So why does it feel like I just made a huge mistake?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Echo
The warehousewe own in The Mission District is dark when I arrive. To anyone passing by, it would look completely abandoned, but that’s precisely the point.
River texted an hour ago letting me know that Mikey, one of our low-level dealers, tried to skim product off one of our shipments. He thought he was smart enough to hide it. He wasn’t.
I find him in the back room, tied to a chair, and bleeding from his swollen left eye.
“He’s all yours.” Briggs says, stepping aside.
I give him a smirk as I roll up my sleeves and crack my neck.
Inflicting pain is what I’m good at, what I fucking excel at. I don’t hesitate. I don’t second-guess. And I have zero confusion about what my role is in this domain. This is the one part of my job where I thrive.
Mikey’s eyes widen when he sees me, recognitionclicking automatically. He knows who I am and what I do for this family. He should be scared. He should be petrified.
“I’m going to ask you some questions.” I say, circling him slowly. “You’re going to answer them. If you lie, I’ll know. If you stall, I’ll know. And if you waste my fucking time—” I pause, letting the sentence hang. “Then I’ll make it hurt more. Understand?”
He nods frantically.
“First question, who helped you?”
Panic morphs the lines of his face, and his eyes widen in disbelief.
In this organization, stealing from us is a death sentence, and every single person on our payroll knows it. Mikey is no fucking leader, so someone else had to have convinced him this shit was worth dying for.
“N-no one. Just me. I swear?—”
Lie.
The amount of product missing alone would’ve required more than one person to move. Not to mention, we never let anyone near the shipments alone. Someone had to help him, or at the very least turn a blind eye.
I smash my fist into the side of face with lethal precision, relishing in the feel of my knuckles breaking skin.
“Try again.” I hiss, glaring at him.
“Fuck!” He wails, choking on the blood gushing through his teeth. “I-It was just me. I?—”
I smash my fist into his face again, harder this time, and his head whips to the side unnaturally. Blood sprays from his mouth and splatters on the concrete floor. Mikey looks up at me pathetically, probably expecting me to feela semblance of sympathy for him, but I don’t feel anything other than the calculated ruthlessness I was trained to feel.
That's the thing people don't understand about me. This part, the part where I'm in a room like this with a purpose and a clear set of instructions, is the only place where everything gets quiet. I’m useful here. I’m good at this. And being good at something is the closest thing to peace I’ve ever known.
Bambi’s voice cuts through my focus.
What the hell are you doing?
I blink and shake my head.
Mikey is talking now. Saying something, but I don’t catch it.
“What?” I snap.
“I said there were two others.” He gasps, half whine, half cry. “Arty a—and Jon. Arty helped me move product, while Jon stood watch.”
“Where is it now?”
