Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 303(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 303(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
It doesn’t take me long to find the mark. He’s at a well-known restaurant not far from his apartment. He lives alone. Never been married. No kids. I can do the searching without Kenzo, but he’s better—I find basics, and he finds everything.
I watch him for a bit as he sits there drinking. He smiles when appropriate but seems to have a lost look in his eye. Walking past the restaurant, I head straight to his apartment. A man buzzes himself in, and I slip in behind him, making my way to apartment number three. I jimmy the lock, and it opens easily. The place is basic, with creams and whites everywhere. It’s small, but I guess that’s all you need when you live by yourself.
Why do I have such a big house, then? Because I want it, plain and simple.
Opening his bedroom door, his bed is unmade, and clothes have been thrown around. Shutting the door, I go to the window to check when he leaves the restaurant. I make my way to the door and wait. It’s not long until I hear the jingle of his keys, and he enters the apartment.
I hit him on the back of his head, and he falls hard and fast. Shutting the door behind him, I pick the mark up and place him in a dining room chair. Tying his hands behind him, I grab another chair and straddle it in front of him, waiting for him to wake. It takes his groggy mind a few minutes until he starts struggling, and when he stops, his eyes lock on me.
“Hello.” I smile. He tries to move back, but he can’t. “Just stay still,” I tell him. I watch him try to place me, but he won’t be able to. I don’t know him, and those who know me know better than to show pictures of my face.
“Hunter.”
Tickle me pink, I was fucking wrong.
“So, you do know who I am. Interesting.” I smile. “Do you know which one I am?” I ask.
He shakes his head and tries to wriggle himself loose.
“I’d kill you before you got your hands free,” I warn him.
He stops moving. “He wants me dead because I have evidence on them all,” he whispers. “Even the person who sent you.”
“Sorry, what?” I ask, thinking I didn’t hear him right.
“What do they call him on the streets? Um…Pops?” he asks, staring at me and waiting for a reaction. “I have enough dirt to send the force after them.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do.” I give him a bored look. Pops makes sure everything is done and disposed of. He is clean, remarkably clean.
“His women. He loves his women,” he adds. And he isn’t wrong. Pops does love women. “They talk, you know. Some were even sent in to gather evidence.”
“Where is it?” I ask, standing.
“You’ll let me live?”
“Where is it?” I ask again. “If I have to ask a third time, I’ll cut your fingers off.”
He nods his head to the kitchen cabinet. I walk over and swing it open, and all I see are glasses. Swiping them out, they all fall to the floor and smash. The tinkling of glass shattering continues long after I view a small slot in the back. You have to be looking for something to see it. Pushing the wood aside, I pull out a folder of paperwork. Turning back around, I sit down in front of him.
The first thing I see when I open the folder is a picture. You can barely make out the image, but I know it’s me and my brothers. I glare at him and see his face redden.
“I wasn’t going to use them,” he adds. “It’s the others I want.” He nods to the folder. “Keep going.”
I do as he says, rifling through. There’s evidence of the governor with what appears to be a teenager. Jesus! What a fuckhead. No wonder he doesn’t want this information to get out. She looks barely seventeen, whereas he’s easily in his sixties. Then I see Pops right next to him, a smile on his face, and another girl next to him the same age as the other.
“That’s not all. Those two girls? They’re dead.”
Hearing that someone is dead doesn’t bother me.
“He framed the detective’s son because the son was dating one of those girls,” he says. “You killed him, the detective… I’m guessing under Pops’s orders. He likes you all to clean up his messes without any of you knowing why.” I look at the detective’s picture and remember him—he was begging us after he fought hard to get away. Told us he had dirt on everyone. We don’t deal with that—we deal with money and death, and we are good at it.
And he is also right—it was on Pops’s order we killed him.