He paused for a minute, the wheels in his mind obviously spinning to come up with a way to get me the money he owed. He borrowed fifty thousand from me to buy the run-down club so he could launder his drug money through it. Taking the club and turning it around from the rat hole it currently was could easily net me another legitimate business and a nice profit, but it would take me more than just the fifty grand he owed me to do that. Plus, I had a reputation to maintain, and he had to pay for the inconvenience of having to not only me having to take the club back but also of having to track him down and deal with his bullshit.
“I’ll tell you what, Grady. I’ve grown tired of your empty promises and excuses. You will sign the club over to me now.” I grabbed the file off my desk that needed his signature and opened it to the page I wanted.
When I agreed to front the money for the club, I put my name on the deed so he couldn’t screw me over completely. I also had a will drawn up that his business would go to a shelf corporation instead of me to hide it from the system should he need to die. I would get my money back one way or another. Being I was a silent partner in the club, I had plausible deniability if anything ever went wrong with his enterprise. It also afforded me a paper trail, so it looked like one partner simply buying out another if he tried to screw me over and didn’t pay up.
“And I don’t care how the fuck you do it, maybe by handing me the keys and title to that fancy new car of yours you bought instead of paying me back, you will get me an additional twenty-five thousand dollars for the trouble you’ve caused. Once that’s paid, you will get the fuck out of my city and never come back. Do you understand me?”
“I can get you the money!” he cried out in a panic, sweat dotting his forehead as he looked nervously between me and Donovan, who still loomed behind him.
I shook my head. “This isn’t a negotiation, Grady. Your time is up. You will sign these documents to turn the club over to me and get me the twenty-five thousand, or I will get the club and all your assets anyway when you suddenly die from a drug overdose. It’s your choice.” I shrugged like I didn’t care one way or the other, and I didn’t. Thomas Grady was a sniveling waste of space, and I just wanted to be rid of him. He was no longer worth my time or energy. “Either way, our business gets concluded today and how you leave this office is determined by you.”
It was no surprise when he stood up on shaking knees and approached my desk to sign the papers. He pulled the keys to the car out of his pocket and handed them over to me as well. Grady flinched when I tossed the keys to Donovan.
“Donovan will walk out with you to make sure the title to the car gets your signature as well.” I dismissed him and put the end of my cigar out in the ashtray and stood up from where I leaned against the front of my desk. I made my way around the large piece of furniture that took up much of the room.
I’d just sat down when Grady whirled around with a gun in his hand, and he leveled it right at my head. Donovan had his gun trained on Grady’s temple as soon as he turned, but the dumbass was too stupid or too desperate to care that he just signed his death warrant by drawing his weapon on me. I doubted he even realized his hand was shaking so badly that from this distance he would probably miss his one and only shot.
“You could’ve just walked away, Grady. You could’ve gotten clean and started a new life far away from here. Lived a legit life since you aren’t cut out for this world.” He was weak and stupid, a bad combination, so his actions weren’t all that surprising to me.
His hand jerked as he enunciated each of his words, “I run this world, you bastard.”
I didn’t laugh because it would have provoked him further, but I wanted to. The man did not know how much he didn’t run a thing. He was a pawn. A patsy. A dead man walking.
“Before you shoot me,” I said calmly, “Let me ask you something?”
His eyes went to Donovan, whom he just now noticed had a gun trained on his head as well. Unlike him, though, Donovan wasn’t shaking. He wasn’t sweating or nervous. He looked fucking bored.
“What?” he gritted out.
“Do you remember the guy that ran into you when you were coming into the building?”
“Yeah, so?” He shrugged like he didn’t understand what it mattered that someone had run into him.
I smirked at his obvious confusion. He had no clue that the man switched his loaded weapon for an empty one without him ever even fucking knowing it. The gun pointed at my head was empty, and Grady was too fucking stupid or strung out to even notice.
“So...,” I said lamely and wrapped my hand around the butt of my forty-five that was loaded and waiting right under my desk. “He switched your gun for an empty one, asshole.” I brought my hand up as I was speaking and fired a single, deadly shot. The bullet went right between his eyes, and he was dead before his body hit the floor.
