From Despair Grows Order: The Broken Billionaire Series Book 3

by Nancy Adams

  JOSH

  Soon, we were driving out of the edge of the city and into the surrounding countryside. I thought that maybe this was part of their game, and, being bored with it already, I decided to say something.

  “Hey!” I shouted into the front. “Turn the fucking tunes down.”

  Kane twisted the knob so that the loud hip-hop became a distant thud.

  “Where’re we going?” I asked. “Ain’t no bars out here.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Kane replied. “We found this real hick joint out in a little town on the edge of the city. It’s open all day long, twenty-four-seven. Some of the barflies there don't even fucking leave, just live there for good, sleep on the pool table if need be. We thought that you, being a connoisseur of lowlife dives, might appreciate the quaintness of this particular booze-pit.”

  “Hell,” Terry added, glancing over his shoulder at me as he drove us away from the city lights and down a country road, “they even got girls they can call for you and rooms to rent up top. They send over a load of bitches and you pick one out, take her upstairs and fuck her.”

  “So it’s a brothel then?”

  “Not exactly,” Terry replied, a slightly baffled look appearing on his dumb mug. “It’s just a service like.”

  “Sure. Sounds cool.”

  I sat back down and Kane returned the music to its former ear-splitting volume. If they were lying, then they’d practiced the routine. I could believe that they’d want to show me something new; even now, they were trying their best to impress me.

  After an hour’s drive, we made it to a large two-story wooden shack in the middle of nowhere. The place stood out surrounded by rye fields, like some discolored tumor had grown out of the green vegetation, calling to it all the bugs from miles around with its neon beer-lights and country music flowing out from within. It certainly was a dive, and I wondered what type of person would call this decrepit shit-hole a home.

  “After you,” Terry proclaimed as he held the seat for me while I got out.

  “You weren't wrong,” I remarked once I was stood in the lot. “This really is a low-life den.”

  “The place looks like shit,” Kane said coming around the front of the car and joining us, “but wait till you see the type of barfly that exists inside.”

  We strolled to the door of the place, which was half hanging off its hinges and needed a hefty shove to open, a great semi-circle score-mark in the linoleum floor where it had scraped its way open over many years. We stepped inside and if there’d been a piano player, he would have stopped. Everyone inside appeared to halt whatever it was they were doing and take a look at us newcomers, spiders feeling the vibrations along the fibers of their webs.

  “How many times have you been here?” I whispered to my two amigos.

  “Plenty. Plenty,” Kane said. “It’s just—you know—one of them hick things. We don’t smell like them or somethin'.”

  It was then that a big guy at the bar with a moustache and mullet haircut that stretched all the way from his buzz-cut fringe to the collection of rats-tails hanging down the back of his pink, sweaty neck, waved at Terry and Kane.

  “Hey, fellas,” he boomed, and his familiarity appeared to appease the weasels in the place, as they returned to their earlier activities, which mainly included sitting silently on a barstool staring ahead, playing pool or cards, or, in the case of one guy, just lying on the floor. We made it to the bar and I was relieved to see that the bartender at least gave me the impression that he was happy to see us, or at least Terry and Kane.

  “What’ll it be, fellas?” he asked in a friendly tone.

  “Three beers and three shots of tequila,” Kane declared as we took our seats at the bar, me in the middle, Terry on my left, Kane on my right.

  “And who’s your buddy?” the bartender asked.

  “This here,” Kane said, slapping his hands down on my shoulders, his fingers biting into the flesh, “is an old college friend of ours, Josh Kelly.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Josh,” the bartender said, offering me his big paw of a hand.

  I smiled weakly at him and took the hand. He instantly grabbed it and squeezed it so tight that I winced, my hand sore after the fight.

  “Ouch!” I exclaimed.

  “Sorry, bud,” the bartender exclaimed. “Did I hurt you?”

  “I just busted my hand at work was all,” I said, a little pissed at his roughness.

  “Well, sorry,” he said with a shrug, before going off to fetch the drinks, which Kane paid for.

