by Hamel, B. B.
“I remember,” I said, annoyed.
“We grabbed a guy.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You grabbed a cop?”
He laughed. “No way. We grabbed a janitor.”
“Still, you grabbed a janitor who works for cops.”
“We checked him out. His name is Juan Altered. He’s a small-time crook, ex-con, got the job on some work program. Hasn’t talked yet, but we haven’t pressed very hard.”
“Shit,” I said. “Good work, Vince.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“Where’s he at?”
“Safe house on 16th.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
I followed Vince out toward the cars, though my mind was still very much on Natalie.
The girl drove me crazy. I wanted her, wanted to fuck her rough, make her come, make her mine. I wanted her to obey my commands and to watch her come hard on my thick cock.
But I also found myself wanting to know her more. It was a strange feeling, something I wasn’t accustomed to. Maybe it was weakness crawling its way out of me, or maybe it was just a new kind of strength.
I couldn’t be sure, not so soon. Not while my head was still spinning with thoughts of her.
We wove our way through traffic, heading toward the place on 16th. It was a bit run-down, but it blended in well with all the other houses in the area. We parked a few blocks away and walked around back, pushing in through an old, wooden door.
“Louis,” I said, nodding to the guy standing guard.
“Boss.”
We moved past and went down some stairs, heading into the basement.
The safe house used to be a normal row home until it was bought by one of the many shell companies my father ran. We used it for interrogations and for people that needed a place to lie low. Not too many people knew about it, mostly just guys in my crew.
Downstairs were two more guys, Joey and Carlo. They were low-level thugs, basically hired muscle, the kind of guys you wanted to have your back if shit hit the fan.
Sitting in a chair, his hands tied together but otherwise fine, was our new pal, Juan.
He was younger than I had expected, maybe in his mid-thirties. Life had been hard to Juan. He had tattoos up his neck, his head was shaved bald, and he had a scowl on his face.
“You the boss?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Good guess.”
“Not a guess, man. Look at the way these people stand around you? Like they scared or something.”
I smiled and pulled a chair up in front of him. “Do you need anything, Juan?”
“Maybe my fuckin’ freedom would be good.”
“We’ll get there.” I leaned back in my chair. “Water? Something to eat?”
“Nah, man. Just get on with it.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Because I work for the cops and you think I fuckin’ know something.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled. I liked Juan already. He wasn’t messing around.
“Well, I don’t know shit.”
“How about you wait until I ask before you deny?”
He shut his mouth and I sighed.
“Okay, Juan, do you remember the cops bringing in a truck a few nights ago?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I seen that.”
“Good. Do you know what was in it?”
“Nah. I didn’t look inside.”
“Okay. I want to know about that truck, Juan.”
“I don’t know shit.” He looked away.
“Juan, listen to me. Did someone take something out of that truck?”
He didn’t answer.
I leaned forward. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to get violent. But I have to know this thing, and you can tell me.”
“Fuck you.”
I sighed and stood up. “Please be civil. We’ve been kind to you so far.”
“You can’t do this shit, man.”
“Don’t be a little bitch,” Joey called out.
I gave him a look and he shut up.
“Who stole our shit from the truck?” I asked Juan.
“I don’t know.”
I stepped forward and kicked him square in the chest. He let out a short cry of surprise and pain as he toppled backward, slamming onto the ground. He groaned, and the boys laughed.
“Pick him up,” I said to Joey and Carlo. They each grabbed him and lifted him back up.
“Fuck you,” Juan said.
“The truck,” I said. “You’re not stupid. You know how this works. You talk and you’re okay, or you get beat until you talk anyway. Make life easy for yourself.”
“I don’t know shit.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pair of brass knuckles. His eyes went wide.
“Last chance,” I said.
“I don’t know who they were,” he said quickly.
“There we go,” I said softly.
“They came in late the night after we took the truck, just loaded all the shit into another big-ass van and drove away. Nobody stopped them or said shit to them.”
“What did they look like? Did they speak Russian?”
“Nah, man, no Russian. One guy had a Russian accent, but that was it. They were white dudes, all normal looking.”
I glanced at Vince, who just shrugged.
“Okay, Juan. Thanks a lot.”
I turned to leave.
