Stain (Stain #1)(50)

“We’ll take this and whatever other shipment you receive in the future,” he says, “pay him.” While one of muscles removes the bags of weapons from the table, another one empties out the black leather tote bag onto the table. The third f*cker still stands behind the pudgy buyer, just to his right. “Eighty grand as we agreed on.”

“Hold the f*ck up. What do you mean eighty grand? We’re talking hundred large here, man.”

The bulldog scowls, his jowl moving like a pendulum as he speaks, “That’s not what I agreed on with Deacon.”

“I don’t give a f*ck what you and he worked out. My price is set. Hundred grand or nothing.”

It happens quickly. Not sure who draws first, but in a blink of an eye everyone has a gun aimed and loaded on one another. I’ve got the Glock in my left hand trained on one of the meatheads, while the SIG in my right hand is aiming at the buyer. It’s a tense few minutes in which we all play a game of chicken. See who will flinch first. The dumbbell I have my Glock on is either dumber than shit or he’s got balls of steel as he boldly reaches down for one of the gun-filled duffel bags he’s set at his side. I say it’s the former. Following my first and only instinct, I squeeze the trigger and shoot. The bullet slices through the air and grazes its mark. He hollers, “Motherf*cker,” and immediately hunches over with his hand pressing against his chest. It’s bleeding but that’s nothing considering I could’ve done worse.

“The next one is going between your eyes,” I say, calmly. But now I’ve got a bullet with my name on it as muscle number two aims my way, ready to shoot.

“Enough!” the buyer barks. In rapid-fire Russian he speaks to his men and they lower their guns seconds later. “This was a simple misunderstanding. We will have no more bloodshed. I’m sure you and I can work out some other arrangement, Droski. Perhaps over a few rounds of drinks and some good company?”

“You pay me the rest of my money and we’ll talk further business.”

“Of course, of course.”

The buyer sends muscle number three to his car. He returns shortly after with—what do you know? Exactly the twenty grand that was missing. Everything after goes as smoothly as one would expect a gun run to go.

***

A few hours later, I’m in the shower. I’m bone tired. For days, Dro’s had me running around the whole damn city collecting money owed to him by his dealers. When I wasn’t doing that, I was working double-duty at his garage. Stripping the parts from stolen cars and putting them in cars that needed to be fixed so we could jack up the total amount of parts and labor on oblivious customers.

I’ve also been purposely f*cking as many girls as I can get my hands on, not only because the site is growing faster than I anticipated, but it’s been my futile attempt at getting Aylee out of my head. After what happened with Noah on Monday, I’ve been running as fast as I can from her, from the memories that have become even more persistent since Noah said what he did about Dad and our mother. About how I was going to turn out like that abusive prick.

Thinking about it gets my blood boiling. How the f*ck could that self-righteous little shit say that bullshit to me, knowing all too f*cking well the mutual hell we grew up in? I’ve made shit decisions but I’m not a shitty person. I’ve protected him, something that bastard never did, so how could he condemn me to being anything like the monster who raped us of our innocence without even a thought as to how it would affect me?

Because I know he might be right.

I am smug and self-centered, and have violent tendencies just like he did. But I accepted my fate a long time ago. These thoughts are like a bucket of ice water down my back. The realization that Noah could be right, even in the smallest degree, makes me feel like I’m going to be f*cking ill. I’m a caged, beat-up animal that no one wants. So I attack. But it wasn’t always that way. I wasn’t always such a miserable rejectee. Our mom loved me, and she was the sweetest woman anyone could ever meet. Years of battling her own depression had made her reserved and so she’d kept mostly to herself. But she’d loved big and she loved hard and that inevitably had been her downfall. She’d fallen for a waste of human skin who’d exploited her kind heart, fed her pills, took advantage of her lack of close friendships, and manipulated her until he became her entire world. He killed her spirit. Robbed her of life years before she blasted that bullet through her head.

Aylee… Damn it. Aylee is a lot like my mother. And I don’t want to taint her like my piece of shit father tainted my mother. She’s beautiful. She trusts so easily. She leaks emotions everywhere she goes. Her expressive eyes reveal everything, all the time. And what I see there are things I shouldn’t want but strangely finding myself needing. Like a flash of her smile or that weird sense of humor that shouldn’t make a damn bit of sense but it does to me. I don’t want to spend time with her and yet her time is something I’m craving. Just these last few days alone I’ve been champing at the bit to go see her. Stalk her if need be. And that right there is what I can’t have. I don’t do things like this. I’ve never, ever f*cking thought about doing shit like this. That’s not the type of guy I am. I don’t chase females. I don’t f*cking pine after women. I don’t need to. And when I do, it’s my dick briefly needing inside some *. Plain and f*cking simple. It should be plain and f*cking simple with Aylee.