press /pres/: verb
1: to extract juice or oil through sustained pressure.
2: what you do to a man until truth bleeds out of him.
I’m getting real fucking tired of clichés.
I spent my morning stopping to smell the roses, and now that night has fallen, I’m slipping through the shadows of yet another strip club as Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” blares through the speaker stacks behind the stage.
Zeke badly wanted to come, but I told him to stay home. I know my best friend would follow me anywhere, but it’s better for him not to see this. Let at leastsomestains remain on my hands and my hands alone.
I pass through a beaded curtain, up a set of stairs, down a hall, and through an unmarked door. Most of the bouncers know better than to stop me, and the five hundred bucks I pass to the one who gives me a wary glance is enough to convince him to look elsewhere.
I find a seat amongst the pools of darkness in the far corner of the private booth. I don’t have to wait long before my source’s intel comes good.
Harold Fitzgerald comes barging in with a girl clenched in his meaty claws. She’s sixteen if she’s a fucking day old, but that’s not the kind of thing I would expect to stop him.
It stopsme,for just a second, though. That wide-eyed fear, the look that says she knows she’s in too deep but doesn’t know how to stop it, skin too young and too unblemished to be in a place like this at a time like this with a man like him… There are a million things screaming it’s wrong.
I clear my throat. “Harold. Fancy seeing you here.”
The man promptly looks like he shit himself. He scans around the room, beady eyes flitting here and there. But it isn’t until I rise from my feet and disentangle myself from the darkness that he sees who spoke. When he does, those eyes immediately open to their fullest extent.
“You… No. You’re— I’m— Isaw?—”
“Take a seat, Harold. You and I have a few things to discuss.” I gently pry his clammy wrist off of the girl’s waist and separate the two of them. I hurl him behind me without much care. Then I hand her a sheaf of cash I don’t bother counting and jerk my chin toward the door. “Get out of here, little one.Go through the front door and keep on walking. You don’t belong in a place like this.”
She takes the bills in one trembling hand, looks at me, gulps, and then flees.
When she’s gone, I turn. Cowering in a heap in the corner of the red-lit room, Harold becomes every man who ever thought his money would keep him safe, and I become every consequence that ever came due.
He’s crying before I even touch him, which is disappointing in a way, because I’d psyched myself up for this. I told myself I could do just enough damage to get what I wanted without crossing Eliana’s line—no permanent scars, Bastian—and yet this pathetic bastard is already falling to fucking pieces.
“You’re dead,” Harold wheezes. “I wasthere. I saw the casket. They—they lowered it into the ground. The priest said?—”
“You should know better than anyone how easy it is to fake paperwork in this city, Harold. You’ve certainly forged enough of it yourself.”
Harold does what I expected him to do, albeit not quite this soon: He makes a break for the door. It’s a clumsy, desperate lunge that would be almost comical if the stakes weren’t so high.
I block him effortlessly. One hand plants itself against Harold’s chest and shoves. He stumbles backward, his heel catching on the rug, and he collapses into the leather seat with a graceless thump.
I point the knife in my other hand at his throat. “Don’t do that again.”
The blade gleams red in the swirling light, like it’s already wet with his blood. The bob of Harold’s throat as he swallows makes his flesh spill over the lip of his collar. Next item on my bingo card is for him to piss himself, but thankfully, he isn’t that far gone.
Not yet, at least. But the knife is sharp and the night is young and the music is plenty loud enough to drown out his screams, if he forces me to go that route.
“Let’s talk about a mutual acquaintance of ours,” I say, settling into the seat across from him. “Aleksei Izotov. Ring any bells?”
Harold tries to draw himself up tall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? He’s the most successful criminal in Chicago since Al Capone, Harold. I’d be very surprised if a filthy, double-dealing fuck like you hasn’t crossed paths with Aleksei on more than one occasion.”
“How dare you!” he cries out. “I’m a legitimate businessman! Whatever you think you know?—”
“Harold, Harold, Harold.” I click my tongue in disappointment. “I personally watched you pull out of Project Olympus hours before the ribbon-cutting gala. Billions on the line, and you waddled away like the building was on fire.” I rotate the knife in my grip, watching the blade glisten. “Then, mysteriously, once all the problems were solved—problemsAlekseicreated, problemsAlekseifixed—you came crawling back to the table. Funny how that works, don’t you think?”
His hands shake as he mops sweat from his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. “You don’t understand,” he finally whispers. “Aleksei approachedme. I had no choice. You have no idea the kind of pressure I was under.”
