Page 49

I mean, she had me. She was my girl. She should have felt lucky that I decided to call her mine. But did she appreciate the fact that she was with someone so much better? Fuck no. She thought she could leave me and start slutting it up with that piece of biker trash. Leave me! No one left me, goddamn it. What did she expect me to do? Just take it on the chin?

Fuck no. She had to learn a lesson, and I’d been the one to teach her.

Fucking whore. That’s what they all were. Whores and sluts. Every one of them.

The skank on my dick started making sounds like a cat being thrown into a wood chipper, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Get the hell off me,” I grunted as I sat up and shoved the bitch off.

“Hey!” She pushed herself up on her hand and shoved her hair out of her face. “What the fuck’s your problem, asshole?”

“My problem is that your rancid pussy isn’t doing it for me.” I grabbed my jeans off the floor of the disgusting motel room I’d rented and pulled them on.

“Fuck you, you asshole. It’s not my pussy that’s the problem. It’s that shriveled little pinky finger you call a dick.”

I moved then, grabbing the stupid whore by the throat and lumbering forward until her back slammed against the wall, her head giving a satisfying bang against the drywall. The fear in her eyes made me hard.

Bitches like this deserved a bit of manhandling from time to time. They needed to be put in their place. Remember where they sat on the food chain. “You’re fucking lucky I was willing to touch your rank ass.” I pulled her away from the wall and slammed her back into it once more. Christ, it felt good to hurt her. It was the same way I felt when I taught Layne her lesson. “Fucking honored.” I used my hold to shove her to the ground. She was lucky I decided not to kick her, but I had enough shit I had to deal with. I didn’t need this piece of trash making waves and screaming assault.

“Now get the hell out.” Snatching up her slutty clothes, I opened the door and tossed them out onto the grimy sidewalk outside.

“What the fuck!” she screeched, scrambling across the floor on her hands and knees.

Placing my foot on her ass, I shoved her out with her trashy outfit, not giving a shit that she was naked. I slammed the door closed behind her, the stress I’d been trying to work out in her body coming back with a vengeance. I wanted to drive my fist through something, preferably that skank I just kicked out.

Before I could contemplate that any further, my cell started to ring. Snatching it off the cheap bedside table I glanced at the screen before swiping to answer.

“The fuck you want, Simmons?”

“Got some news boss. Something you’ll be really interested in hearing.”

Hell, maybe my night was starting to look up after all.

“Meet me at the place in thirty.”

“You got it, Toll⁠—”

My free hand clenched into a tight fist. “The fuck I tell you about that, huh? You don’t use my first name. We aren’t friends. You’re a little pissant who does my bidding.” Simmons was a sniveling, whining little pussy who wasn’t good for much of anything. But I kept him around because he occasional did something that made me think he was worth keeping around. Like just then.

“Sorry boss,” he said quickly, that fear that coated my tongue in honey coming through the line and making me smile. “My mistake. Won’t happen again.”

Fucking right it wouldn’t, or I’d make him pay too.

“Thirty,” I repeated. Then hung up before he could get another word out.

If there was one lesson I took to heart from my father and grandfather, it was that business such as this should never be conducted over the phone.

Fucking hell. Maybe I’d been wrong in thinking Simmons was worth anything.

As I stood under the abandoned trestle bridge, listening to the idiot recap how he’d all but handed his case over to that motherfucker, Hastings, I contemplated grabbing my gun out of the glovebox and putting a bullet in the shithead simply for wasting my time.

Part of why I’d chosen this place to conduct this kind of business was because there was no one around for miles. Stuck in some kind of desolate wasteland between Ashland and Redemption, off the beaten path, it was the perfect place to bury a body if necessary, and if Simmons didn’t get his shit together, I was going to find it necessary.

“You called me all the way out here to tell me you pussied out and gave that asshole your case?”

Simmons face went white as a sheet in the headlights of our cars. “N-no, sir. I mean . . . well, I-I didn’t really have a choice. He was the ranking officer⁠—”

“I don’t give a shit if he was the goddamn pope himself! Hastings isn’t your boss. I am!” And I refused to give up that position. Consequences of the election be damned. We were living in a brilliant day and age where the rules could be bent in favor of my kind. The true leaders. The ones who deserved to be in power. And I’d be damned if I lost my title and rank when the playing field was set up for me.