by Kiki Leach
We plowed through the crowd hanging around the front doors of the place like a pack of wild dogs, only to be stopped in our tracks by three Jolly Green Giant sized motherfuckers who came out of nowhere and blocked us off before we could even make it past the foot of the lobby. They each looked us over, seeming to size us up while mumbling into tiny mics hanging down from the end of their clear earpieces.
I balled my fists in case one of them tried taking a swing for no reason but relaxed when Riggs turned to stare me down and shook his head.
"The Reapers?" one of them said. Standing right in front of me with a head shaped like the tip of a limp cock, he looked me square in the face as if his green eyes couldn't move down a few inches just to take a quick read of the name of our club between the rows of patches on my cut.
"Yeah," I told him, my tone obvious as hell.
He eyed me up and down, then looked to the other two bald pricks on his left and right and nodded. "Lorenzo's up in VIP at the bar, but he's only looking to have a conversation with about four of your guys in particular."
Chute shrugged. "Who the hell are they?"
Baldy in the middle turned back to me and nodded. "This one here with the most pissed off look on his face. Your Prez, VP and another one named Atom."
Poker stared up and down the line, then focused all attention on Riggs and threw his arms out to his sides in irritation. "What the hell are the rest of us supposed to do in the meantime? Find a corner to jerk off?"
Riggs lifted his shoulders. "Play the slots and don't scope out any pussy." He pointed. "And stick close." Poker nodded.
As the other two giants remained in place with the rest of our crew, the four of us followed Baldy through the casino and straight down to the bar, which was overcrowded as hell and playing loud, shitty music that would've made even a dog's ears bleed out.
He walked us past a giant dancefloor filled with nothing but drunks and college kids sucking face and having open sex in any place they could find, then led us up a set of spiral stairs near the back and past a red curtain. Once we were all in place, he pulled the curtain back and waved his hand across himself, indicating that we step inside. Riggs moved in first, followed by Tracker and Atom.
I was last, and when I looked across the room, in which everything was red and white, including the lights flashing high above our heads, I frowned.
"Ho. Ly. Shit." Riggs stepped forward and opened his hands as his eyes shifted back and forth between Lorenzo and who we soon realized were none other than the Falucchi brothers. They were all seated along the edge of a red and white couch that was lined against the wall on the opposite side. A few topless girls had just finished serving them drinks, then snuck out the back without saying a single word to us or even looking in our direction. I noticed Tracker adjusting his cock as he moved up near Riggs, who continued staring. "What the fuck is this shit?" he asked.
"It's a party." Lorenzo grinned at each of us and slid back even further onto the couch.
"A party of what?" asked Atom. "What the fuck are the Falucchi brothers doing here? We've got no business with them."
"You've got no business with them, but Jeremiah does -- or so he thinks."
I moved past Riggs and focused my eyes down on Lorenzo's face. "What the hell are you talking about?" I asked him.
"Your brother, who also just so happens to be one of the biggest damn morons I've ever seen in my entire life." He chuckled. "I'll admit he was smart in stealing from me, but he was also stupid as hell in how he managed to lose that green just the same. At least most of it. But I guess it was better for me that he did, otherwise tracking him down wouldn't have been as easy as it turned out to be for me. Which also happens to work out well for you too. Great timing in dialing me up tonight, by the way. Meant to tell you that shit over the phone." He smirked.
"Listen, do you mind explaining just what the hell is going on in straight up English?" asked Tracker. "Some of us would like to move this shit along before the night's over. Hoping to get some from one of your girls in the back before all's said and done."
Lorenzo glanced between the Falucchi's before turning back to us. "After Jeremiah gambled, smoked and fucked away most of the cash he had stolen from me somewhere up in Atlantic City -- and within less than a few hours after taking off at that -- he headed back west and started sniffing around the strip again on the low." He wagged his head. "Idiot was hoping that someone off my radar would either take him up on his offer to work their books, or dole him out a loan that they both knew he was never going to pay back to keep up with his habit. For obvious reasons, most turned him down." He paused and leaned back. "Then he called up the Falucchi brothers as a last resort. Knowing that we had a falling out a few months back over a business deal gone wrong, he figured it would be nothing to just hit them up for a little cash while in the same stupid breath bragging about how much he had stolen from me without ever planning to pay it back. They realized he was bound to screw them over too and called me up."
