by Coralee June
The warehouse door was suddenly wrenched open, and two men were getting pushed inside. My dad shoved Eddie through the door so hard, the man fell to the ground. My dad looked down at my tormentor, and I knew it was taking everything in him not to kill him. “You hurt my little girl. If it were up to me, I’d make it fucking slow.” My dad’s foot came out, catching Eddie in the face, and his cheek split open and started dripping with blood. My dad spit on him for good measure, and then turned as one of his men shoved Mr. Taylor inside.
With one last glare, my dad slammed the warehouse door shut, locking it from the outside.
And then there were two. Our most hated men were trapped inside the warehouse with us, and they had nowhere to go.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Taylor came to a quicker realization than Eddie did. He seemed to know right away that there was no way out of this. But Eddie scrambled to his feet, his red hair sweaty and his shirt skewed as he tried to yank on the door that wouldn’t open. When he realized that wasn’t going to work, he looked around the rest of the space, searching for another door, but there was none. He started pounding his fist against it, screaming my dad’s name and cursing him until his voice went hoarse.
It was funny—there was no dark lighting to set the anxious mood. Everything was lit up with fluorescents instead, highlighting the sallow tone of Eddie’s skin and making the gold cufflinks on Mr. Taylor’s sleeves glitter. There was no ominous music like in the movies, either. Just the sound of Eddie cursing, his voice echoing in the large, empty space.
By appearances, the two men didn’t fit together at all, but on the inside, they were the same. They both used people up, not caring who they hurt as long as they got what they wanted. Gerald Taylor in a pristine suit with cufflinks and greed, and Eddie Lancaster was wrapped up in polyester and a poisonous soul. It was only fitting that Godfrey and I be the ones to end them. We were the ones to suffer the most at their hands, after all.
When Eddie had finally given up on the door, his eyes finally fell to the table in the middle of the room, where Mr. Taylor had already been looking for the past few minutes.
“He’ll go for it first,” Godfrey murmured beside me and sure enough, his father strode forward, his steps echoing with arrogance as he walked. Eddie followed after him, not one to like being left behind.
They both stared down at the single stack of cash there, which had a piece of paper skewered to it with one, long toothpick. Eddie picked up the cash, his mismatched eyes taking in the words I had written for him:
Eddie,
Get ready to suck JJ’s cock in hell.
All the worst,
Rachel Nomar
P.S. You’re lucky you’re not drowning in a bucket of whale cum. That’s what my crazy ass hit man wanted to do.
“What the fuck?” Eddie cursed before spinning around, looking frantically around the room while Gerald read the note that had sent Eddie into a frenzy. “You sent us headfirst into a trap, motherfucker!” Eddie screamed at Gerald, spit spraying from his lips as he circled the room, looking for a way out.
This was Godfrey’s idea. He’d requested that we make them wait, and watch while they got worked up. It made me wonder how often Gerald Taylor made him wait in submission for an impending beat down, seemed only fitting that Gerald had to suffer the same agonizing mindfuck.
“It’s not my fault you got cocky and only brought a dozen men!” Gerald Taylor seethed. “There must have been fifty of them ready to take us down!”
Eddie turned on his associate, stalking closer as rage made his pale skin turn a bright red. I dug my nails into my thigh at that sight. I’d seen his anger many times before, had felt the terror that his angry expressions could instill in his victims. “He can’t get to you, princess,” Godfrey assured me, and once again, I loved how clearly he could read me—how clearly he sensed what I needed.
“I know,” I replied.
More shouts echoed around the warehouse, and I knew that Forty-One was enjoying the dramatics. He wanted a show with a leading role, and he got one. Positioned behind a partition, he could easily watch things unfold while staying hidden.
“This is all your fault! You told me Rocco wanted a deal. You should have known he was playing us!” Eddie yelled, and then he reached in the waistband of his pants.
Shit. Did Dad forget to pat him down?
I felt Godfrey stiffen beside me as the same realization dawned on him. I just prayed Forty-One was resourceful enough to pull this off. What if he didn’t see the gun?
