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I mean, you had to be pretty ballsy to break into the warehouse of a known arms dealer. We weren’t exactly people who shied away from shooting someone.
But, obviously, they’d been watching me, getting to know my routine, and likely seeing that I was a bit of a loner by nature, so they probably thought they wouldn’t have much of a fight on their hands.
Well, they clearly hadn’t watched me enough.
Because having to liquidate some of my assets to pay back the fucking bikers was going to piss me right the hell off now that I had no way to pay them back with the sales by my deadline.
I watched the cameras for a couple more minutes after the car drove away, wanting to make sure there was no more activity, then I powered down my computer, grabbed a few extra guns, and made my way back out of the warehouse, hearing the incessant barking of the dog next door, and getting an idea.
“Hey hey hey, the fuck you think you’re doing, ma?” a man in a ribbed tee that didn’t quite fit him asked as he came rushing out of the building when I pulled open the fence they didn’t even bother to lock since the dog wasn’t exactly the friendly sort.
“I’m taking your dog,” I told him, reaching down for her collar.
“The fuck you are,” he shot back, a flash catching my eye in my peripheral. I knew the sun shining off a gun barrel when I saw it.
“Really?” I asked, producing my own with an eye roll. “You want to play it that way? I’ve been shooting since I was seven years old. Never missed a headshot in my life.”
His bravado deflated a bit at that. His hand even fell a few inches. But he wasn’t ready to give up that easily. “That’s my dog, man.”
I released her collar to reach into my pocket, pulling out a wad of cash. I didn’t even know how much it was. A grand, maybe. More than enough to buy or adopt another dog.
“And now she’s mine,” I said, tossing the cash halfway between the two of us, grabbing the dog, and walking her back to my building.
“Listen,” I said when she looked around the open space dubiously, “I know you’ve always been an outside dog. But, trust me, heat and air conditioning are the shit. Speaking of shit,” I said, wincing. “Well, we will just have to work on that, right?” I asked, rubbing her head. “Let me just get you settled for a bit,” I said, moving back around the warehouse, filling an old five-gallon bucket with water for her, then tossing a pile of leftover chicken nuggets from my office fridge onto the floor for her.
“I know it’s not ideal,” I told her as she immediately started to scarf down the nuggets, “but I will get you, you know, proper dog shit in a little bit, okay?” I asked, but she was too happy eating to give me another look as I made my way back out of the building.
There was a reason drug dealers like my neighbors had dogs.
Cameras could be thwarted. Security systems could be hacked. People could be bribed.
But a territorial dog?
They could scare off even some of the most hardened criminals. Or, at the very least, alert you that something was wrong.
“Rip the throats out of anyone who tries to come in here, and I promise you will get a steak dinner,” I told her as I made my way back out, adding going to the pet store to my list of things to do.
It looked like getting felt up by a lady at the bra store was now off my list of priorities.
My left tit wasn’t exactly happy about that.
But we all had to make sacrifices when someone had fucked with business.
I had to hit the streets and figure out how the fuck some Czech group I didn’t even know existed managed to get into my building and steal my entire fucking inventory.
Then, well, then I had to get that shit back.
CHAPTER THREE
Anthony
“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry!” the woman said, eyes saucers as she frantically reached for napkins to wipe the coffee off my shirt.
The least of my concerns was my dry-clean-only shirt as the hot coffee burned through the material and into the skin of my chest and stomach. And I didn’t think it would exactly be appropriate to strip out of said shirt in a public place.
“It’s alright. Don’t worry about it,” I insisted, wondering if the burns would be self-treatable, or if I had yet another visit to Salvatore ahead of me.
“Let me give you my number so I can at least pay for your dry-cleaning,” she said, already trying to fish into her purse for, I assumed, a paper and pen.
