“Get your foot off the boy, put your gun down, and walk away slowly,” ordered one of the men. Clearly someone older if he considers the douche on the floor the age of a boy rather than a grown man.

Cutter is bent down in front of me, but turns his head slightly towards the voice, and when he does I recognize the fury in his eyes. He’s just as pissed as I am that there are two guns on us, but more importantly that we’ve fucked up like this.

We’re fixers and we know better. It’s our job to clean up messes made by the wealthy clients who hire us. It’s a vocation we were born and bred for. We’re good at it. And even though it can sometimes get complicated, and messy, and dangerous, we don’t usually make mistakes like this. But tonight we did.

“Who the fuck are you?” Cutter demands to know while backing away carefully his hands up in the air.

I on the other hand still have my gun pointed at Ronald. It’s going to take more than a simple request from some old dickhead for me to relinquish my piece. Especially when there’s a gun pointed at my own damn head.

“Never mind who I am, and I’m not going to say it again. Get your foot off of Ronald’s head, put your gun down, and back away, or I’ll blow a hole through the back of both of your skulls.”

Without even having to look at me, Cutter knows that I am not going to back down. We’ve been raised if someone puts a gun to your head, then you better put his ass in the ground.

Whoever this is has balls, is smart, and must have been following us for a while to have cornered us in this out of the way location without us knowing. Which also means that we have no clue what he knows and what he doesn’t. Another complication and a loose end.

While we rarely have to resort to lethal force in our line of work, one thing that this job doesn’t tolerate is loose ends. Especially loose ends that put a gun to your head. Unfortunately you can only tie up loose ends with money or with blood.

Ronald already turned down our money.

So tonight it would be blood.

I keep my foot on Ronald’s head, but bend down slowly to place my piece on the floor. Giving the gunman the illusion that I am fully cooperating. I place my hands up and after giving Ronald’s head one more hard squish with the bottom of my boot, I slowly begin to back away.

I make sure to back myself up completely in front of Cutter, so that I am standing directly in front of him. Like we’re in a line. Both of us with our hands up. Then we both turn to face the gunmen to get a good look at their faces. They don’t look familiar, and they don’t look like professionals, but they do look very motivated. This Ronald guy means something to them. Maybe he’s family.

“Get up, Ronnie,” the other man orders. Answering at least one question of mine. This is personal. They definitely know him. They have a nickname for him. Ronnie. Which means that my brother and I are probably as good as dead if we don’t handle this situation carefully and swiftly.

“Now go outside and get in the silver Lincoln. We’ll be out in a minute. We just gotta take care of these two shitheads.”

Ronnie stands up, brushes off his pants, and nods his head smugly. I can feel it in my gut that this is going to go down quickly. The minute Ronald makes it to the other side of the door we’re going to be put six feet under by these two middle-aged Rambos. They’re not professionals, but I can tell they’ve killed before. It’s much easier the next time.

It’s obvious we’re going to have to shoot our way out of this one. I just pray that Cutter remembers how we made it out of a situation like this once before, and the reason why I’m standing so closely in front of him.

Fortunately for us he does.

And it all goes down in a matter of seconds.

As Ronald opens the door to leave, Cutter quickly steps closer behind me, reaches inside of my jacket and under my shirt, where I carry a second gun. I always carry two when I’m working.

He whips the small Beretta Pico out of the back of my waistband, carefully takes aim over my shoulder and in between my raised arms, then shoots both men in the head with two quick shots using marksman precision.

Pop! Pop!

While we take the man in charge completely by surprise, the other gunman sees it coming and tries shooting first. Not quickly enough though. Fortunately the asshole’s safety jams, and they both collapse to the ground before he can get a shot off. Cutter rarely misses his mark.

As soon as their lifeless bodies hit the ground, Ronald shrieks like a little girl. “Barry! Oh my God, No!” he screams while running to the guy that gave the orders just moments before.

I pick my glock back up and breathe for a moment. We’re alive, and for that I’m grateful, but I’m also pissed. This very simple bribery job has morphed into a big pain in my ass. Now we have a clean up situation. I hate those, because you basically have to make a scene look like you were never there. No bodies. No DNA. No evidence whatsoever. And that shit is much harder to accomplish than you would think.

To execute a drama free clean up and cover up you either have to have a friend in the police or coroner’s office, know an actual criminal cleaner for hire, or do the job yourself. None of us have connections to the coroner, and a professional cleaner is hard to come by at the last minute, so we decide to handle the shit ourselves.