Eddie stalked closer to Gerald and unholstered his gun. Lifting it up, he pistol whipped Mr.Taylor, cracking the heavy metal against his cheek and making him fall to the ground. Gerald’s body went limp, knocked out from the force.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Godfrey hissed under his breath beside me.
Forty-One cut the lights just as Eddie pointed the gun at Taylor, his finger hovering over the trigger, prepared to deliver the final shot. This wasn’t exactly the plan but would still have the same end result. We were shrouded in darkness, unable to see a thing, and Godfrey growled. I knew he wanted to see the final shot, wanted to see his father’s life end once and for all.
“What the fuck is Forty-One doing? I can’t see!”
A shot rang out, clear and piercing. I gasped and reached out to grab Godfrey, wrapping my trembling fingers around his wrist. The bullet echoed in my ears.
“Is it done?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Godfrey replied.
One breath.
Two breaths.
Seventeen.
We waited in the dark, my eyes straining to see anything, but there was no movement. No shadows. Only pitch black.
A sinister laugh echoed around me, and I felt it in my bones. I knew that laugh. I knew that cruel chuckle. I’d been forced to listen to it so many times that it made my blood turn to acid.
“Eddie’s alive still,” I whimpered.
I pressed my ear against the glass and listened as the sound of his expensive shoes clicked along the concrete, and suddenly, I wasn’t in my dad’s warehouse. I was back in the basement, waiting like the prey I was. My breathing was labored, and fear like thorns pricked at my memories, making every ounce of me shake with the impending doom.
A rough noise, like skin sliding against wood, was faint, but deafening all the same.
The lights clicked back on, and I saw Eddie standing at the wall with one hand over the light switch and the other on his pistol.
“Fuck.” Godfrey’s voice made me follow his line of sight, and I gasped, my hand slapping over my mouth as my eyes widened. Forty-One was there, his prone form by the partition and a puddle of blood growing bigger around him.
“No,” I breathed, but I didn’t have time to panic, because Godfrey was already moving. When he got to the door, he looked back and pointed at me. “Stay here. Lock the door after me.”
“But—”
“Rachel!” he snapped, fear apparent in his wide eyes. “Please.”
“Okay.”
He threw the door open and went out, and I locked it after him like I said I would. The last thing I wanted was for him to go out there alone to meet the wolf, but everything was happening so fast.
I watched out the two-way mirror as Eddie stalked over to Forty-One and nudged him with his foot. Forty-One didn’t move, and Eddie started to laugh. “Is that the best you can do?” he shouted at the empty warehouse with his hands up as he spun around. He was always an arrogant bastard.
He was still spinning when Godfrey rushed him from behind and tackled him to the ground. Eddie went down hard on the concrete with Godfrey landing on top of him. Godfrey didn’t give him a single second to recover before he started raining down punches. Godfrey kept him pinned as his fists battered Eddie’s face, and I flinched with every hit.
Somehow, by brute size alone, Eddie managed to shove Godfrey off, sending him sprawling back. Before Godfrey could get back to his feet, Eddie was going for his gun. I watche
d in horror, time slowing down as Godfrey changed movements at the last second and went to reach for the pistol too.
One blink. That’s all the time it took. A hand closed around the pistol. He swung it, still on the ground, murder in his eyes. “This is for Rachel, you son of a bitch.”
Godfrey fired. The sound dug into my ears and reverberated in my skull.
Eddie went down, a single shot through his temple, dead before he hit the concrete. His poison leaked out with his blood, and I knew we’d never be able to get the stain out.
Godfrey sat back on his heels, dropping the pistol with a resounding thud. I opened the door and rushed out, scrambling in front of him. “You okay?”
His eyes slowly dragged up from Eddie to me, and he nodded. “Yeah. You?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Godfrey got to his feet, his gaze still on Eddie, while I hurried over to check on Forty-One. My heart leapt in my throat when I touched his cheek, and his eyes fluttered open. “Oh, thank God,” I breathed.
