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Brent

H er lips were on mine .

Fuck, if only she knew how much I loved that mouth of hers.

She tasted like a whiskey mix and the scent of her perfume sent me over the edge.

I wanted her, on the wall at this party.

Unfortunately, that would have to wait. No matter how her breath hitching made me want to push even further, to throw her over my shoulder and carry her up those stairs and have my way with her again and again.

Just a kiss would have to hold me over until I could get her all alone again and bury myself inside her.

She pulled away from me, breathless and dazed. With my hands on her waist, I steadied her against the wall as she looked me up and down with those big doe eyes.

“I’m a little buzzed,” she admitted.

“I can taste that,” I purred back. I’d love to taste something else, too.

A heavy sigh escaped her perfectly red lips. “I was supposed to have fun tonight, but it seems everywhere I turn...”

Shushing her and playing with a strand of her hair, I placed a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t worry about it. You focus on having fun. I’ll deal with everything else. Sloane. The rats. All of it.”

Kelly approached with an incredulous look on her face. “Are you two done sucking face? There’s a costume competition and I’m going to enter Fallon.”

I released her from my grip, ushering her to Kelly. “Be my guest. I have business to attend to,” I said, turning around and covering my face back up before stalking out of the room.

Time to go to work.

Making record time, I needed to work quickly before I tried to approach my grandfather. He was particular in his dealings with me; if I didn’t come back with a job well done, I may as well not come back. So, it was the night I took care of our problems before announcing another.

A much larger problem.

I found it odd that he didn’t know about snakes in the grass, unless he was playing his old tricks again. Nevertheless, odd.

The envelope contained two profiles. Mario and Nicholas.

Mario had worked for my grandfather for about ten years and had gotten complacent. He let things slip to the point that he was ignoring theft, amongst other things. Growing soft after ten years was what my grandfather loathed about him. He had two choices: fix himself quickly or let me fix him permanently.

Nicholas, on the other hand, was due to die tonight. He was one that Mario had ‘forgotten’ to report for theft. He stole drugs from a drop off location and sold it on the streets to fill his own pocket. Too bad our hearty paychecks weren’t enough for him.

I called up a few available men to group up with for the long night ahead.

Dave, Jon, and Reaper. Some of the best cleaners we’d probably ever had. Reaper was a bit of an oddball, demanding to be called death's name. Thank God he didn’t ask to be called Lucifer. That would have been awkward.

Heading out with Lucifer tonight, hehe.

The Dictator asked Mario and Nicholas to be near for some sort of meeting; I just hoped they weren’t runners.

It made things messy.

“Hiya, boss.” Reaper saluted me with his typical greeting, wearing his favorite black riding gloves, as always.

“Reaper,” I nodded.

Dave and Jon eyed him standing there. For such brutal men, they were awkward.

I tossed the profiles down on the table beside me. “Here are the two men. Nicholas isn’t to leave alive. Mario is either or. You boys take your pick or flip a coin—I don't care.”

They read over the profiles for a moment, memorizing the faces of the men they were about to brutalize.

I continued, “They’re supposedly at one of our places a bit north. I suspect Nicky boy to be a runner type. Do your due diligence in twenty minutes before we split. We need this handled before morning.”

Folding my arms, I watched them scramble to work for the time we had left to verify the locations of the men. Making the mistake of thinking I had more time with this task before Fallon dropped her bombshell on me, I needed extra hands on deck to ensure smooth sailing of another finished task from my grandfather.

His tasks were endless, and my participation in the business was strictly cleaning. I had to earn my way out into the formal business, and it didn’t help that we had to keep covering up assault cases and domestic disputes.

I just fucking loved a good fight to get me going.

“I’m showing Mario at the place on Eighth Avenue, but Nicholas is nowhere to be found,” Jon broke the silence about ten minutes in.

“Grab your party supplies, they both die tonight.” I grabbed my helmet and let them pile into the car. We’d meet up eventually. I had an interrogation first before I handed him off to the wolves to be torn apart limb by limb.

Bursting through the door, I came face to face with Mario. “Mario, Mario, Mario,” I clicked my tongue at him. “We have some business to attend to, and I’m going to need you to be cooperative.”

My walking in scared him. He was wide-eyed in fear, hands gripping the chair. “What kind of business, m-mister Vaughn?”