Arson would be the easiest way to go in this situation. The warehouse is abandoned and there are no other buildings open within a two or three block radius at this time of day. So there won’t be any innocent bystanders getting hurt by a fire, or anyone to call and stop the blaze before it effectively wipes away any traces of our DNA.

I turn the gun back on Ronald while Cutter makes a call to Roman, to give him a heads up about what’s going on. This type of thing is usually up his alley, but he’s been preoccupied lately.

“You see what you’ve done, Ronald,” I say coldly.

Tears start rolling down his face.

“He was my brother!” he wails. Snot running down his nose.

“Boo fucking hoo. You’ll see him soon in hell or wherever snitches go if you don’t do what we asked you to do. What we offered good money for you to do thirty minutes ago. This is all on you, you know that right? You’ve turned this into way more than it needed to be.”

“You’re a fucking maniac!” he yells at me with his eyes wide in disbelief and disgust. “You both are!”

“Because we shot first? How convenient of you to dismiss the fact that your beloved brother was about to put both me and my brother in the ground. He was no fucking saint.”

“He’s never killed anyone in his life. He wouldn’t have—”

“Really, man? On top of everything else, you’re also naïve? Your brother had a gun cocked and pointed at my head, and so did his friend. In my world that means he was ready to take a shot. He made his choice, and it was a bad one. Now it’s done. He’s gone. And you still have a job to do, or you’ll be gone too. Take the money and go far away, or I’ll just make you go far away.”

“Can I speak to you for a minute?” Cutter interrupts after finishing up the call with Roman. I already know what he wants. At this point there’s no way I should still be giving Ronald the option to take the money, and my brother wants to check me on it.

We’ve ended two lives tonight. Two people connected to a guy that knows us. Knows what we look like. Knows what we do for a living. Knows the client we work for. He could easily incriminate us. The reality is that we have to eliminate Ronald too. I just don’t want any more blood on my hands. Not tonight.

Ronald looks back and forth between us with terror in his eyes, especially when he looks at my brother. Cutter was the one who actually took the shots tonight, so in Ronald’s eyes Cutter is the bad cop, and I am the good cop, or at least sort of good.

“Wait!” he turns to me and begs for his life. “I’ll take the money. I’ll go far away. Out to the west coast. Wherever. Just don’t kill me.”

“Have a seat against the wall over there. Let me speak to my brother about it,” I say.

I can see the hope in Ronald’s eyes.

It is very much misplaced.

I’m no good cop.

There’ll be no discussion.

It was already decided the minute he tried to shove a knife in my gut.

I’m in my office at the club, and I smell like accelerant and smoke and sweat. I’m fucking exhausted. I’ve committed about a dozen crimes tonight, and while that wasn’t something that used to bother me, I’m starting to think that as I grow older, I’m getting softer. Or maybe it’s simply a case of me preferring to do what I do best.

Tracking and hacking.

Learning who people are, what they do, what they buy, and where they go by digging into personal emails, phone records, and work databases. Gathering intel that we can hold over them and get what we want without having to resort to blood. It’s so much easier, and it doesn’t sit on my chest like a crushing weight for days, like the shit we did tonight will.

I start backtracking the way we handled this job from start to finish. Our old boss, Joseph Masterson (Roman’s father), taught us very early on that everyone has a price, and our job is always to find it. Maybe three grand wasn’t Ronald’s price. Maybe if I hadn’t let the knife he tried to put in my side piss me off so much, and interrogated him a little further, I would have discovered his real price.

I guess I could second-guess myself all night, but what’s done is done. There will be no testimony made by him incriminating our client, and therefore we have fulfilled our end of the contract. How we fulfill it is on us. Not the client. That’s our burden to bear.

“You look like hell,” Jade notices, but I don’t respond to my little foul-mouthed distraction. I’m too fucking angry with myself for all the mistakes we made to spar with her tonight. Especially the one which almost allowed two amateurs to get the drop on me and Cutter.

“And I told you to call me when you were done,” she continues fussing.

I start to mindlessly rummage through my duffle bag for some sweats to change into. I don’t even look at her when I respond. All I want to hear her say is that she’ll agree to my terms. She’s pissing me off by taking so long.

“You don’t tell me to do anything. You’d do best to remember that shit.”

“What the hell crawled up your ass, King Kong?”

I pop my head up and look at her straight on.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop calling me that shitty nickname?”