Forty-One grimaced as his hand went to his chest. “Not God. Kevlar,” he said. “First bullet hit my vest. Second hit my damn arm.” He tried to lift it, but the pain was too great, so he hissed and set it back down in the puddle of blood collected beneath him. “Didn’t help that I hit my head real fucking hard as I went down. Fucker must’ve seen me when I hit the lights.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but I heard a noise behind me, and when I turned, I saw that Mr. Taylor had woken up at some point. He now had his hands wrapped around Godfrey’s throat.
“Godfrey!”
Godfrey knocked his father’s hands away and shoved him in the chest, making him stagger back. Mr. Taylor wiped away the blood from his lip and laughed as he removed his suit jacket and placed it on the floor. Like a fucking psychopath, he started to roll up his shirt sleeves methodically, his eyes never leaving his son. “So you chose to side with the Nomars. An interesting play, but not a winning move. Although, I didn’t really care for Eddie anyway,” he said with a shrug, as if the death of his associate didn’t matter at all. “There will be someone else to take his place. There’s always someone else. And I always come out on top.”
“Fuck. You,” Godfrey spat, his fists curled at his sides.
“You know what I appreciate about you?” Mr. Taylor went on. “You always try to give a good bark. But we both know how this ends. You’ll always be the dog, and I’ll always be the master. You heel to me. You fall in line and do what I say. You take your punishment to whatever extent I see fit. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it will always be, boy.”
Without warning, Mr. Taylor swung his fist and delivered a powerful blow to Godfrey’s face. Godfrey staggered, and I wanted nothing more than to take every hit for him, accept the pain and save him from his fucked up father.
Mr. Taylor stalked forward and got up in Godfrey’s face, his snarl just inches from him. I watched in horror as Godfrey tried his hardest not to bow his head in submission. He was shaking from the effort, and I was proud of him for standing tall, meeting his father’s stare head on. Submitting was a conditioned trait; he’d spent a lifetime bending to his father’s will, but enough was enough, and we both saw it in the curl of his fists.
“You gonna hit me, boy? You’re no better than I am,” Gerald said while cocking his head to the side, peering at him with a calculated cruelty that made him look manic. For all our talk of games, I’d never realized the ultimate game Godfrey had been playing his entire life. His father was an unpredictable board. One wrong move could send them all crashing down.
Godfrey shoved at his father, and I inched backwards. Gerald wasn’t affected at all. He held his ground like the stubborn asshole he was and reared back his lips, showing his sharp teeth and making him look predatory.
“I’m better than you,” Godfrey said, though his voice was cracking.
“You’re the same as me!” Gerald screamed. “I made you. I own you. I own this entire goddamn city.”
Gerald lifted his leg up and kicked Godfrey in the balls, making my Heir sink to his knees with a grunt. My heart climbed up my throat as I stared at Godfrey on his knees at his father’s feet. I took another step backwards. This entire thing had gone to hell, and it was all my fault. This was orchestrated because of me.
My heel connected with something heavy, and I glanced down at the metal it connected with. Forty-One’s gun.
My hit man had dropped it when he was shot, and he couldn’t shoot it now with a bum arm, but he could kick it towards me, which is exactly what he’d done. Our eyes met, and he nodded at me, giving me strength. I breathed in determination and very slowly picked it up, keeping Mr. Taylor in view.
Once my fingers connected with the cool metal, I wrapped my palm around it, remembering all those times Dad took me to the range and taught me how to shoot. I never liked going, was never a fan of violence. But now I had lead in my hands and a need to save the boy I loved.
Holding the gun up, I pointed it at Gerald Taylor’s head where he was standing over Godfrey. I let out a shaky exhale, trying to keep my fingers still and my target in sights. I couldn’t help but wonder if fate brought us to this moment. If I was always meant to meet Godfrey Taylor, if we were always meant to help each other destroy our demons.
“Hey, Gerald,” I said, gaining his attention as Godfrey garbled his protests. Mr. Taylor spun around to meet me head on, his eyes widening when he saw the weapon I had pointed at his chest. I didn’t want to hit him in the skull, I wanted this blow to land right in the black hole where his heart was supposed to be.
I wanted him to suffer. I was Dad’s little gangster princess, and I’d finally stepped up to my birthright.
