Ten years ago.
My front door wide open, a tumbler in my hand, I watched the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles on the street cut across the darkened yard.
Bringing my glass to my lips, intent on pouring more alcohol down my throat, I opened my mouth.
Goddamn glass was empty again.
The EMTs lifted a stretcher with the bloodied asshole that was still alive and put him in the ambulance as the ME drove off with the unlucky asshole that didn’t make it. The cops, a couple detectives and a dick in a suit hovered nearby. One EMT got in the back of the ambulance while the other shut the door and got behind the wheel.
The cops scanned the crowd as the ambulance left, but the suit turned and looked toward the house, making eye contact with me.
I smirked.
Fucker took it as an invitation. Pushing through the crowd that’d been in the house only moments before the sirens sounded, keeping his beady-as-fuck eyes on me, he came straight up the walk. Striding through the front door like he owned the place, he aimed right for me.
Reeking of money in his custom suit, the slick asshole held his hand out. “Leo Amherst.”
I knew who the hell he was. Everyone who was anyone knew who he was, but I didn’t shake his hand or play into his power-trip bullshit. Giving up on the glass, I picked up the bottle of Jack and threw back. My throat numb, the bottle already half gone, I wanted to forget about this whole fucked-up night. None of this would’ve happened if I’d kept my goddamn hands to myself.
Resigned, I spared Amherst a glance before looking back at the cops. “What do you want?”
The prick cut right to the chase. “Where’s Sanaa?”
I snorted. “You’re late to the party.” I’d handed her a wad of cash a half hour ago and told her to get lost until I could clean this fucking mess up. “You already missed her.” The beautiful, innocent Sanaa, too goddamn innocent and the one woman I never should’ve touched. She didn’t want me. She thought I was him, and I didn’t fucking stop her.
The asshole Amherst didn’t leave. “Where’d she go? She’s not at home.”
“Fuck if I know.” Attempting to dull the memory of what I’d done, I took another swig.
Amherst pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, kicked the leg aside of some prick passed out on the floor, and sat right in front of me. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he steepled his fingers and leveled me with a look. “Do you know who I am?”
“Do I look like I care?” Anything this asshole could do to me would pale in comparison to what my bosses were capable of. Besides, running guns for the past year for people I wasn’t stupid enough to speak of out loud made me about as untouchable as this asshole’s bank account made him. If he was smart, he’d realize there was a reason I wasn’t talking to the cops from the back seat of a cruiser with my hands cuffed.
“You should,” Amherst warned.
Squinting to focus, I pretended to look at him. “Why’s that?” I didn’t give a single fuck about this conversation or where it was going. I’d already paid the cops off.
“For one, I make more money in an hour than you make in a year.” He tipped his chin toward the front door. “But more importantly, the guy going to the morgue and the guy being taken away in the ambulance, both of whom were beaten outside your house party tonight, they work for me.”
Wasn’t my party. At least, it wasn’t being thrown in my honor. There wasn’t a damn thing honorable about me. Technically, the house wasn’t mine either. I just lived here, courtesy of the people I worked for.
“Sounds like a bad night for both of them.” I drank again, but I couldn’t taste shit anymore. “Or maybe their bad night started long before this. Maybe they made a shit decision when they decided to work for you.” When the hell did Jack Daniel’s start tasting like water?
Unimpressed with my reasoning, Amherst kept talking. “Do you know what my manager said right before his injuries rendered him unconscious?”
I took a calculated guess. “That your dick’s small and you pay shit?”
“That you’re the one who beat him up and killed his assistant, right after he informed you that he’d signed Sanaa and he was her new manager. He said you had a problem with that.”
I smirked. “Funny, the cops said his assistant beat the fuck out of him right before he punched the dude in the face. One strike and the fucker was dead.” I took another swallow of the Jack. “At least, that’s what they surmised because there were no witnesses. And for the record, if I’d bothered to beat the fuck out of anyone, you can guarantee they wouldn’t be conscious long enough to speak, let alone say my name.”
“He pointed at you,” the asshole clarified.
I glanced from the open front door to the mess around me. Two people fucking on the couch, some dick passed out on the floor, a chick snorting lines off the coffee table, and a handful of stragglers doing shots in the kitchen who couldn’t be bothered by the spectacle of cops and an ambulance outside. I never should’ve invited these losers from work to this party. “Right. He singled me out among all the other assholes in here.” I took another swig. “Good luck proving that.”
“Do you see anyone else in here in a black T-shirt who’s Sanaa’s boyfriend?”
I laughed.
Then I couldn’t stop laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Amherst demanded.
“I’m not her boyfriend, you fucking dick.” I laughed harder.
The chick on the couch screamed right before the dude pounding her growled out a “Fuck.”
Amherst glanced at them in disgust, then looked back at me and leaned closer. “Let me explain something to you very clearly. Your little girlfriend shows up at my office tomorrow morning by nine ready to fulfill her contract, or I’ll make sure the cops know it was you who killed one of my employees and beat the other within an inch of his life. And when they come to arrest you? Trust me, it’ll be decades before you see the outside of a jail cell.”
Fucking prick. He had no idea who he was screwing with. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight. Your manager signed Sanaa, then beat the fuck out of his assistant, and now you want to blackmail me, who’s not her boyfriend, to get your shiny new toy to show up for work tomorrow?” This shit was almost laughable. “Did I forget anything?”
“Yeah, the part where I have a witness that says you killed a man tonight.”
“And I have a woman who was with me all night who says otherwise.” Or I would as soon as I paid someone to lie for me.
We glared at each other.
Amherst broke first.
Standing, the asshole pulled a business card out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. “Sanaa better be there tomorrow.” Then he leveled me with a warning look right before he kicked my house of cards. “Or I’ll make sure your side gig of hustling guns becomes your last shit decision.” Leaning close, he dropped his voice. “Remember this about me, Conlon. I make the big bucks because I do my homework.”
The whiskey doing nothing to take the edge off, I fucking seethed.
Then I played the only card I had left.
“Do you know what your asshole manager and his assistant said in front of witnesses about an underage seventeen-year-old girl?” I didn’t wait for the fuck to guess. “They said they were going to take Sanaa for a test drive before passing her around to every executive prick who works for you.” My grip tightened on the bottle of Jack. “How many young recording artists do you think are going to want to sign with Trinity Media Group once your company makes headlines for statutory rape?”