Page 60 of Dirty Game

I lean against the railing and let my thoughts drift.

The echo of her voice, soft as silk but sharper than bone:I belong to you.

It’s a problem. It’s a fucking problem.

Movement down below breaks my trance.

Two men in body armor hustling a third toward the loading dock.

The third is bleeding, leaving a track I could follow blind.

They’ve got the shipment, or at least part of it, packed onto a forklift. I sight down my barrel and take the shot.

The driver’s head jerks back—pink mist against the crate. The second dives for cover.

The third man, the one bleeding, is slower.

I shoot him in the thigh, and he spins, collapsing under the weight of his own panic.

My men close in, quick and brutal.

Two on the left, one on the catwalk above, guns barking in perfect sequence.

The survivors are Hungarian, but not from around here—accent’s off, like they learned English from TV and cigarettes.

They curse, plead, one even tries to pray.

I don’t let them finish.

The firefight lasts maybe ninety seconds.

Feels like a year.

I take a round to the side… grazing, but it burns hot, tearing the fabric of my shirt and the skin beneath.

I ignore it and keep moving.

When the last man falls, I step into the open, boots crunching on spent casings and blood.

The shipment is here, intact except for a single crate punctured by gunfire, leaking straw and packing foam.

I walk the line, hands behind my back, surveying the damage like a general counting the dead.

My men watch me, waiting for orders.

“Clean up,” I say. “Bring the trucks around. Burn the bodies.”

They scatter.

I light a cigarette, drag deep, and feel the nicotine settle the tremor in my hands.

I look down at the blood seeping through my shirt, a slow ooze mixing with the residue of someone else’s brains.

I don’t bother to wipe it off.

There’s a dull ache in my ribs, nothing more.

I press two fingers to the wound and wince at the sharpness of it.