  As we drank, I decided to offer an apology and get straight to the point of this whole thing.

  “Look,” I began as we sipped our beers, having knocked back the tequilas the moment they arrived, “I just want to apologize. First to you, Terry”—I shone my eyes to my left and looked him straight in the face—“I should never have roughed you up like that. It was wrong of me to jump on you and I’ve been an asshole to you and to Kane these past months. A lot of it was because of my dad, but I should’ve been a better person to both of you.” Now I turned my eyes to Kane. “Kane, I feel real bad about what I said to you. I should never have threatened you like that. I was angry because I’d just had my balls busted by my old man. But I should never have taken it out on you. For that, I’m truly sorry.”

  Kane placed his arm around my shoulder, and, as he did, the bartender began filling up our shot glasses again.

  “None of that shit matters no more,” he said, handing me my shot of tequila before picking up his own. He launched his back and I followed him by doing the same. The moment the glass was back on the bar, the bartender began filling it again. Kane started to dig his fingers into my shoulder, like the talon of an eagle, and I winced slightly. He put back the next shot, as did I, and the barman kept on with his pouring. “You see, it’s all outta our hands now,” Kane added with the faint whiff of a smirk.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, bewildered by where he was going with this.

  “Sorry, Josh,” Terry meekly said from my other side.

  I realized then that I couldn’t hear any other sound in the bar. The jukebox had stopped, the pool balls were no longer chinking, and even the guy on the floor wasn’t snoring anymore. I glanced over my shoulder and found that most of the barflies were lined up behind me, two of them locking the front door to the place, all the windows in that sunless dive already shuttered up.

  “I don't get it,” I said, Terry creeping off at that point, Kane remaining next to me with his arm around my shoulders. “You hire a whole bar to beat me up?”

  “Nah! It ain’t like that exactly,” Kane replied, picking up the next shot and throwing it back. “Tell him Riley,” he addressed the bartender once he’d swallowed.

  I gazed forward and found the big figure of Riley the bartender standing there with his thick arms crossed over his belly, a scornful smirk written across the pages of his face.

  “Your friends here,” the big man began, “came to the bar about a week ago. I don’t usually like college kids, but they was flashin’ their cash around, so I thought why not. It was when they was sittin’ here that I overheard them bitchin’ about some Josh Kelly and his rich daddy. Sos I ask them if they be talkin’ about Andrew Kelly’s boy, and would you believe it they says yes.”

  Here he smiled wide and showed off his two missing front teeth.

  “What’s my father got to do with this?” I inquired.

  “You see, it’s like this,” Riley answered me. “Once upon a time, I owned a good place back there in the city; a good city place. Pool club it was, made a good turn in cash too. That was until a certain rich prick by the name of Andrew Kelly came along and began buyin’ everythin’ up. Had me and most o’ the business owners in the area swept straight outta the city.”

  “Well, I’ll drink to that,” I couldn't help saying, and I picked my tequila up, winked in his face and slung it back.

  “Ha! Smart-ass. Well, let’s see how smart you really are.”<
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  In a super quick movement, Kane took ahold of my left wrist as Riley grabbed a knife from his belt and came down on my hand with all his force, pinning me to the bar. I couldn't help screaming out, feeling the blade cut through the bone and cartilage, blood oozing out were it was buried almost all the way to the handle. My first reaction was to jump up from the stool and pull my hand back, but this was a terrible mistake, and I screamed out again as the blade bit further into me. While I struggled, my ears filled with the barflies’ cacophonous laughter, Kane’s echoing especially bad.

  Breathing deeply, I retook my seat and stared straight into the mook barman’s face, my eyes bulging at him. If they were going to beat me to death, I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of hearing me beg. As for my cries, I’d try to keep them to a minimal.

