I told you to shoot him, King had scolded. I corrected him—he had only said to kill him, he didn’t say how I had to do it. I did shoot him, but only at the knees. I earned a smack on the back of the head from one of the other club men for talking back. King only smirked.
The target was more muscular than I was, and he had busted up my face real good. And I managed to shoot his kneecaps point-blank before he tackled me. The gun skittered off into the road, and his burly arm wrapped around my throat as we hit the ground. I had grabbed whatever was nearest my hand when the pimp had me on the floor in a chokehold. A golf driver. I smacked him in the head and kicked his knees out.
I stood up, bruised and battered with blood in my mouth from my busted lip, and looked at the guy writhing in pain. He reminded me of how my parents looked when they were killed. I saw the rather effective tool that was the gold club driver and this concaved skull where I had hit him. And all the rage of the past came to the surface, and I beat the man to death with the club.
King didn’t much care for the mess at the time. He looked at the body then turned to me;I think you’ve earned your name there, Crushhe had chuckled. In an easy move, he took a pistol out from behind his back, and for a moment, I thought he would shoot me. But he simply thrusted it into my hands. I looked down—it was my gun that was kicked away during the skirmish.
When I say I want you to shoot a man, I mean shoot him, he growled. He produced his prized desert eagle from inside his white suit jacket and, without any hesitation, shot the man to the left of me. His body dropped to the floor, a bullet wound right between the eyes.Now shoot him, King motioned to the man on the right.
And because I was young and thought that King was a certified badass, I took my still loaded gun and, with as little hesitation as I could muster, shot the man on my right in the foot. After he let go of my shoulder, I aimed my gun at his head. His eyes were wide, almost pleading. At the time, I was going for a clean shot to his skull like King had done to his buddy, but I missed and ended up shooting him in the throat. He fell to the floor, choking on his own blood.
I looked at King, and he nodded at me. I had to finish the job. This guy wasn’t dead yet. The name I had earned,Crush, was a siren song in my head. I walked up to the man, who managed a gargled sound around the bullet. And in trueCrushfashion, I lifted one shitkicker booted foot up and stomped on the man’s throat as hard as I could. He was dead by the time I brought my pistol up and shot him between the eyes.
“Crush,” King’s voice rang, pulling me out of the reverie. I wasn’t the scrawny little boy from before. I was a man—my own man. And I didn’t take orders anymore. “Done anything with the friends of the club lately?”
Whatever he thought he had on Brianna and me, it didn’t matter. The pair of us obviously wasn’t going to pan out. She made that very clear the other day at Lakeview Park and that hellish date.If you could even call it a date. I shrugged and decided I had no reason to lie. She was just a surgeon who had the unfortunate fate of being on King’s payroll.
“I took the Doc out,” I answered casually. “She wasn’t interested.”
Silence stretched between us for a brief moment. But King just nodded and gave that evil smile of his, “So long as she can uphold her duties, nor interfere with yours, you can do whoever you want. I don’t particularly care.”
I nodded my acknowledgement of his words. With a wave of his hand, I was dismissed again. I walked out of the penthouse and onto the elevator to go down, feeling like I just passed a test of some sort. Like King just gave me a litmus test for my honesty.Whatever. It took some heat off me. I was on the ground floor in no time and weaving through the bustling traffic of the casino and the poker tables when I ran into Prince, almost literally. He was winded, his eyes wide and frantic.
“Whoa,” I said, catching him by the arm. “What’s the rush?”
“We’ve been hit,” he paled, looking at me dead in the eye. He looked terrified. After the shit his father just pulled at the meeting, I couldn’t blame him. Prince took a gulp of air before expanding on the point, “Reapers took out the east warehouse.”
“Fuck,” I swore.
Letting go of Prince’s arm, I double timed it out of the casino. There were a few grunts and curses hurled at me from the people I mowed over, but I didn’t care. As soon as I was out the door, I beat feet to my bike and practically launched myself onto the seat of the Harley. I started the engine and pulled on the throttle to get gas in the lines.
I looked down at my bum leg, seeing a small patch of darkness on my black jeans at the site of my injury.I tore the stitches, I thought. But that would have to wait. I needed to get to the east warehouse, and fast. I backed my ride out, ignoring the honks of a pissed-off taxi driver.
I headed in the direction of the east warehouse, my mind running a marathon as thoughts passed in a blur. But I latched onto one particular thought—someone was a double agent, and it wasn’t me. And I’m not sure what was more unsettling: the idea of killing Satan in his own home or that the Black Reapers had been destroying the warehouse and no one called.
I wove through traffic and in between cars, much to the anger of other drivers on the Strip. Pushing my bike faster, I sped past a cop, and I was easily going more than twenty over the limit. But seeing my vest, he used his better judgment and decided it was better not to pull me over right now. And if he decided to get a hair up his ass about it, then he was going to be meeting the business end of my ass where he could kiss it.
After what felt like forever, I was finally at the east warehouse. I slid my bike up slowly and as quietly as I could. If the Black Reapers were still lingering around, I didn’t want to be caught off guard. I parked the bike and pulled out my pistol from its holster, flicking the safety off. Gun drawn, I walked up slowly to the entrance and kicked in the door.
The warehouse was completely ransacked. Splinters of wood were everywhere, along with dots of blood. But there were no Black Reapers still milling about. This was more about destruction than anything else. King was probably popping a blood vessel at the moment, and I was thankful I was not the one to diffuse that ticking bomb.
Holstering my gun, I went about checking the damage. All the crates of product were busted open—drugs, guns, everything. The Black Reapers had been thorough and wiped out the whole supply. There was nothing left over, and the reserves were gone.Thorough indeed,I thought as I examined the mess.
The club members that had the unfortunate luck of being caught unaware were dead. Bodies totaled up to six, bullets between the eyes. Which at least, there was that to thank the Black Reapers for. A quick death like that was a high honor from a rival club. Suddenly, my dime-a-dozen comment didn’t seem as accurate. At least not if they would drop this fast. If any of them had weapons, they were taken by the Reapers when they made their getaway.
I walked through all the rooms, checking the damage and the carnage. Thankfully, no one else was killed. And the club bunnies had all conveniently been away for the morning, which was nice to know. Finding bodies was always rough as it was, but finding women and children was worse.
Making my way back to the main room, I stood at the epicenter of everything that had happened. My phone chimed in my back pocket. I pulled it out of my cut, seeing the screen light up with a new notification. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I had a feeling I already knew the nature of this text. Exhaling, I unlocked my phone and opened the message from King:
Two weeks.
Brianna
It had been a week since I just walked away from Crush at the park. I tried to keep a low profile—something with that call from King that day just had me all sorts of anxious. Something was about to go down, but I couldn’t tell when or from what side. And I remembered the last time I felt this powerless.
When I found out my parents died, I was devastated. I just started my second semester of med school. It was a time when everything was going great in my life, and then suddenly, nothing could gorightfor me. After they died, bills came due and tuition became an issue. I was able to pay the next three months of rent and bills and that semester of tuition dues from my parents’ life insurance. But after that, I was practically broke. What little remained of their money would cover rent for two months or one semester of school, but not both.
I was sitting at the small table in my dining nook in my apartment. I looked at the scribbles on the paper. That whole scenario I just described? About rent and med school? Yeah, thanks to that, I owed King around 300 thousand dollars. And after five years, I had barely made a dent. $100 a call seemed like a good deal at the time, but for the first two years of working for King, I got called in a total of three times.