"And that's why they're here?" I asked.
He nodded once. "See, what your dumbass kin failed to realize is that even though the three of us had cut our ties through business, the Falucchi's are second cousins on my mother's side. Meaning that any form of being screwed over by someone outside the family was going to take priority over anything that we had going on within it. Sort of like your club, I imagine."
I glanced over at Riggs, who kept his attention straight ahead.
"If all this shit you're saying is accurate, that means Colette being out here was a giant set up by you," said Tracker. "Just like I thought from the get go."
Lorenzo bent his head to the side and mumbled, "In a way."
"Not in a way," said Tracker, shifting his eyes between Atom and Riggs. "I was right -- I'm always fuckin' right. Especially when it comes to shit like this."
"I needed to draw Jeremiah out into the open and keep him put for a while," Lorenzo went on, ignoring Tracker's moment of victory and turning to me again. "The only way to do that was through your girl."
I stepped over to the table and lowered my head. "Where the hell is Colette right now?"
He reached inside the pocket of his suit, pulled out his giant cell and pushed a few buttons, then handed it over to me. "See for yourself." While staring down at the screen, I saw Colette alone and inside of a room with nothing but a bed on one side and a bathroom on the other. She was pacing back and forth across the carpet with a panicked look on her face and her arms crossed over her chest.
As my eyelids burned, a giant lump crept up into the back of my throat. I was beyond glad to know that she was okay, to know that she hadn't been hurt as I had feared. But I was pissed off that everything had managed to even get this far; pissed off at the fact that Tracker might've been more right than I was willing to give him credit for. Maybe it was my fault for not paying closer attention to Jeremiah. Maybe I could've prevented all this shit from happening to my wife and club.
When the screen turned black, I cleared my throat and swallowed. "Where the hell is this?"
"Our hotel," one of the Falucchi's said, his Italian accent as thick as the black toupee sitting on top of his head. "She's being kept in one of the overnight bunkers on the lower level at back that's usually set up for one of the maids."
"What about Jeremiah?" I placed the phone down on top of the table and leaned forward. "Where the hell is he?"
"This." Lorenzo stood up from the couch and yanked the lapels on his suit jacket. He looked between each of us and bobbed his head. "I think you might enjoy. Let's head back into my main office."
As the Falucchi brothers hung back to enjoy more women and liquor on their way up, Lorenzo waved his hand and led us through a separate door behind another curtain to the left of the couch. This led to an above ground tunnel with bright white lights flashing at us from every angle with each step we took moving forward.
Once we had finally reached the end, Lorenzo turned back to us and grinned. Then he wra
pped his hand around the knob of another door and pushed back. Though I don't think what he saw on the other side of it was something to be expected.
"Holy fuckin' shit," I muttered, my eyes going wide as they shifted across the room.
There was blood everywhere, splattered across his walls and framed pictures, across the white leather of his couches and mixed into the cracks of his ceiling; some splattered across the top of his desk and along the edges of his bookcase behind it. The rest seemed to pour over his chair, which was knocked to its side on the floor. Laying behind it and flat on his back with his arms and legs spread wide was Baldy from earlier. His right eye hung by the edge of a nerve from the socket and dangled along the side of his face; his throat had been slit from ear to ear and his tongue was missing. His chest and stomach were mutilated as if chewed out by a thousand or more piranha; he was straight up gutted like a goddamn fish; his bones were cracked from one end to the other and poking out through pieces of his flesh.
Riggs moved forward, ahead all of us, and shook his head while staring at Lorenzo, whose face and eyes had burned bright red before turning completely white. "Are we at the part that we're supposed to be enjoying?" he asked. "'Cause to tell you the truth, I don't think we've hit it just yet."
