gun on me.” Demeanor unnervingly calm, he slips around the vehicle and into the driver’s seat. “And for no one will I ever apologize for that. Not a goddamn fucking soul.”