Disruption

by Victoria Johns

  Her shocked face looked at mine, and I saw her chin wobble.

  “But he’s… he’s my husband. Zane, you can’t—”

  “He’s betraying you and me right now, Roxanne, that comes with a price.”

  “But—”

  “Did it look like he was here against his will? Did he look under duress to you? Or did he look like someone who’s made a very bad decision and has been caught?”

  Her body convulsed, and this time when she tried to get out of the car, I let her, and Bishop followed, not that she was in a position to jog off anywhere.

  “I think I’m gonna—” she leaned over, her baby belly making that an effort, and projectile vomited on the tarmac beside the car. “Don’t fucking watch me,” she hissed at us both.

  I gave her a bit of privacy while Bishop ignored her, reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and handed it to her. When she was in a more respectable state, I climbed out to join them.

  “You realize you can no longer work for me. I’ll pay you well, only because I’m inclined to believe that you didn’t know about this.”

  “I didn’t know shit!”

  “You’ll get a generous settlement, but your man in there, he’s going to pay in a different way and pay dearly.”

  Roxanne stood up straight, pulled her maternity dress up and in the top of her stocking garter was a cleverly concealed Ruger handgun. “Too fucking right, he will.” With the gun in her palm she stormed off across the parking lot.

  “Are you going to follow her?” I asked Bishop who was still in a state of shock.

  He continued to look at her, his mouth a gape. “That’s just about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, and no one shocks me. Ever.”

  “Bishop, get a grip, she might be the size of semi, but she’s getting away in the open, wielding a fucking gun.”

  He ignored me and didn’t move. “But that, a pregnant bitch carrying. I’m impressed.”

  So was I. I’d always know she had a decent set of lady balls, and I was glad I’d chosen well.

  “Do we have a cleanup crew on standby?” Bishop mumbled.

  I looked to the heavens, unimpressed by his distracted manner right then, that was usually the level of detail he took care of. “I don’t know do we?”

  “Joking,” he laughed out. “Course I do. Although this may not go as cleanly as I expected.”

  “Bishop,” I hissed. If he didn’t move soon, then I’d have to and one of us needed to keep her in our sights while the other dealt with whatever the fuck was going on in that room.

  We both hot-footed it across the parking lot, Bishop taking the gun from his shoulder holster and tucking it in his pants waistband, catching her up quickly. In truth, she was acting unhinged and I felt like I was getting a first-hand glimpse of how she kept the stock in line. At the door she stopped in front of it, and we waited wondering what she would do. Like the devil had inhabited her, she spun on the spot.

  “What? Want me to knock and pretend to be housekeeping? How fucking cliché. You…” she pointed a long-painted finger at Bishop.” Kick the fucking thing open.”

  Roxanne was disrupting how I thought the evening would go, and it unnerved me, was this what I did to people?

  Bishop looked at me fighting a smile, he lived for this shit. I nodded, intent on letting this play out, as he picked a booted foot up, turned and kicked the door in. Squeals came from the room, and we found the driver scrabbling to get up with his pants around his ankles, and his dick in his hand.

  “What the fuck?” Graham barked, from the bathroom only to come out and spot his friend with his dick in his hand and it covered in blood.

  “Told you no playing until the others get here.” We weren’t in his eyeline yet. “Goddamn, can’t have five minutes to take a shit.” He finally paused when he rounded the corner wall and saw his wife in the doorway with a gun casually held in her hand by her thigh.

  “Well, this is interesting.” I pushed past her, looked around at the scene and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. There was gear everywhere, and by gear, I meant sex toys and drugs. The girls were shackled, cheeks to the bed and asses in the air. Two of them had butt plugs inserted, the third was bleeding from one of her holes. Judging by how they were shackled it was clear they hadn’t inserted anything in themselves. One girl whimpered, a ball gag in her mouth, while the other two mumbled something in a foreign language. There were lines of blow cut up on most of the flat surfaces and video cameras ready to roll.