“As if I like any of the names you call me.”

“What you like or don’t like is not important.” I’m being an asshole, but there’s something about our acerbic exchanges that always lifts my mood.

“And what are you wearing?” I ask as I run my eyes up and down her body. Questioning why she’s wearing skintight leggings and a cut off shirt, which puts all of her delicate curves on full display for every man to ogle. “Leggings are not pants.”

“What are you my daddy? When I’m not at Roman or Elizabeth’s house, I work inside of an office at a nightclub, genius. You’re lucky I don’t wear a g-string all day.”

I should be so lucky.

“I can see the imprint of your crotch.”

“Why are you even looking down there? Keep your eyes above my neck. That should help.”

“You’re distracting the men that work here dressed like that.”

Jade laughs. “They see half naked women every night, and you’re worried about them looking at me? Look at me,” she demands incredulously.

That’s the problem. I am looking. I’m always looking.

“I’m totally covered up, and I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation,” she blusters. “I can wear what I want. Even if I was walking around here in the nude, these guys should still do their jobs.”

“Now you sound ridiculous.”

“Male employees do it at strip clubs everyday.”

“They’re all gay.”

“No they aren’t.” She laughs out loud.

“Well this isn’t a strip club.”

“And there’s never been a dress code here except for wearing all black. Since when do you care what I wear to work anyway?”

“You ever heard of dressing for the job you want and not the job you have?”

I’m bullshitting so much right now, that I can smell my own self. I haven’t felt this territorial about a woman since … never. It’s embarrassing.

“So what? You want me to look like all of the corporate bitches that come sniffing around here for you every night? In silk sheath dresses. Pant suits. Ugly ass kitten heels. Is that what you want?”

She’s right about one thing. I do tend to attract the corporate types. Beautiful college educated women who come to Lotus for the overpriced mixed drinks and fantasies about getting their bad boy fixes met by fucking one of the notorious owners. But Jade’s clueless. That’s not what I want by a long shot. I don’t want corporate. I want her.

“No, Jade. Just cover up your ass.”

“Why don’t you just forget about my ass. How about that.”

I wish I could.

“I texted you earlier for a reason,” she says getting back to the original topic.

“What was it? I was too busy making sure I didn’t get myself shot in the head.”

“What else is new. Look, I’m taking the day off tomorrow.”

“That’s what you wanted? The day off,” I respond in disbelief.

“Yes, yes. I know it’s unheard of at this company,” she says in a condescending tone. “But at most places, employees actually get vacation days that they can use for whatever the hell they want.”

“You don’t.”

“Well, I am tomorrow. I’ve already cleared it with Roman, so I’m letting you and Cutter know too. You’ll have to manage without me tomorrow.”

I try not to ask, but the words tumble out of my mouth.

“What are you going to do tomorrow?”

I’m such a bitch.

“You’re so nosy. No one asked me a single thing about what I’m doing but you.”

“Just wondering what would make you take a day off of work. What couldn’t wait?”

“Wait until when? The weekend? You’ve got to be kidding me. Between the clients and the club, I work seven days a week. It’s got to be illegal how many hours I log weekly for you guys.”

“Fine, take your stinking day off,” I say, frustrated with the direction of the conversation.

She snickers, “I wasn’t asking for your permission or approval. I was just letting you know.”

“You do remember that you work for me right?” I grumble while ransacking my duffle.

“You never let me forget it.”

“When are you coming to work here full time?”

“I’m not.”

“Ungrateful brat.” Dammit, I don’t have any clean underwear. “I’m running home for an hour. Can you at least do your job while I’m gone.”

She laughs, “Go take a shower while you’re there. You stink like badly burnt barbecue.”

When I get up to leave, I can’t help myself.

Her tits are covered up, but IT is staring at me.

Taunting me.

Jade’s ass.

I give it a good slap as I make my exit, and oh my fucking hell, I forgot that it jiggles.

“Hey!” She jumps in protest.

“See you later, itty bitty.” I grin. “And if you don’t want anyone to touch it, maybe you should cover it up.”

I laugh as I listen to her spew a string of curse words behind me. Something about perversion and workplace harassment, but the joke was really on me. My hand, her ass, and my dick all just shared a mutually beneficial connection that reminded me of why I want her here with me twenty-four seven. I can’t get the picture of that jiggle and the way it felt against my hand out of my head.

I’m burdened with the desire of wanting more.

I just hope she’ll put me out of my misery soon.