“Oh please,” I rolled my eyes, “my grandfathers name is Mister Vaughn. He sent me here to ask you a few questions.” I dropped my duffel bag to the floor, pulling out some ropes as my eyes remained locked with his.

His panic levels were rising, his chest rising and falling quickly. “I didn’t do nothing!” He looked left and right as if anyone would be there to help him.

A cruel laugh came from my throat. “Oh, Mario...” I started tying a few preliminary knots absentmindedly while he watched and looked for an escape. “...we both know you did. Now, you’ll answer my questions if you know what’s good for you.”

His hands were visibly shaking as I approached and booted him in the chest, sending him flying backwards out of the chair. He screamed. I laughed. The chair collapsed into a few pieces on the ground and Mario was gasping for air, gripping his chest in pain.

I crouched down next to him. “Still going to play dumb? Or can we have a civilized conversation?”

Grabbing his arms and tying them together, he begged me to stop whatever I was doing. “Boss, what is this about?”

“Complacency,” I replied simply, continuing to tie him up. “The type that leads us to be very, very disappointed.”

Realization came over his face that we knew what a shit job he’d been doing when it came to the deliveries and organization of the trade. “It can’t be that bad. We’ve been doing great overseas with no issues!”

My hand itched, so I punched him in the face. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions about Nicky boy, and you will answer honestly and with as much detail as you can. Otherwise, my men will come in and rip you apart—piece by piece.”

His chubby little face squished under my fingers as I gripped his head and forced him—tied up—into a non broken chair. It was tempting to put my boot to his chest again, but I had other tools at my disposal for extracting information.

“I’ll tell you anything, boss,” his voice quivering while I flicked open a knife.

I started cleaning my fingernails with the knife, casually sitting in front of him. “Did you know Nicholas was stealing?” My eyes were trained on him, piercing into his soul. My knife casually pointed in his direction.

“I-I...”

“Ah, ah,” I warned. “I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“I thought he just took a little for himself to try.” He flinched after responding, bracing for impact.

“Wrong answer,” I growled, stabbing my knife into his left thigh. “The truth will set you free, my dear Mario. How many times did you look the other way?”

“Ah! I, uh-” He was breathing heavy, the pain of the knife distracting him from a formal train of thought. I pushed it a little, for fun. He cried out, “Ah! I haven’t-I mean, I’ve been looking away for...” he clenched his teeth, gritting through the pain “...somewhere like two years.”

“Why?” I ripped out the knife, relishing in the sweetly sick sound it made.

Another scream mixed in with an adrenaline-fueled giggle escaped him. “Nothin’ was going wrong. I figured...”

“You could go lax on us? Wrong answer.” I swiftly reached over to break a finger–or two. Not my fault he clenched his fingers together. “Where’s Nicky?”

“I don’t know! Ow!”

My patience was wearing thin. “Wrong answer,” I said with a wicked laugh, stabbing his other thigh.

“Boss?”

I turned to see Dave entering ahead of the other two, giving me a hint of curiosity. They all held their cleaning supplies and would most definitely be using them.

Motioning to the man in the chair with the knife sticking out of his leg, I gave a smile. “Oh hey, Davey. I was just asking our friend, Mario, where we could find Nicky. It’s important we find him tonight.”

Through his panting and bleeding, Mario looked to the three men that strolled into our little interrogation with pleading eyes. “Please, please! I’ll tell you everything you want to know!” He shook his tied-up hands, shifting the chair around a bit.

Kicking him in the shin, I asked, “Then why were you making it so difficult?”

“Boss, just use his phone,” Jon piped up.

I nodded to them to search his belongings. Reaper pulled out his own toys to play with after rolling out a plastic sheet, standing over Mario waiting to play with him.

Mario shook even more, making me wonder if he would go into shock soon. “Nicholas has been dealing with some bad people, okay? Bad! They’ll kill me!”

Rolling my eyes, I grabbed him by the hair, forcing him to look at me. “I’ll kill you, shitface.”

“Heh, yeah. Shitface,” Reaper taunted.

“Look. These guys are fucking scary, and Nicholas started letting them skim a little from drop locations for extra money.” His breathing was jagged and rough. I needed to staunch the bleeding to keep him awake longer.

Stupid motherfucker couldn’t have just answered my questions?

“I have his messages, boss.” Dave held up the phone. “Looks like Nicky boy split and he’s heading out of the country.”

Open palmed, I smacked Mario in the face as hard as I could. “You are so fucking lucky I need you alive right now.”