  “So, that one was a virgin.” I pointed at the bleeding girl. “That’s a lot of money you’ve just cost me. Arabs pay a lot for white, untouched flesh.”

  He glared at his friend, who still didn’t have the brains to put his now flaccid dick away after taking liberties while his boss was taking a dump.

  “You making a move on my turf, Graham?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, Zane. These are perks of employment.”

  His tactic was to try and front this out, which was interesting. We all knew I was a threat, and Bishop was a bigger one, but the one he’d underestimated was his wife.

  “But I don’t employ you.”

  “Is this some kind of sick fucked up joke, Graham?” Roxanne finally entered the fray. He had the good grace to show a semblance of shame. “Look at me!” she shrieked, so loud it was a wonder the lightbulbs didn’t explode and wild dogs didn’t come running.

  “Roxanne, shit… baby—”

  “Don’t shit, baby, me. I don’t want to hear that word fall from your lips again. Here I am humping my pregnant ass to work, while you do what? Cheat the hand that feeds us, get fucked up on blow and then screw lord knows what that’s been dropped off the boats. You were supposed to collect them and take them to the stable.”

  It was impressive how she was looking at this from a business perspective, but I wondered if she’d forgotten the outcome.

  “As touching as this fucked up reunion is,” Bishop interrupted, “we’ve already been here too long.”

  “Roxanne.” I looked at her, aware that she had a gun and could use it on me as easily as anyone else in this room, but while I had her attention, I saw Bishop casually pull the one from his waistband, just in case and point it at her. “If you don’t put an end to this, I will put an end to you all.”

  Her face paled as she glanced down at her stomach. I didn’t need to say any more, she understood perfectly. I had that in me. I was all about disruption, and if she didn’t do her bit tonight, I’d disrupt the course of their lives forever.

  “Fuck, Zane, let’s talk about this, I can put this right.” Graham had his hands up like they would protect him from an errant bullet.

  “Roxanne.” That one word from me made her wince, the unspoken demand in my request.

  “Shit! Baby, come on—”

  Before he could finish whining, cold as ice she raised her gun, pointed it at her husband and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit him dot center in his forehead. Time seemed to slow as the bullet jiggled around for a millisecond, mashing his brain like soup before it cracked a chunk in the back of his skull and exited. In true movie style, he fell at her feet and she dropped the gun next to him like it had burned her.

  The girls on the bed all screamed and tried to move, it would have been comically seeing their jeweled asses bobbing about if we hadn’t just turned this motel room into a murder scene. Bishop, quick as a whip, put a bullet in Graham’s floppy dicked friend first, before pulling a knife from his ankle boot. In cold blooded, murderous fashion he slit the throats of the girls until they stopped bucking in a pile on the bed.

  Roxanne swayed on her feet, the understanding of what she’d done catching up with her. I went to help her. “No, not you. I hate you for making me do this.”

  That was disappointing.

  “Roxanne, you knew the terms of your employment.”

  “I know,” she gritted out. “So, is this done now? Are we square?”

  “We’re square. You chose well.” Mayb
e tonight had gone better than expected, she’d made the right choice, one which proved her loyalty to me.

  Pulling herself together she cradled her stomach and turned for the door. “I didn’t choose you; I chose my baby. I chose to live. I’ll wait in the car.”

  She was close to tears and under the circumstances, I understood why she wouldn’t want to cry in front of me. Right then, she had me convinced that she was on my side, loyal to the business. But the realization and shock of all this would kick in soon.

  I was okay with that, if looking at that fatherless baby reminded her every day that I was not to be crossed, especially if it caused her to reconsider comfort and complacency, then I’d had a double win today.

  Bishop interrupted my musings as I watched her haul ass across the parking lot. We looked at each other speechless, until he found appropriate words.