  “So anyways,” he went on, “I had a real good thing going until your old man kicked us out. He offered us all peanuts for our places and when we told his men to fuck off, he had the city do his job for him. They ended up havin' everyone that hadn’t sold up arrested on trumped-up charges, so that the rest was pushed into sellin’. I was particularly stubborn, and for that I did three years in County for a narcotics charge when your old man had a bunch of his people plant drugs in my club’s basement. And when I came out from that, I had nothin’—no club, no license, nothin’. Even my fuckin’ wife had run off. All I could do was come out here with what little I had and work in my brother’s place. This place.”

  “Look, buddy,” I said, sweat dripping down my face from the incredible throbbing pain in my hand, “is this gonna take all night, because as much as your sob story pulls at my heart strings, I’d rather be beaten to death now than have to listen to anymore of it.”

  Giving me a twisted smirk, he nodded and said, “Okay, have it your way. But first a drink.”

  He took the tequila bottle and slung it to his lips, taking a rapid shot. Then he looked into my eyes and said, “Now one for you.” And here he turned the bottle upside down and emptied it onto my hand, the spirit burning the cut flesh, spilling down the blade and into the wound, forcing another hardly suppressed cry to emanate from me like the cry of a dying wolf. Then addressing his colleagues, who still stood behind me, he added, “Gentlemen, let’s make this fun.”

  Feeling a pool cue smash against my already bruised back, I abruptly butted Kane to my right, throwing him off. That allowed me to grab the knife and pull it from my hand, an action that took all my strength, the whole time a hurricane of blows coming in from behind. Having pulled it out, I spun around with the knife. A fist came spilling toward me, I weaved to one side of it, narrowly avoiding the punch, then launched my body forward, grabbing ahold of someone’s waist, lifting him up and ramming him into some tables. Having dumped him down, I slammed him with several quick blows about the face and upper torso with my free hand, the other still holding the knife. Hands took ahold of my shoulders and threw me back. As I steadied myself, a pool cue smashed me across the midriff, shattering into pieces and winding me in the process. Before I could do anything about that, a punch caught me across the jaw, knocking me sideways, and I spilled onto a table where two jackals dove on top of me and began pounding me in the face and body with punches. In the commotion, I realized that one of them was Kane. With the knife still in my hand, I managed to stick it all the way into his thigh. He screamed out and flew back, grabbing onto his injured leg, his eyes shimmering as he gazed at the knife sticking out. With only one guy left on me, I maneuvered myself away from his blows and managed to get up from the table. Finding a beer bottle, I smashed it into the guy’s face, a cloud of shattered glass going everywhere and the guy sprawling back. Another pool cue came flying my way and I blocked it with my left forearm, darted forward and butted the guy full force with the top of my head, cracking him in the mouth and spilling his teeth. More blows came my way, and I dodged most of them, but an awful lot caught me and I felt my knees going weak underneath. When a whole bar stool came crashing into the back of my head, the crack causing a wet slapping sound to ring in my ears, I was finally put down.

  As I lay there, a series of terrible blows came digging into me—feet, pool cues, punches, a frenzy of violence tumbling down from up high—and for the first time in my life I faced my own death in such a way that made it feel inevitable. I fell into weeping down there, feeling my body busted apart by rabid fury, and in that final moment all I could think of was Sarah. How I’d never see her again. Talk to her. Get to be near her. Feel her love. I would be all alone for eternity, and never more so than within this final moment.

  It was then, as I lost consciousness, that I saw something truly odd and didn’t know if it was real, or whether I’d already fallen into the dreamy realm of death. From where I lay, I was facing the front wall of the bar and I saw it suddenly burst apart, everyone stopping their assault and ducking as the front of the place caved in. It was within this state of utter confusion that I sank into the jaws of darkness and felt oblivion wrap itself around me like a snake, my mind disappearing from the bar. And possibly from life itself.

  SARAH

  “SARAH,” came a man’s frightful cry entering my sleep and instantly filling me with foreboding terror. “SARAH DILLINGER.” This was followed by a terrible knocking sound that rumbled through me, until I awoke and became aware that someone was knocking frantically on the front door. “SARAH DILLINGER,” it repeated in a bass tone that I sensed I recognized. I sprung out of bed, ran from the room and came onto the landing, where I found my father.