"FUCK!" Lorenzo stormed over to his desk, spewing words in Italian, and reached for his phone, the only thing not covered in blood. He punched a few numbers and sucked in a deep breath, and while gritting his teeth, turned his eyes directly to me and tightened his fingers around the handset. "Where the fuck is this son of a bitch?!" he screamed into the phone. The brothers and I looked around at each other, pissed off. Lorenzo lowered his gaze from me and rattled his head, then waited a few seconds and hollered out, "SHIT! Who the fuck went looking for him?!" He stopped and shook his head again. "And nobody thought to mention this shit to me first?! He runs out of here covered head to toe in somebody else's blood and there's nothing brought to me about it?!" He paused again. "Shit, SHIT! NO," he said. "NO! I'll deal with you and the others' fuck ups later. Just send Connor and Romero back up here to inform the Falucchi brothers in VIP of what's going down. The rest of this shit is something I've got no choice but to take care of myself!"
After slamming the phone back down on the hook, he stepped over Baldy's body and hustled to a cabinet in the corner on the opposite side, unlocking and opening its doors, and searching through one helluva gun and knife collection that filled five rows.
I moved closer to him and clinched my jaw. "What the fuck is going on?" I asked him.
He stopped moving and looked aside. "What's going on is that brother of yours went apeshit in here." He turned back to the cabinet and continued searching. "After he brought Colette to the Falucchi's, I had my guys snatch him up from his room at the DoubleShot and brought back here to confront and eventually take out. Son of a bitch was supposed to be knocked out cold with a tranquilizer strong enough to put a bear to sleep, and got shot up with a high dosage of PCP from another vial instead."
"Jesus -- Where the hell did he take off to?"
He grabbed a small handgun from his bottom shelf, then slammed the doors shut and turned back to us. "My guess is after realizing that I fucked him over, he went straight back to the DoubleShot for Colette."
"Then let's go." I started for the door on the opposite side of his office that led out to the hallway. But Riggs threw his hand into my chest, holding me back. I stared down at it and shoved him away so hard that he nearly tripped over the back of his feet just before finding his footing again. "What the fuck, old man?!" I said, narrowing my eyes and balling my fists again, preparing to take him down if need be. "You realize the shit his now cracked out mind could be capable of?!"
Riggs peered and threw both of his hands into my chest. I fell back into Tracker, who held me steady before I could fall to the floor.
"I know it," he said between his teeth. He stepped forward and exhaled, staring down into my face as I steadied my feet and fixed my cut. "But we don't know if he's there yet, and that's the entire point of this shit." He turned to Lorenzo, who had slipped his gun into the holster inside his jacket. "Whip out your phone and let's see if this fucker's shown up for her yet." He glimpsed at me from the corner of his eye and brought his hands up to his waist. "We try to go in on him before knowing what's up, and we'll all be fucked. You might be willing to take a risk on that shit, but on this one, I'm not, brother."
Tracker stepped around me and moved closer to Riggs. He dragged his hand back and forth across his mouth, then down his chin "We've got our entire crew against a PCP filled fuck up, Prez," he told him. "Not much he can do to us if we all head out after him at once."
"Maybe not much he can do to us," I said. They both turned to me as I lowered my eyes and shoved my brows together; the fear rising high and flooding my bloodstream just as much as the rage. "But he'll damn sure have no problem in doing something to Colette. Or any other innocent bystander if he knows that we're coming."
"We also don't know if he's got his own crew set in place," replied Atom. "It's more than likely not the case, but they could also just be laying low 'til the time is right to strike back at us."
"He's right." Riggs turned back to Lorenzo, who stared down at his phone, pushing buttons again. "This asshole could have all kinds of tricks up his sleeve, setting traps up for us left and right."
"Yeah, one big trap that could be right here inside this room." Tracker looked to Lorenzo and narrowed his eyes. "How the hell do we know that this isn't just some set up you two cooked up together to fuck us all over from jump?
Lorenzo looked up from his phone and switched his eyes between all four of us. Then he brought them back to me and snickered. "Is he serious?"
