Because I’m already standing from the park bench. I’m halfway across the weed-riddled sidewalk. How does she know that I’m withdrawing? How can she sense that I’m not there anymore?
I shove the questions aside, because they don’t matter. She doesn’t matter. Not really. A pretty face. Sweet brown eyes. A smoking-hot body. That’s all she is to me. That’s all she can be.
And I can push her away more effectively with words than with a gun.
I slip along the side of the building, using the shadows to disguise myself. If I really wanted to be stealthy, I’d hang up, but I need to finish this. For both our sakes.
“Oh yes, sweetheart. I’m there. I’m holding your hands down to your cunt, telling you to fuck yourself. Shoving my cock in your throat until you’ve got tears down your cheeks. Until you’ve got saliva running down your chin. You’re crying, but you don’t dare stop touching yourself.”
Her cries grow louder as I speak, her breath faster.
“And it feels good because it’s so wrong. You’re coming on your hand, spilling that sweet juice all over your slippery fingers. Even while I’m taking away your air, making you choke.”
She comes on the word choke, her body reacting on primal instinct, squeezing her throat until she breaks apart.
Like I’ve done a thousand times, I detach from the moment. I store her moans and cries in a secret place, balm for every dark thing I’ll do in the future. By the time her body finishes spasming, her inner muscle clenching, her breathing exhaled in a low moan, she’s already a memory to me.
“Very nice,” I say, my voice clipped.
I stare down the alley where the black limo has stopped in front of the private poker game. Early. This is a high roller, but he isn’t coming after midnight. Because the guy at the door lied to me? Did the guy decide to have a few drinks before the game?
“Stone?” she asks, sounding lost.
Her voice seems small and distant over the phone line, like it’s across an ocean instead of just the city. “Now you sleep in those wet panties, understand? Keep them on and pretend I came inside you, that I’m leaking out all night long.”
Before she can respond, I click the end button on the phone.
The light in my phone goes out, leaving me in darkness. I erase the call history—nobody needs to know about Brooke except me—and I turn my attention to the back entrance of the pub.
The dark car is pulling away. It moves around to the edge of the park and pulls over. That’ll be the driver, settling in to read or watch something on his phone or smoke or whatever, waiting for whoever it is to finish his game or his business inside. Is this the guy?
Is the game starting?
This is a fact-finding mission. If I don’t recognize anyone, I’ll just sit down and play. You get a really good sense of different guys off playing cards with them, especially if there’s money involved. I take the safety off my piece. Nothing has to get bloody here. It’s just me figuring out who might’ve hired the guy who framed Grayson.
Still, I like to be ready.
I’m back at that door. It’s the same bouncer, and he gets a nice, crisp bill for letting me in. “Game’s just starting to roll.” He nods his head toward a staircase.
I don’t like this. Something about this feels rushed. Not my presence here, but the dark car. The break in schedule. I just don’t know what it is.
“They have their five yet?” That’s how many they’ll need to start, but it’s not really why I’m asking.
He hesitates. He doesn’t seem to like the question. “Yeah, but one of ’em’ll play out.”
I watch him an extra beat. Is he nervous? And upstairs. Not the best. Better than the basement, though. That’s an old weakness, my reluctance to go below ground level. Not that I’d let it stop me.
I turn and head up. At the top, I knock on another door.
It opens, and right then I know it’s wrong because the guy backs way away, but it’s too late, because somebody rushes me from behind, pushing me in. A setup.
Four guys materialize on either side of the door, which gets slammed quick enough. Do they know who I am? Or is this about the game?
They have my arms before I can pull my piece out of the back of my pants.
I go at them with my legs. I land a knee-cracking blow on the biggest guy, and get in a backward head butt on one of the guys holding me—his jaw, I think, from the way he cries out. If this goes bad, I’m extra fucked for that one, but that’s what you do—when you fight, you fight.
Five against one. And they already have my arms. It’ll definitely go bad.
I get in what blows I can before the beatdown. A fist in my face. Warmth explodes, followed by the taste of blood. Another fist drives into my gut, and another and another.
The biggest guy, a baldie with bushy blond eyebrows and a goatee and blood coming off the side of his lips, does the honors while the other two hold me.
“Fucking serious?” he says, smashing his fist into my mouth. The guy I got in the knee is down in the corner, back against the wall. He’ll be trouble later.
I go into it, just go into the misery of it. That’s what you do when there’s no more fighting. You just want it over with, because you know the morning will come again. Or at least, you have to think that. I relax and take the pain. The broken ribs. The blood. There’s no part of me that isn’t battered, but they need me conscious. So eventually they stop. I let them push me into a chair.
The goatee guy puts his hands on either armrest and gets into my face. One of his teeth is cracked. Did I do that? “You’re gonna tell us what you know about Dorman, starting with thing one, and not ending ’til you’re done.” He gets closer. “And we know some of what you know, so there’ll be no use leaving anything out.”
Dorman, also known as Governor-elect Dorman, is the man who framed Grayson—or, at least, we only suspected it until now. But is he the one who directly ordered the hit of the cop and the frame-up?
I spit at the guy, but he’s ready for it and backs up, then he advances and stomps my foot under the heel of his boot, and I just wish I would’ve hit him.
Chapter 11
Brooke
There are plastic stars on my ceiling.
They’ve been there so long I almost don’t see them. They glowed in the dark at the beginning, but that was a long time ago. I had a brief astronomy phase in middle school. A telescope is packed away in one of the closets, too expensive for someone who isn’t serious.
I can still recognize a few constellations. I remember having my ruler out, determined to get the relative spacing right while the maid held the ladder steady. The little dipper. Gemini.
It feels like I’ve lived my entire life as a child, my protective bubble lined with plastic and glitter. And suddenly, with a single phone call, the bubble pops.
Imagine how shocked your mother would be.
Shocked, probably.
Disappointed, definitely. All her hard work to turn me into a society lady down the drain. The booster club would never let me in. It’s a strange relief, even if they’ll never know.
How angry your father would be.
He would be furious at all the money he poured into me, into my private school and my designer clothes. Like I’m an investment that will never pay out.