“What’s your name?” I ask.
He glances around frantically, but when I lift a brow at him, he exhales in defeat, and his shoulders slump in on themselves.
“Graham,” he answers forcefully.
“Graham…” I stretch my neck to relieve some of the tension there. “For all that verbal foreplay we had, you and your buddies turned out to be complete disappointments.”
“The men you killed tonight were a thousand times better than you and your friends,” he rasps.
I grit my teeth. “Is that why they decided to take money from someone to come fight me, then – to prove their fuckingsuperiority?”
He snorts. “We needed that money, however small the amount. It was better than what we made at the boxing arena.”
Made. He’s already talking about himself in the past tense.
“You wanna tell me who hired you to do this?” I ask.
He swallows and meets my eyes. “Will it make a difference if I do?”
I work my jaw and shake my head. Letting him live will be too big of a liability, and it’ll be foolish of me to even consider it.
He laughs humorlessly. “Well, fuck it. If I’m gonna die for something that wasn’t even my business to begin with, then so should he.”
“Who?” I push.
Graham sniffs and lets go of a cough. “Gavin,” he says.
Surprised, I look at Cignette and my crew, only to find them wearing a similar expression on their faces.
“Gavin, as in the tattoo shop owner?” I question.
Graham nods. “Yeah. My friends and I always got our inks done from him. He priced us reasonably, and was fun to be around. We weren’t exactly friends, but we did hang out a few times in the last couple of years.” He shifts on his knees. “When we met last month, he told us about Cignette, and how she broke up with him to be with you. That’s when he suggested we threaten you to stay away from her, and that he’d pay us if we said yes. A couple of the guys weren’t onboard with the idea, but Iforcedthem into it, and they…” He looks around at the decimated bodies of his friends with pain and regret on his face. “In a way, I killed them too, didn’t I? I should have just said no to Gavin, should have…”
I zone him out, because what he’s saying doesn’t matter now, and it most definitely doesn’t mean shit to me.
I glance at Varsha and give her a subtle nod. She returns it, then points her gun at Graham. The sound of a muted gunshot cuts through his rambling, followed by a bullet piercing one side of his head, and exiting through the other.
Cignette gasps and places a hand over her mouth at the suddenness of it, and her eyes widen a little as she stares at the exit wound on his temple.
His body falls over with a loudthump, and Jayce steps back before raising his arms and looking down at his white t-shirt, which is now splattered with blood.
“JesusfuckingChrist.” He glares at Varsha. “A warning next time, maybe?”
She shrugs and puts her gun away. “You knew it was coming; you shouldn’t have stood so close to him.”
He rolls his eyes at her, but says nothing.
“Relax, babe,” Alex chimes, then circles a hand over the stains. “That’s…a good look on you. Totally complements your complexion.”
Jayce scowls at him, then turns around and heads for his Jeep.
Alex clicks his tongue and stomps after him, and with a shake of her head, Varsha follows behind them, leaving Cignette and I alone.
I get to my feet and dust my hands off as I examine the dead bodies around me. “Fuckers didn’t even care to call cleanup,” I mumble, then shoot a quick text to Eddie, asking him for immediate assistance. Once I’ve done that, I look up as I’m pocketing my phone, and find Cignette – with a hand covering her nose – sidestepping brain matter and gore. She manages to make her way over to me without vomiting, or worse, tripping over the sticky trails of blood.
“Oh God,” she whispers, but the words come out muffled. “I can’t breathe; this placestinks. It’s like a goddamn meat market in here.”
I chuckle, then grab her by the waist when she stumbles.
