VICIOUS MEN: THE COMPLETE VICIOUS CITY COLLECTION

by Renard, Loki

  “What if I said she was getting laid?”

  “Awesome.” I force a smile. “That would be awesome news.”

  “Uh huh. Right.”

  “What the hell!” Vicious strides into the room and stops dead, staring at me with brilliant angry eyes. I don’t often get scared, but suddenly it feels like I’m back in that elevator again, slammed up against the wall with him breathing rage into my face. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just waiting for a mate,” I drawl. “You still have my friend.”

  He rounds on me, his shoulders square, his posture aggressive. “I thought I made it clear…”

  “Yeah, you’re going to kill me.” I shrug again.

  “She wants to know if Kitty is getting laid,” Slick interjects. All my super cool chill badassery is utterly ruined by his comment.

  Vicious shoots me an incredulous look. It takes a moment for him to speak. “You’re not really risking your life for petty jealousy, are you?”

  “I am not jealous.”

  Slick snorts.

  “I’m not! I’m here to support my friend. Now you let her go! Where is she?”

  “She’s out,” Vicious drawls.

  “I guess I can go then,” I say. “Tell her I dropped by.”

  Seems to me like now would be a good time to leave. I haven’t gotten as much out of this as I thought I would. Having two older men find me funny because they think I’m jealous they’re banging my friend isn’t my idea of a good time.

  “Hm. Now that I don’t know about,” Vicious says. “I warned you. You’ve defied me. I’m not going to let that slide.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” I lift my chin defiantly. If he was going to kill me, there would be a bullet in my skull right now, so whatever he’s saying, he’s saying to fuck with me.

  He smiles malevolently. “I’m going to have Slick take you for ice cream.”

  7

  Kitty

  How the hell did I miss those cops?

  Slammed up against the side of the building, I evaluate my life choices and recent decisions. A female officer is patting me down, getting far too intimate with various parts of me for my liking.

  This is total bullshit. This isn’t how stings go. There’s usually a van. An unmarked car. People loitering in a way that’s so casual it’s suspicious. There were none of those signs this time. It’s like they fucking appeared out of thin air, pouring from other doorways, out of alleys, even a burned out car without wheels hid a few of them. These officers look like homeless people, and smell like them too. If it wasn’t for the badges, I’d think I was being robbed. That’s some serious dedication to their work.

  No fewer than eight officers are on scene. This is some fucking… I can’t even finish the thought in my head. If I go to jail for this, I am going to be pissed.

  In spite of my anger, I don’t resist arrest. That’s what stupid people do.

  I let them cuff me. I tell them the name on my ID. I ask for my lawyer. And I shut the hell up.

  After a quick ride to the station, I get processed. Then I get put in a single cell, which is weird because on the rare occasions I get taken in, I usually end up in a holding pen. There’s nothing but a concrete wall to look at as I wait for a court appearance. I have been arrested before on several occasions. It’s not a big deal. I know what to expect. I get pulled in front of a judge, I get bail set, I walk free. The person I was evaporates. My fingerprints are pulled from the system no more than twenty four hours later when I pay a friend of a friend to take them down. This wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t for the criminal potentially waiting to kill me for fucking his delivery up.

  I’m still not sure if Vicious did this to me or if I failed him. I don’t really even want to find out. My best chance is to hope the judge is in and that court is flowing smoothly. Maybe I can get through the system and out in time to run before Vicious even knows what happened. I do not want to see him again, not for a long time. Not ever. He should have picked Blaze up instead of me. She’d be loving this.

  “Well, well, well.”

  I freeze in place, like a deer caught in headlights, and just as stupid. It’s not like sitting very still is going to stop him from seeing me.

  “The kitty cat got herself caught,” he tuts.

  When I get the courage to look up, Vicious is outside the cell, stalking back and forth in front of the bars. I don’t know if he’s pissed at me for getting caught, or if this is one of his games. I don’t trust him anymore - not that I ever did. Our relationship began with a kidnapping and a beating and has been rocky ever since then.

  “You were careless,” he says. “I thought you were better than that, Kitty.”

  “I guess I’m not. I guess you’ll need to find someone else to do your work.”

  “Oh no. I’m going to punish you for your failure, and we’re going to try again.”

  I get to my feet and cross to the bars. When I speak, it is in a hiss designed to let him know how angry I am, and stop the cops from hearing.

  “You set me up. Those cops were waiting.”

  “You should have seen them.” There’s no apology in his voice, just outright censure.

  “I…” I stumble verbally into silence as he just outright admits that it was another trap. Another lie. “Fucking what? I should have seen them?”

  His brows rise. “It was a rookie mistake, Kitty.”

  No, it wasn’t. It was a set up. Another lie. I can’t trust this guy and I sure as hell am not going to work for him.

  “Fuck you,” I curse. “When I get out of here…”

  The corners of his eyes crease with amusement. “You’re going to what?”

  “Make you regret ever touching me,” I promise, my fingers wrapped around the bars of the cage that keeps me in and him out.

  He lets out a low chuckle. “Temper, temper, Kitty. I am going to have to clip those claws of yours, aren’t I.”