  “Who is it?” I asked him.

  “I don't know. But stay here while I see.”

  The man outside continued to cry in his frightful manner and my father crept to the door, placed the chain on and opened it cautiously while I watched from the landing. The moment the door was ajar, I saw the terrified, despondent face of Holman and I quickly rushed down the stairs.

  “It’s okay, Daddy,” I said. “You can take the chain off.”

  A sickly apprehension cascaded through me and made my body weak as my father opened the door and let Holman in, Dad’s eyes widening as he recognized Andrew’s henchman.

  “What’s happened?” I asked once I was in the hallway, frightened out of my wits already.

  “You gotta come with me,” Holman said, and it was at that point that I noticed the blood all over his white shirt.

  “Oh, my God,” escaped my lips and tears filled my eyes.

  “What’s going on, Holman?” Dad asked in a confused tone.

  “Josh has been hurt real bad,” Holman answered. “He’s at the hospital in Intensive Care.”

  “Oh, no!” I cried out, my knees buckling so that I fell awkwardly to the floor.

  My father swooped down and grabbed ahold of me. He attempted to envelope me in his arms as I cried, but, regaining part of my strength, I pushed him away and got back to my feet. The moment I was upright, I grabbed my jacket from the pegs and put it on.

  “Sarah, you gotta get dressed first,” Dad said.

  But I hardly knew what was going on. All I could think of was getting to the hospital and being by his side. In my confused state, the only thing I knew for sure was that without me there with him, he was somehow weaker, and if he was to survive this, I had to hold onto his hand and let him know that I would walk by his side as he traveled this mortal tightrope. I shoved my shoes on and, wearing nothing but my nightgown and jacket, I flew out of the door with Holman.

  “I’m coming with you,” my father announced, and he too grabbed his jacket and shoes.

  Voices came floating down from the landing, asking what was going on, and in my numbness I loosely gathered that it was my sisters. My father answered with something and they appeared appeased. We then ran out of the house to Holman’s four-by-four, which was badly damaged at the front, the windscreen shattered and the big heavy-duty grill guard all bent up.

  “What happened to your truck?” Dad asked him.

  “It’s not mine.”

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sp; “Then, what happened to the truck?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  We got in, me in the front and Dad in the back, and I observed that the whole backseat was covered in blood, as was most of the interior. A second later, Holman was driving like a man possessed through the early-morning streets, the sun beginning its appearance and the sky slowly filling with crimson twilight.

  “Which hospital’s he at?” Dad asked.

  “St. Helens, about a twenty minute ride from here,” Holman answered.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Some old buddies of his led him out to a bar where the owner has history with his father. The whole bar locked the doors and then turned on him. Beat him real bad.”

  “What’s real bad?” Dad wanted to know.

  “They stuck a knife through his hand, broke several of his ribs, his jaw, right forearm, left collarbone, gave him a compact fracture to his skull which has caused internal bleeding in his brain.” I went rigid all over at this and fresh tears pushed hard. “They’ve also knocked most of his front teeth out, broke a cheekbone, punctured a lung.”

  “Please,” I begged, unable to hear anymore.

  Holman stopped sharp, turned to me and apologized.

  “How’d the ambulance find him?” Dad inquired of Holman. “If they locked him in. Sounds like they meant to kill him.”

  “They did. It was me that found him. I’ve been keeping a watch on him lately, especially after Sarah left, making sure the kid doesn’t kill himself through stupidity; he’s got a self-destructive side to him if you hadn’t noticed. Anyway, tonight I was keeping watch when he got off work. I saw him get into those two bozos’ car and followed them out to this bar. While I was there I kept an eye on things. When I saw that they were attacking him, I took this truck from the lot and drove it through the front wall, my own car being a bit too small for the job. That’s when I grabbed him from the floor, threw him in here and got outta there before they could finish the both of us off.”