"Fuck yeah, I'm serious," Tracker told him, regaining his attention. "This shit has been shady from the beginning and now one of your guards has been conveniently taken out by some measly prick who could barely knock the fly from a horse's ass? You think about that shit for a minute and tell me from your own mouth if it sounds right to you."
"I could think about that shit, or we can go and take this fucker out together before he takes out his girl," said Lorenzo, nodding his head toward me.
"That's a convenient answer." Tracker stared him in the face and bent his head to the side. "One that sounds full of guilt."
Lorenzo stepped forward and opened his hands. "You think I stole half a mil from my own business too?"
He shook his head. "Wouldn't put that shit past you if it meant getting what you wanted in the end, which was us underneath your thumb."
Lorenzo pointed in his face. "You're full of shit."
"Not as much as you."
"We are wasting valuable time here with all this back and forth dick wagging, motherfuckers," Atom interjected. "Now--"
My cell rang, disrupting him. The sound was loud and almost too damn clear for me to ignore. Tracker, Atom and Riggs all turned to look me in the face, as did Lorenzo. I ripped it from the pocket of my cut as quickly as I could and stared down at the number. When I recognized it as being Jeremiah's this time, I got a feeling in my gut that wasn't good.
"Yeah," I said after answering.
There was a long pause that put me on edge until the son of a bitch finally spoke. "I want you to meet me on the roof at the DoubleShot," he said between hard and erratic breaths. "Just you alone. None of the brothers or I put Colette down like a dog."
I swallowed hard and inhaled. "Where the fuck is she right now?" I asked him. "With you?"
He laughed and I wanted to put my fist straight through the phone. "You shouldn't even worry about where she is right at this very second unless you're not able to make it here within the next fifteen minutes, then you might need to," he told me. "And remember what I said." He hung up without another word and we were instantly disconnected.
Atom shoved himself between Riggs and Tracker and stood in front of me. "What the hell did he say, Rome?"
I stared down at the phone for a few seconds
before stuffing it back inside my pocket. I flared my nostrils and gulped while trying to hold back the urge to lose my shit all over again. "He wants me to meet him on the roof at the DoubleShot alone."
"Jesus," he breathed. Then he stopped and made a face. "No," he said. "No way in hell are you going up there on your own with that fucker. You just said yourself that he's got a cracked-out mind and meeting you up on the goddamn roof of that building?" He leaned back and wagged his head. "Fuck no -- He's liable to shove you off that thing and send you flying straight down to your death at the bottom of that shit -- hell no."
I clamped my teeth together and flexed my jaw. "He's gonna put Colette to ground if I don't."
"Is she with him right now?" asked Riggs, looking to Lorenzo again.
"I can't get shit." Lorenzo tapped the screen of his phone and wagged his head. "Looks like the cams connected to my phone are down."
"What'd I tell ya," said Tracker. "Motherfucker's gotta be working with other people or this asshole is screwing us all over again."
I turned to Prez and knit my brows. "I'm going after her," I told him. "Trap or not, she's my wife and I'll be a damned if I allow that piece of shit brother of mine to have even an inch of a chance in taking that away from me."
He sighed heavily, unsure as I could read it all over his face, the lines between his eyes, the wrinkles forming in the center of his forehead. Then he looked away from me and reluctantly nodded his head. "You make sure to keep your ass aware, alright?" he said. "I want Atom following behind out there" -- he turned to him and pointed -- "but I need you staying back far enough to keep from being seen. The last thing we need is this motherfucker being spooked and pulling some shit, yeah?" Atom nodded. Riggs looked to me again and stepped forward. "Head out and we'll deal with this prick." He stopped and turned to Lorenzo. "You get the Falucchi's to call their staff to let them know what's up and to stay outta the goddamn way. We don't need any more interference for chances of having this entire thing become even more fucked up than what it is already, got it?" Lorenzo lowered his eyes without responding. Riggs turned back to me. "We'll inform the other brothers of what's up."