  I cut my eyes at him. He is the most infuriating, arrogant… beast of a man I have ever met. The fact that he can walk into a police station and not immediately be arrested is testament to just how broken our system is. He deserves to be behind these bars, not me.

  “Alright, you’re out of here.”

  A cop interrupts our exchange and lets me out of the cell. This is very much not protocol, but I’m not going to start arguing now. Even with Vicious by my side, out of the cell is better than inside it.

  Vicious walks me out of the station. I don’t want to make a scene, so I let him do it. As soon as we’re outside, I pull free of his grasp.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “I don’t think so,” he frowns. “We need to debrief.”

  “You debrief by yourself,” I say, raising my voice. Eyes start coming in our direction. We’re getting attention. He doesn’t like that. He lets me go, even though he’s more than capable of grabbing me up again.

  “What is your problem? I’ve offered you work… I’ve paid you, even though your test run was an abject failure…”

  “What is my problem?” I hiss back at him as I stalk down the street. He follows me every step of the way, dogging me like some oversized dominant pup. “You lie to me. You scare me. You’re a total fucking asshole. You set me up. You used the police force like your own private army.”

  “Manners, Kitty,” he drawls. “I might lose my temper with you.”

  “Yeah, and god knows what would happen then. You might be really unpleasant to be around.”

  “Smart mouthed little girl,” he shakes his head. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

  “I disagree. I absolutely know when to quit. I’m quitting right now. Goodbye.”

  I walk away, and to my surprise, he doesn’t actually stop me. He lets me storm down the street and into a cab. In seconds I’m free of him, and wondering why I didn’t just do this in the first place.

  8

  Blaze

&nbs
p; “Let me go!”

  Slick has dragged me out of the apartment. I expected to be thrown out. I didn’t expect the man doing the throwing to not let me go once I was out. Vicious was content to let me go once he had me out of the elevator. But Slick keeps a grip on the back of my ill-fitting maid uniform and marches me all the way to a low slung blue sedan with tinted windows, and a license place which reads: SL1CK. No prizes for guessing whose car this is.

  “Seriously, let me go and I won’t come back. I promise.”

  “Quit lying,” he snorts, pushing me into the front passenger seat. He shuts the door behind me, but I open it and pop out as soon as he walks around the car, and I run like hell.

  He doesn’t shout out, he just chases me down. I’m pretty fast, but his long legs overtake me in a matter of seconds. His arms wrap around me and he swings me up and off my feet.

  “Quit that,” he rumbles in my ear. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, but you’ll hurt yourself if you keep fighting me.”

  “I’m not going to let you take me out of here,” I growl back, doing my best to bite him. I don’t know what he has in mind for me, but I doubt it is anything good. I saw Vicious’ face when he walked in and saw me there. He was pissed. I might have gone too far this time. I might have seriously fucked up .

  “I gave you a chance to leave of your own free will. I was going to let you go. But you wanted to stay. You asked for attention, now you’re getting it.”

  He drags me back to the car and releases me next to the door, points for me to get in. Maybe now is a good time to beg. Before he drives me out into the middle of nowhere and makes a brutal example of me.

  “Okay, okay, please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry. Please don’t…”

  “Shut up and get into the car,” he growls.

  I get in. He shuts the door. Walks around the car.

  I throw the door open and run like fucking crazy, dodging between other cars. He’s closing on me again, but this time I zip around a Maserati and use it as a block between us.

  “You are making this so much harder than it needs to be,” he sighs, running his hand through his hair. “Just get in the damn car, please.”

  “So you can drive me away and put a bullet in me and tell Vicious I won’t be a problem anymore? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m not going to kill you. If I was going to do that, I’d have done it in the apartment. No witnesses.”

  “Yeah? Then how would you have gotten the body down?”

  “Rolled you up in a rug, I guess.”

  His words remind me of the conversation I had yesterday. “Exactly! Thank you! Kitty doesn’t think that’s what happens, but I tell her I get real suspicious every time someone changes flooring.”

  “You get real suspicious every time a fly farts, far as I can tell,” he smirks. “Come back and get in the car. I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Promise?”

  “I mean, I’d probably promise not to even if I was,” he says. “But I’m not, so you’ll just have to trust me.”

  Trust him? The last thing I’m ever going to do is trust someone I don’t know. There are a handful of people in this world that I trust. Kitty is one of them. She’s my ride or die, and I am going to make sure she’s not being hurt. I guess that probably means sticking as close to these guys as possible. Okay. He wants me close? I’ll stay close. If he tries anything funny, he’ll soon learn I can protect myself a lot better than Kitty can.

  Keeping an eye on him, I walk back to the car, get in, shut the door, and put my seatbelt on, just to show I’m not planning on going anywhere.

  Slick comes around and gets behind the wheel.

  I’m nervous. You’d have to be stupid not to be in this business. Men are dangerous as a rule. These men are more dangerous than most. He could still be planning to hurt me. I know whatever comes next is not going to be good.

  We drive through the city, head out through Brooklyn and toward Coney Island. I haven’t been out this way in a while.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Luna Park.”