“Hey, man, what about me?”
I looked back at him. “Carlo and Joey here are going to rough you up, just so you know that if you speak of this to anyone, we will kill you.”
“Hey, man!” he yelled, but Joey had already punched him square in the jaw.
I walked away, Vince at my side while Carlo and Joey beat Juan senseless.
“What do you think?” Vince said when we were upstairs.
“I don’t think it’s the Russians,” I said, “but we still don’t have proof.”
“You believe that guy?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding, “I do.”
Vince shrugged. “Okay, boss. What now?”
“Now we go home and eat some fucking dinner.”
He laughed as we headed back out onto the street.
Truth was, I wasn’t sure where we needed to go. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that the Russians weren’t the ones behind everything, but that left a huge question mark.
Was is one of our own? Was it one of theirs, working on his own? Or some totally different third party?
I needed more information, but it was so frustratingly scarce. We had our guys keeping tabs on the area’s market, looking for any large influx of olive oil, but so far there was nothing.
Unless the guys were unloading their goods in some different state, then they were still holding on to the stuff. And I doubted that they’d move the stuff between states; that’d make it a federal offense.
We climbed into the car and began to roll back toward the compound. My head was spinning, a mix of hunting down the shipment and Natalie’s body.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Natalie
I was practically buzzing with excitement as I walked away from the stables.
I couldn’t believe Lucas. He always acted like such an asshole, such a confident dick, but he had been tender, almost kind. He was interested in my life, he had asked questions, and he had even told me things that seemed private.
It was almost like he wanted to open up to me.
And yet he still held back. I could sense it, sense that there was something more to him that I couldn’t access.
I wanted to figure it out. I wanted to know him, wanted him to give me everything all at once. I knew that was greedy and not fair, but it was the truth. I was falling into him, becoming his, and I hadn’t even realized it until those moments in the barn.
Plus, there was the way he made my body feel to consider.
I bit my lip, not thinking at all as I wandered into the house. I was starving, which was mostly why
I had left, and my head was completely in the clouds. I wandered around at random, thinking about what had happened.
About his hands on my hips, his cock between my legs, the dirty way he spoke, the strong way he commanded me to show him my ass.
Everything he said and everything he did worked to overwhelm me, to make me dizzy.
Dizzy with a lust and a desire that I hadn’t ever felt before.
Almost without thinking, I unlocked a door and pushed it open. It was dark inside, but I heard some strange noises. Confused, I took a step inside.
I instantly regretted it.
Spread out on the ground was a single white sheet, and on that sheet were two bodies. The room was a storage closet, but I wasn’t looking too closely at my surroundings.
It was my mom and the driver, Franklin. He had his face between her legs, and they were both completely naked.
It took half a second to understand the scene. Franklin was furiously eating out my mom right there in the closet.
He tipped her head back, and we made eye contact.
“Oh my god!” she yelled. “Oh my god!”
I stepped back, completely in shock, and slammed the door shut.
Holy fuck.
I backed up and started walking away as fast as I could.
I couldn’t have seen that. Camille wouldn’t be so stupid, so reckless. She wouldn’t cheat on her brand-new mobster husband with one of his staff barely a month after having married him.
But clearly she would, because I saw her doing it.
Oh my god, disgusting!
I wanted to burn that image from my brain, to purge it from my mind. It was so gross, so wrong, so nasty. I practically sprinted down the hall, and it took me a minute before I figured out that I was one floor down, directly below my rooms.
I climbed the stairs and found the right door. I unlocked it and slammed it shut behind me.
I had just seen my mom cheating on her new husband.
I had never, ever seen my mom having sex. At least not that I could remember. And I really, really never wanted to repeat that as long as I lived.
I collapsed onto the bed and grabbed a pillow, shoving my face underneath it. I let out a loud, long scream.
That made me feel a little bit better.
I crawled out from under the pillow and stared blankly at the ceiling. Slowly, my disgust and shock was replaced with anger.
Camille did a lot of dumb shit. She brought around her boyfriends, she got too drunk at parties, she said horrible things to the media, and she even had a sex tape somewhere that I totally refused to ever watch.
But she had never directly endangered me. She had never done anything that could lead to anything that could actually harm me.
