Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“And she came to you for what, exactly?” Lorenzo asked.
Good fucking questions.
“She wants me to handle it,” I said.
“Handle it how? Killing all of them?” he asked.
“She didn’t specify. She seemed freaked. Maybe not thinking clearly, just needing help.”
Emilio had sisters.
Lorenzo had a wife, a daughter.
I could see them imagining the women in their life being in that kind of situation and needing help.
“And how do you want to handle this situation?” Lorenzo asked.
“Given what I know about those fuckheads? I wouldn’t mind taking them all out,” I admitted.
“Christ,” Lorenzo hissed, rubbing his brow with his hand. “Alright. I guess we are doing this now. What did they do?”
“Think you know me well enough to know I’m not someone who kills for the thrill of it,” I said.
They couldn’t argue with that.
I wasn’t Brio.
I didn’t enjoy bloodshed and pain.
None of us did.
It was just part of the job sometimes, like it or not.
“Alright. Out with it then,” Lorenzo said in the voice of a man who didn’t have time for this, but was resigned to hear it.
“Nicholas Myers had an on-and-off-again girlfriend named Lily who lived in my building,” I explained, watching both of them straighten, suddenly interested.
What? Did they think it was some fucking bar slight gone wrong or something equally as ridiculous? Like I didn’t have more self-control than that?
“She was fucking seventeen when they started dating. He, if you remember, was in his early thirties.”
“Fuck,” Emilio said, shaking his head.
“And, as you’d expect from a predator who only wants young girls, he did all that predatory shit. Led her away from her friends and her family. Even got her to drop out of school. But only because he didn’t want anyone to see when he beat the ever-loving shit out of her. Used to see her rushing back sometimes, begging her parents to let her back in.”
They always did.
No one wanted their little girl to be hurt and alone with nowhere to go. Not even if she went no-contact with them for months at a time.
“One night, I was coming home from work. Late. Think it was like three in the morning or some shit. Elevator doors opened to her sprawled on the ground, covered in bruises, blood running down her thighs.”
“Oh, fuck,” Emilio said, eyes closing for a second.
“Turns out, she told Nicholas she was done with him for good. And how did he choose to punish her? By him and his brothers gang-raping her. She waited afterward until they were too drunk and high to notice, and left. But she’d passed out in the elevator.”
“You didn’t take her to the cops?”
“She didn’t want me to,” I said. “Can’t fucking force someone to report. She said she couldn’t make it through a trial, having to look at them, having to be cross-examined and questioned about why she didn’t leave, or having them suggest she’d wanted to be with them all, then just regretted it after. You know, the shit they do to all rape victims,” I said, shrugging.
Sure, lock up the wiseguys who were just taking out other criminals. But let all the fucking rapists walk free. We had a bang-up criminal justice system.
“Can’t blame her for not wanting to go through with it,” Emilio said. “It would only traumatize her again.”
“Yeah. I brought her to her parents. They took care of her. Even got her in-home therapy and shit like that since she was terrified to step out of the apartment. She was… recovering. But I… I couldn’t fucking stop thinking about finding her that night. Those images were burned into my brain. Couldn’t even sleep at night. So… I took out the guy I considered the ringleader.”
I’d have taken all of them out, given the chance.
But shit didn’t work out that way.
Because I hadn’t planned it out.
I hadn’t been careful enough.
“Shit,” Lorenzo said, shaking his head. “I can’t even be mad at you any more about it then,” he declared. “No matter how much I had to shovel out in attorney fees. You know Vega charged us four-hundred bucks for some kind of fucking spicy chips she had imported in weekly?” he asked, shaking his head.
“That… sounds like her,” I decided. And, come to think of it, I always saw a bag of chips peeking out of her bag, the top tucked and clipped with one of the claw clips she used for her hair.
“Still,” Lorenzo said, sighing.
I knew the answer then.
“We got a lot of eyes on us right now. Especially since the hung jury. There’s no way more of the Myers brothers turn up dead, and we don’t get blamed for it. You, in particular. It’s not something we can risk right now.”
I figured that was going to be what he said.
“What do you expect me to do then?” I asked. “Just walk away? Tell her she’s on her own?”