  “We’re going to Luna Park?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s a weird place to kill someone in the middle of the day.”

  “It is,” he agrees.

  It turns out he’s not lying. We actually go to Luna Park. I haven’t been here since my dad took me. Fifteen years ago, just after he got out of jail, and right before he went back.

  The great white faced man absorbs us through the entrance. I feel myself slipping back into a more innocent, incredibly dated, much louder time.

  “This is the weirdest thing,” I shout to be heard over the chaos of a gaggle of scrawny small people.

  “Come on,” he says. “They have good ice cream.”

  “We’re really getting ice cream?”

  “Mhm.”

  “Is it poisoned ice cream?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is it…”

  “It’s just ice cream, little girl.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He looks down at me from his great height. “Why not? It seems apt.”

  “Only because you’re a stupid tall giant.”

  He ignores that remark as much as he resembles it. We get to the ice cream cart and it turns out he’s buying.

  “What flavor do you want?”

  “The only flavor there is. Chocolate.”

  “Chocolate coming right up.”

  He gets chocolate ice cream for me, and vanilla for himself. Seems like a waste of ice cream to me.

  “So you just don’t like flavor?”

  “Vanilla is a flavor.”

  “Vanilla is the opposite of flavor.”

  “Let’s sit down,” he says. He’s pretty good at selectively ignoring the things I say.

  I can’t come up with an objection to that, so we sit down amid thousands of happy screaming people and we eat ice cream while I wonder what the hell is going on. I don’t know what they’re playing at with this whole “ice cream” angle. It’s a far cry from what Vicious did to me when we first met, and it doesn’t make sense.

  “You’re being nice to me. Vicious said he’d kill me. He didn’t say anything about theme parks. Are we going to go on a ride next?”

  “If you want,” he shrugs.

  “Okay, what the hell is going on?” It’s hard to get aggressive over ice cream, but I do my best.

  “You’re Kitty’s friend. She probably wouldn’t like it if Vicious hurt you, and she’s giving him enough trouble as it is. So I’ll babysit you. Make sure you don’t cause trouble. It’s what I do for Vicious. I make sure trouble doesn’t find him.”

  So he’s only doing this because he has to. I push away the reluctant attraction I was starting to feel for him. These are Kitty’s boys. She seems to have both of them wrapped around her little finger. They might be holding her captive, sort of, but I can tell she’s having an effect on them.

  “This assignment is much more pleasant than most,” he adds with a wink which makes butterflies suddenly erupt in my stomach. Okay, he’s handsome. He’s not scared to handle me, and of course I find that attractive. And he bought me ice cream, which is a win for basically any woman on the planet. He’s basically cheating at this point.

  “That’s good, I guess. Ice cream is probably better than blood and guts. But it’s not going to be enough to get rid of me.”

  “It’s pretty obvious we’re not getting rid of you,” he says. “What is it you want?”

  “I want to see her. I want to know she’s okay. She is my girl. I’m serious about that. She doesn’t have anyone else.”

  “And neither do you,” he says perceptively. “Is that why you’re hanging around?”

  “No!” I deny indignantly. His brow rises just a fraction and his eyes stay locked on me. “Alright. Maybe yes.”

  He nods. “Hey. I understand. It’s normal for people like us not to have close family ties. We have to choose our families. You and
Kitty are obviously close. She called you first when things were going wrong. And you showed up. You were brave.”

  I try not to be pleased about the compliment.

  “I’m just me.”

  “Mhm. I’ll make a deal with you though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll give you my number. Next time you feel the need to drop round, text or call me first. Make sure you’re not getting caught up in something that will put you in more danger than you intend to put yourself in. Fair?”

  I take a long lick of my ice cream. “Fair.”

  9

  Kitty

  I get back to my apartment, and sigh as I step through the door. It’s not a big apartment. It’s not even a particularly nice apartment. But it is mine. My plants greet me silently, just as I like it.

  It is only mid-day, but the day may as well be over as far as I’m concerned. I spend the entirety of it watching trashy television and ignoring my phone as it lights up with flash after flash and vibration after vibration. A while later, there are knocks at my door. I ignore them too. If Vicious wants in, I can’t stop him, but I’m not going to let him in. He can break the damn door down. After a bit, the knocks stop. I keep watching television like they were never there at all.

  By the time evening rolls round, I’ve had a shower, got my flannel PJs on, and I’m sitting in front of the television with a tumbler full of wine and a plate full of toasted pastry. Strudel and sauvignon, the perfect end to a perfectly shitty day.

  With any luck, Vicious will pick another victim to do his work.

  The only thing bugging me now is the fact that I’ve disappointed him. There’s some professional ego sting associated with that, but I’m more relieved than anything. Disappointing Vicious is probably the healthiest thing I’ve done in years. Now he knows I suck, and he can give Blaze a trial run.

  I’m in bed by eleven pm, much earlier than usual. Now that all this craziness is over I’ve decided that I’m definitely turning over a new leaf. I’m going to make better decisions. I’m going to try kale. I’m going to go back to school and get that law degree and become a prosecutor and put men like Vicious where they belong.