by Nicole Fox
“Damn,” he said, walking in and making a beeline to the weapons stacked on the wall. “Russell wasn’t kidding about that shit he’d been buying.”
He rubbed his hands together as he looked over the weapons. I could almost see the dollar signs floating above his head.
“You’re new to all this shit, but you’ll find out real quick just how much money you can make selling this fuckin’ gear. You’ll learn.”
He flashed me a shark smile over his shoulder that somehow made me feel more ill at ease than I already had been. I didn’t have any desire to talk to Cory, and thankfully it appeared that whatever drug he was on made him more than happy to carry on the conversation all by himself.
“Me and Russ, we’re a fuckin’ killer duo,” he said. “Russ gets all this shit lined up, gets the buyers picked out, and together, we get this fuckin’ shit sold. Stacks and stacks of cash.”
He placed one palm on top of the other in order to demonstrate his point.
“We’ve only been getting’ started, but we’re makin’ money hand over fuckin’ fist. Makes sense he’d want to get a chick on board for where he’s going.”
It was clear that he was trying very hard to impress me. There was a certain eagerness to Cory, almost like what you’d find in a little kid trying to look tough to his peers, or some girl that he was looking to get sweet on him. Maybe in a little kid, this might’ve been cute or endearing, but in a grown man like him, it just made him seem unstable, like any reaction to what he was saying that he didn’t like might send him flying off of the handle.
“Why does that make sense?” I asked.
Really, I wanted the conversation to end as quickly as possible, but I felt that I should say something, to at least mask a little how uncomfortable I felt.
“Well, you see all this shit on the walls?” He gestured to the stacks and stacks of guns packed onto the shelves. “This is primo, grade-A fuckin’ merchandise. The kinda shit that every banger in this city would kill to get a hold of. But it’s all ours, see. That little deal we ran tonight, that was a ‘trial run,’ if you wanna call it that; we wanted to get a sense of just how in demand our shit was. Well, the answer is that it’s really fuckin’ in demand. We got twice what we were hopin’ for, and the buyers were chompin’ at the bit to get even more, like, to know if we had any more merch that we could sell them right then and there.”
“I still don’t get understand why there needs to be a woman involved for any of this.”
Cory was fidgety, and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. I was nearly certain that he was on something. It was becoming clear why a man like Russell would be short-tempered with someone like Cory.
“Right, right,” he said. “The women. Anyway, we’re mostly dealing with low-life criminal thugs, you know? The kinda guys who don’t really have much taste or class or anything like that. Gangbangers, drug-pushers, that kinda shit. You see, my bro and I have been at this game for a long-ass time now, ever since we got out of high school. Well, high school for me, and college for Russell.”
“College?” I asked.
“Yeah, don’t you know? Then again, why would you; you’ve only known us Carrick boys for less than a day. Russ’s got a degree in some kinda shit from NYU. Can’t remember what it is, exactly; philosophy, political science, some kinda brainy shit like that.”
Now that was a shock. Though, the more I thought about it, it wasn’t all that surprising. Russell did exude a cool, collected intelligence. And I had the distinct impression that a guy like Cory wasn’t exactly the criminal mastermind type.
“If he’s got a degree, then why is he doing … work like this?”
As much as I wasn’t all that excited about talking to Cory, I was, for some reason, interested in learning all I could about Russell. After all, I was going to be working with him. And he didn’t really strike me as the type to be keen on offering loads of personal information about himself.
“He did some white-collar shit for a while, but fuckin’ hated it. Not sure why; he doesn’t really talk about that kinda stuff. You ask me, I think it’s because he’s got too much ambition for his own good. Jobs like those, you gotta be button-down and fly straight and all that crap, and a guy like Russ only gives a shit about playing by his own rules. Me? I’ve been in and out of criminal shit since I was old enough to get a hard-on. Started out shoplifting pills for meth heads, moved to drugs, and now I’m here with my bro.”
The whole time he was talking, all I could do was picture Russell in a sharp, well-fitted suit. It was easy to imagine him standing at the head of a boardroom table, his palms pressed down on it, those sparkling blue eyes scanning everyone in the room. I had no idea if that was anything like what his reality in that world had been, but man, was it an attractive mental image.
Cory, on the other hand, was just as easy to picture as a skuzzy little hoodlum shoving pills into his coat pocket in some pharmacy. The detail about Cory coming to work with Russell really stuck out to me. I wondered if Russell had figured that Cory wouldn’t last long in the criminal world by himself, and that keeping him close by was the best way to keep him safe. It was just a guess, but if someone who’d known Cory for as short of a time as I had could tell that he was barely able to keep it together, then surely his own brother would notice it.