  “Damn pregnant bitches and hormones. We should recruit them to do the wet work. Cold as fucking ice.” He brushed off what had happened like this was a normal day in the office, which it wasn’t—gone were the days when we had a body count this high in one evening—and pulled out his cell. “I’ll get the cleaners to come deal with this.”

  “Probably best to destroy this room.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have it torched,” he replied as a matter of fact.

  As Bishop sent various texts, we followed Roxanne who had climbed into the back of the car. I looked at my loyal friend. “Hate to do this, but I think you need to stay.”

  He huffed and puffed, making a show of being hard done to, but I needed someone out there I could trust, otherwise our problems could escalate. We had to make sure that the stable was ship shape and hadn’t suffered any detrimental damage from this little set back, and even more importantly, the Yakuza had exposed Roxanne as a gap in my operation. If they decided to take advantage of that, they’d take my business operation apart and a war with those insane motherfuckers made working with Bishop look like a fourth of July picnic.

  “I know. Although never thought I’d be a maternity leave stand in.” He paused. “You need to watch my sister. Closely.”

  We were nearly at the car. “Of course. But just so we’re clear…” I slowed my pace. “I’m going against every instinct I have letting her live. She even blinks at the wrong time, she joins her joke of a husband on the other side.”

  “Roger that.”

  Roxanne sat as far away as possible from me in the rear of the car. I didn’t care if she hated me, but I did care if she followed orders and did her job. Bishop would remain in Hawaii and assess the situation. One way or another, the decision would present itself, and then he would come home.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bishop had been gone a month and even though I spoke to him every day, I realized that I missed his miserable ass in my life. Roxanne had had her baby, and fortunately for Bishop, who displayed next to no feelings at all, she took it all out on him. She hated him as much as she despised the world right then. He told me how he saw her and her new kid every day, smiled like they were the best of friends, and helped with the business. Having multiple reminders about being forced to kill your husband probably did nothing for your mindset, but it sounded like he was enjoying fucking with her, killing her with metaphorical kindness, well, about as kind as the psycho got. I lived for his little tales and reports, he’d become the ultimate disruptor. I was like a proud daddy.

  Like every night, I ended up alone in my house, drinking a Scotch and eating a steak for one. I watched shit on TV, worked out in the gym and worked my ass hard to avoid thinking about the state of my life, and when I could avoid it no more, it came to me.

  I’d been kidding myself, telling myself I wasn’t lonely; I was just alone. A choice of mine that I was comfortable with, but in reality, it didn’t matter how I tried to avoid it.

  I was fucking lonely.

  Soul deep down to my bones, I missed having someone close to me.

  That weekend in Hawaii with Bailey had fucked me up, disrupted my life and had shown me just how different things could be. I’d always wondered what it would like to be with her, but dreaming about it and touching that reality had blown those wonderings out of the water.

  Ruined me.

  And I couldn’t get past that.

  My life at the moment was empty.

  Bishop’s over-long absence had become just plain tedious, and I felt it.

  I felt everything.

  All those people I’d had around me had disappeared.

  I was left with limited time with Jameson. I saw him at work, but then he went home to a wife I was sure he hated, so he was probably as lonely as me too.

  I called Bella occasionally, but as a nurse she kept anti-social hours, and when she did have some downtime, she didn’t want my miserable face sucking up her mood.

  It was lonely at the top, I didn’t ever remember my dad being on his own, but then he wasn’t. He’d had my mom and me, he probably craved the opposite and wanted alone time.

  The harsh truth was, it had been a while since I’d felt the love of Bailey Roach and I had no idea how I was going to move on, and in any case, who the fuck would be good enough to replace her in my heart? Unlike Jameson, I didn’t think I had it in me to be with someone just for the sake of it. I could fuck as many girls as I wanted as often as I needed to, but if they meant nothing I was still alone and lonely.

  My cell rang and I could see it illuminating on the sideboard, brightening up the darkness, disrupting my desolate musings, and I had no heart to rush to it.