“You’re a fucking coward. Godfrey is stronger, smarter, and better than you,” I said, keeping my voice strong and letting it bounce off the walls. “You pick on things that intimidate you, right? Godfrey is everything you aren’t, and that pisses you off. You’re nothing but a narcissistic bully.”
“You won’t shoot me. You don’t have the balls,” he chuckled as Godfrey crawled out of the way, dragging his body away from his father and giving me a clear shot. I didn’t have to worry about any stray bullets hitting him now.
“I don’t need balls,” I replied. “I just need to know you’ll never hurt him again.”
I pulled the trigger.
The bullet was like a snap, slicing through the air and bursting a gaping hole in his chest on impact. Blood spattered around him, and he looked down in shock at his chest. Disbelief was the last expression that crossed his face before I shot him again and again and again. I emptied the entire magazine on his body.
He fell like a sack and bled out on my father’s warehouse floor.
My gaze collided with Godfrey’s, and we stayed like that, just watching each other and soaking in the aftermath. Our hands were stained with the blood of each other’s enemies. He’d avenged me, and I’d avenged him.
Dropping the weapon, I walked over to Godfrey while he got to his feet. As soon as I was close enough, he pulled me against him and cradled me against his chest. “It’s over, it’s over,” I whispered on loop, reassuring the strong but broken man that I loved, even as he was saying the same thing to me. He closed his eyes and breathed me in, wordlessly thanking me for doing what he’d struggled to do his entire life, while I clutched his shirt, relief filling me that Eddie was finally gone.
An enthusiastic clapping sound filled my ears, and Godfrey and I turned to greet the noise head on. Forty-One was sitting propped up against the wall, mouth open in awe as he applauded us by using his good hand to slap his thigh. “Now that was one hell of a show, Blondie.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Godfrey
This was a fucking shitshow.
Evidence and blood filled the space and coated the concrete, and all I wanted to do was wrap Rachel up in my arms, but sirens sounded in the distance. Fuck. We had no time. The police weren’t supposed to be called y
et; someone passing by must have heard the shots. I sure as fuck hoped Rocco was done dealing with the bodies outside. This was a fairly remote warehouse, but occasionally, people drove on the road nearby.
My eyes flickered down to the sight of my dad on the ground. His body was obliterated. He looked like someone put him through a meat grinder, his flesh and bones poking through his skin in a gruesome display where the bullets had cut him up and blasted him apart.
I should have been disgusted. I should have felt a hint of remorse at the knowledge that my father was dead, but instead, all I felt was relief.
“Shit, the police are coming, what do we do?” Rachel asked.
She was shaking beside me, and I wondered if the adrenaline would ever wear off. She’d have to carry what she’d done for the rest of her life, and I wouldn’t be there to comfort her, because we were definitely going to be arrested right now. We were caught up in the middle of a gang war, and Gerald Taylor was dead by our hands. There was no way we could get out of this one. Our entire plan went to shit the moment Eddie pulled his gun out. All the moving pieces, all the well-meaning plans, went up in smoke. We wanted them dead, but now we’d rot in prison for it.
“Forty-One, you’ve got to get Rachel out of here!” I snapped in action. Leaving Rachel’s side to hurry over to the hit man and help him up. I knew how this worked, could see the piles of evidence stacked against us and was prepared to take the fall for my princess. I was in the business of cleaning up messes, after all. Holding my hand out, I helped him up, just as the main door to the warehouse opened and a staggering Rocco entered.
He looked beat to hell, a broken nose and black eye covering his face as he grabbed his ribs. “Dad?” Rachel’s shrill voice yelled as she ran over to him.
“I’m fine,” he grunted as she came up beside him. “More of Eddie’s men showed up. I’ve got guys taking them all off the premises, but it’ll be close.” The fucker was already recruiting for his empire, I bet. Taking them instead of killing to show that he was a formidable leader, tricking Eddie’s men into following him because he saved them. “What the hell happened here?” Rocco asked, looking around the room and taking in the carnage. His eyes flicked down to the gun tucked against her belly.