“You still haven’t gotten to the part about why he’d need a woman.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Right, right.”
Definitely on something, I thought. This guy can barely keep his thoughts straight.
“Anyway, Russell says that he doesn’t want to spend much time fucking around with these low-class thugs. Says that they’re all loose-trigger, short-tempered assholes who are a ‘perceived insult’ away from putting a bullet right between the eyes during what should be a routine deal.’ His words, not mine. So he wants to move up in the world, you know? Do some deals with the kingpins who run things behind the scenes in this city. Smart move, if you ask me—more money, less bullshit, and maybe we’ll even get to go to some swanky parties every now and then.”
“The woman thing,” I said, trying to keep him on track.
“Right. So at these parties, having a girl like you at your side is a pretty good idea. These guys love beautiful young ladies, and having something easy on the eyes in the room is a really solid way to sweeten the deal. Guys seem to lose their head when there’re babes around, you know?”
“I don’t know, actually,” I said, becoming more uncomfortable by the moment.
“Well, it’s true. These guys love a good-looking girl, you know?”
It was at that moment that I noticed that the distance between Cory and I was … less than it had been before. We’d started our conversation with him sitting on the far end of the couch, but somehow, without my noticing, he’d closed the distance between us to around half a foot. And he was staring deeply into me with those beady, watery eyes of his. I could see that they were the same general color as Russell’s, but where Russell’s eyes were sparkling and piercing pools of ice, Cory’s seemed more like dingy puddles. Where Russell’s eyes betrayed a sharp, calculating intelligence, Cory’s seemed to demonstrate a dull, animal sense of understanding.
“Speaking of pretty girls, I’m a sucker for those myself.”
A sense of danger was beginning to creep over me. My skin tingled, and I felt the blood begin to rush to my hands and feet. The back of my neck tingled with fearful anticipation.
“And you know, Russell and I, we’re close. Really close. And close brothers like us, well, we like to share.”
Now my internal alarms were going off. I started scanning the room for either a way to get out or a way to defend myself. My eyes settled on one of the guns on the shelves, but what was I going to do with that if Cory tried what I was now pretty damn sure he was going to try? Was I seriously considering running to one of those guns, grabbing it off the shelf, and putting a round in Russell’s brother? Cory wasn’t nearly as beefy and strong as Rus
sell, but he could still likely overpower me easily.
My eyes shot to the door, hoping that Russell might come back at any second.
“You don’t need to worry about my bro,” said Cory. “He’s gonna be gone for a long while. That means that you and I can have plenty of time to … get to know one another.”
It was the least appealing thing imaginable to me. I shuffled my butt down the length of the couch, trying to put some distance between Cory and me without seeming too conspicuous.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” said Cory, noticing my movement. “I’m a real nice guy once you get to know me. And it would be pretty damn rude of you not to even try to get to know me, you know.”
“Just,” I started, now feeling helpless, “let me put something on.”
It was a strange thing to say, but being there in nothing but my towel was making me extremely uncomfortable. And maybe it could give me the chance to get away from Cory for enough time for Russell to return.
But Cory wasn’t having any of it.
“Nah, I think you look pretty damn good wearing just that,” he said, his thin voice taking a harder edge.
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little baggie of porcelain-white powder. I’d seen the aftermath of enough of Logan’s little outings to know exactly what that was. Cory dumped out a small pile onto the coffee table in front of him and sorted the coke into a pair of long, thick lines. Next, he pulled a stainless-steel tube out of his pocket and offered it to me.
“Let’s party, girl,” he said.
I never had been one for drugs, and doing coke with Cory was about the least-appealing sounding thing to me in the world.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want any.”
“I insist,” he said, the hand holding the tube still extended towards me.
“No,” I said, making my voice as hard as I could.
A long moment passed, the air tense and uncomfortable. Then, a wide, almost dopey smile broke out on his face.
“Fine,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “More for me.”
With that, he leaned forward and placed the silver tube into his nose. Starting at one end of one of the lines, he sniffed hard, the powder disappearing as he moved the end of the tube. Once the first line was gone, without missing a beat, he brought the tube to the end of the other and snorted it right up.
“Woo!” he shouted, punching the air. “That’s the real fuckin’ shit!”
He dabbed the remnants of the coke from the table and rubbed it inside of his mouth. The whole thing was disgusting to behold. Next, he turned to me, his eyes now manic and wild
Before I could react, he reached towards me and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Damn, girl,” he said. “You’ve got some smooth skin.”
I was paralyzed. I wanted nothing more than to flee right then and there, but I found myself frozen in fear. As strange as it sounds, I couldn’t help but notice that Cory was instilling in me the exact opposite of my feelings with Russell last night—where Russell had seemed to pull my barriers down the more he came onto me, Cory made me feel nothing but some combination of fear and disgust.