  I ignored it at first, but when it stopped immediately and started up again it irritated me. For that reason alone, I moved to answer it. When I saw Bella Bishop’s name on the display, I wondered if she was in trouble. I was usually the one to call her, not the other way around, unless she couldn’t get hold of her brother.

  “Everything okay?” I said into the phone as soon as the call connected.

  “Uh… I shouldn’t be doing this. In fact, I’m fairly sure I’ll get fired if she complains.”

  “Who complains?” I heard lots of beeping and noise in the background. She was at work. I couldn’t imagine what doing a night shift at Cedars-Sinai emergency room was like, but she was good people and probably took it in her stride.

  “Shit…” She hesitated. “Bailey. She asked me not to call anyone, but I couldn’t do that. They brought her in over an hour ago. It’s not pretty.”

  Her words rattled around in my head, but they failed to make any sense. I had to have heard that wrong, there was no way Bailey was in an ER, and worse than that in the ER, injured and not calling for people.

  Bella waited patiently until I’d got my shit together. “What was it, car wreck?”

  “No. She looks like she’s been attacked.”

  The blood chilled in my body. “Attacked as in… sexually?”

  “No, violently. Listen, she didn’t want me to call anyone and if she finds out I’ve called you, I’m in trouble.”

  “Okay.” One side of my brain was telling me to appease her, thank her for doing it, and the other side was gearing up for war with whoever had touched her.

  “One other thing, I did try to call Jameson, but I think he’s blocked my number.”

  I shook my head, feeling disappointed that he was still behaving like a pussy rather than thinking straight. “I’ll call him when I know what I’m dealing with, I’m on my way.”

  Forty minutes later, I got to the desk at the ER and asked for Bella. I wanted her to know I was here before I hunted down Bailey and as she’d been expecting me, was close by. “Listen, she’s out of it at the moment.”

  I couldn’t hide the terrified horror from my voice. “As in unconscious?”

  “We’ve just given her a little something to help her rest, she was in a lot of pain and resisting treatment.” She pulled me off to one side. “There was some cocaine in her system, so it made administering pain meds a bit tricky, but we got there. I can’t tell you any more th
an that, you’re not family. You have to call her mom and dad or Jameson, call him and get him here. The doctor will want to talk to someone.”

  “Fuck.” Words, apart from obscenities, were failing me. “Take me to her, I’ll call him from her room. Her parents are on the yacht.”

  We walked to a side room, and before she opened the door, she stopped me. “Please stay calm, this is a hospital.”

  I followed her into the room and knew why she’d asked me to remain calm.

  Bailey’s condition nearly took me to my knees. Her face was battered and swollen, covering more colors of the Home Depot paint range than I thought was possible. Her eyes were shut, one not of her own volition, and her hair looked matted and manky like a homeless dog needed an urgent trip to the groomers.

  How in fucking hell was this my Bailey?

  This battered body contained none of her vibrancy and life, this was a stranger.

  “How did she get here?” I swallowed, taking my eyes off Bailey briefly as I spoke to Bella. She stood patiently letting me come to terms with the body in the bed, hooked up to drips and machines.

  “Incomplete call to 911, dispatch sent a police car to check it out, the officer found her and called for a paramedic. The police will be back at some point to take a statement. I’ll leave you to call Jameson.”

  Bella left the room and suddenly, I didn’t know what to do with myself, how to comfort her, and even worse, how the fuck I was supposed to tell her twin. But I knew I had to get on with it. “J…” I swallowed, my courage on short supply, as he answered on the first ring.

  “Impeccable timing, brother,” he sounded frustrated.

  Ever since I’d found out about him and Bella I’d tried to go back and analyze everything. Look at every comment he’d made about his wife Kerry forensically, I knew I’d sensed things were wrong, but I’d never bothered to look any further. If I had to guess right then, I’d say I’d interrupted an argument. If he was already in a bad mood, there was a fair chance he was going to go ballistic when he laid eyes on his sister.