“Don’t … don’t touch me,” I said, taking his hand away.
The hardening of his face after I moved his hand made it very, very clear that he didn’t appreciate what I’d just done.
“I don’t think you get it, Alyssa—when I said me and my brother share, I meant it.”
He moved closer and closer to me.
“Now,” he said, his voice charged with energy from the drugs. “I’m gonna take what I want, and you’re gonna be a good girl and let me have it, get it?”
He placed his hand on my thigh and squeezed it hard.
“Get off of me now!”
But Cory wasn’t exactly in the listening mood. His eyes wild and predatory, he moved closer and closer to me.
Out of options, I opened my mouth to scream.
Chapter Eight
Alyssa
Everything that happened next seemed to take place in fast-forward.
A hand reached out of the corner of my vision and took hold of Cory right by the scruff of his neck. Next, Cory was whipped across the room like a ragdoll, landing with a crash in the corner. He howled in pain as he slammed into the wall. But my eyes were now on the empty air where Cory had been not five seconds ago. Before I turned to see what had actually happened, it almost seemed as though he’d been picked up by a great wind and tossed.
But it wasn’t a force of nature that was responsible for throwing him; it was Russell.
As time slowed back to its normal speed, I looked up to see Russell looming over me. I realized that I must’ve been so focused on the danger in front of me that I didn’t notice when Russell came in and sent his brother on a little flight.
“Cory, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Aw, man!” shouted Cory, squirming in pain where he lay on the other side of the room. “What the fuck, bro?”
Russell ignored Cory’s complaints, instead squatting at the coffee table and running his finger over where the drugs had been only minutes before. He stuck his finger in his mouth, his eyes narrowing when it appeared that his suspicions had been confirmed.
“What the fuck did I tell you about doing drugs in this fucking apartment?”
“You said—ow, fuck.”
“No, I didn’t say ‘ow, fuck’.”
Cory rolled over onto his side, his eyes still wild and manic.
“You said don’t ever do them again in here.”
“Now you remember,” said Russell. “Then you want to tell me why the fuck there’s coke on my fucking coffee table?”
“Because … because I was doing coke there.”
“Thank you for not lying right to my goddamn face for once.”
“Hey, no problem, bro.”
I watched the events unfolding as I was curled into a tight ball on the far end of the couch. Russell was furious, but his anger seemed tight and controlled. I had flashbacks to Logan and his bouts of anger, remembering the times when Logan would come home on coke or drunk or both and take his frustrations out on me or whatever else was nearby. Russell, on the other hand, was singularly focused on his brother. His rage was like a sharp, hot laser. Relief washed over me as it sank in that Cory wasn’t going to be getting his miserable little paws on me.
“And you want to tell me what you were about to do with my property?”
His ‘property’? I thought. Is that really what he thinks I am?
“I was … um, well, you know.”
“I don’t know.”
“I was gonna have a little fun! Not fair you get to keep her all to yourself, bro. I mean, it was you and I both doing the work for her.”
“You don’t get to make a call like that,” said Russell, his voice stern and hard. “I’m going to be doing all the work of taking her to our deals, and then I’m gonna be the one to get her new identity when we’re done. I’m getting my hands dirty, so I’m the one who decides who gets to do what with her.”
I … didn’t really know how to feel about all this. I mean, Russell had made his terms quite clear to me, but I wasn’t sure how to react to seeing it all play out in real time like this. I was just another thing that he had rules about—““don’t do drugs in the house,” “don’t touch my fucktoy.” Still, it was nice knowing that he was looking out for me. Just having him stand there near me made me feel more comfortable and safe.
“Jesus, bro,” said Cory. “You don’t need to get all agro on me like that.”
“Considering you don’t seem to give a good goddamn about the rules of this place, maybe I do.”
Cory didn’t have anything to say to that.
“So, here’s the fucking deal, bro,” he said, putting a sardonic tone to the word “bro.” “You’re gonna get the fuck out of here right now. And I’m gonna change the locks. If you want to be part of what I’m getting into with the merchandise, then you’re
gonna stay as far the fuck away from it as possible until I say otherwise.”
“‘Change the locks’?” asked Cory. “That’s a little harsh, man. Come on—we’re family!”
“You know, when I see how much of a fuck-up you can be sometimes, I can’t help but wonder about that,” said Russell, his voice grave.
Cory struggled to his feet and leaned against the wall for balance.
“Now,” said Russell. “Get the fuck out of here before I rip your little nuts off.”
“Fine, fine!” said Cory. “Goddamn.”
He got up and started towards the door.