She went too far this time. She had fucked up so much in the past, but this was completely different.
There was a knock at my door, and I really didn’t want to answer. But I knew I had to speak my mind or else never say it at all.
I pulled the door open.
“Honey,” Mom said, “that wasn’t what you think it was.”
“Get in here.”
She walked in and I slammed the door behind her.
“You have to understand,” she said. “I’m so lonely here. I have no friends, and Franklin was so nice to me.”
“Shut up,” I said fiercely to her, surprised by my own anger. “Just shut up, okay?”
She nodded slowly.
“Do you even understand who these people are?” I asked her.
“Of course I do.”
“Then you understand what they’re capable of.”
“Oh please,” she said, laughing. “Artie will never find out.”
“Stop rationalizing,” I said, shaking my head. “This is serious, Mom. If Arturo ever finds out, we could be dead, or worse.”
“You’re overreacting,” she said.
“No, I’m not. You’re fucking everything up for us again by acting like the completely messed-up wreck you really are.”
She stared at me, shocked. I had never said anything like that before.
I felt bad. I really did. I had tried as hard as I could to never say things like that to her, to try to support her, even when she was embarrassing and insane.
But enough was enough. She was fucking up. She was fucking up everything, and not just for herself.
“We have a good thing here,” I said softly. “We could actually like it here. You could be happy.”
“You don’t know anything, you silly girl,” she said viciously.
I shook my head sadly. “Stop ruining your life. Grow up. Be good to Arturo. Try to find happiness.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was on the verge of tears. “Arturo can’t satisfy me. Sexually, I mean.”
“Okay, gross. Enough,” I said quickly. “Enough. Just stop.”
“Honey,” she said, coming toward me.
I held up a hand. “Just leave me alone, okay, Mom? We can pretend like this never happened. I’m sure that’s what you want.”
She looked at me for a long time. Then silently, she turned and left my room.
I watched her go. I felt devastated and exhausted. I had never come down on my mother before, but I was beginning to truly see her as the immature and messed-up person she was.
I walked over to my bed and climbed in, trying to will away the memories of Franklin’s face between her legs.
I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be a family.
But then again, normal people didn’t marry their stepbrother.
I groaned to myself, sighing into the pillow.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Lucas
I moved slowly through the halls of the compound, thinking to myself. It felt good to pace the mainly empty space, trying to get a handle on the situation.
Things were beginning to move fast, and yet we didn’t have all the information we needed. I felt like I was trying to fight a guy with my hands tied behind my back.
I was stressed out, but some weird part of me thrived on the stress. I liked having a challenge, a puzzle to solve, and the higher the stakes, the more I wanted to step up. My head spun from all the different layers to my situation. There was Natalie, the hijacked shipment, the other bosses on my back, and of course my father.
As I walked, I suddenly found myself standing outside Natalie’s room. I checked my watch; it was late, probably too late, but part of me didn’t care. I could suddenly taste her skin on my tongue again, her body against mine, the tight squeeze of her pussy wrapped around my cock. I wanted to hear her say my name.
I knocked once and waited. I heard some muffled sounds, and then the door pushed open.
“Lucas?” Natalie asked.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
She stepped aside and I walked in, sitting down on her couch. She looked like she had been sleeping, her hair a bit askew, her sweatpants wrinkled, but I absolutely fucking loved it. The girl could be wearing absolutely anything, look like she hadn’t slept for weeks, or be covered in mud and I’d still want her. It was absolutely uncanny how she affected me.
“Is everything okay?” Natalie asked nervously.
“Everything is fine.” I patted the couch next to me. “Sit.”
She shook her head and sat on the arm of a nearby easy chair. “It’s been a rough night,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked.
She sighed, shaking her head. “Just stuff with my mom.”
I grinned wickedly. “Want me to take care of her? I can make her disappear, you know.”
Her whole face suddenly drained of color. “No. Oh my god, Lucas, don’t say that.”
I held up my hands. “I’m just kidding, Nat. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she said again.
I stood up and moved toward her, but she quickly walked away from me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again. “I can help.”
“I saw something,�
�� she said slowly, “and I’m not sure I can tell you.”
“You can trust me,” I said, and I knew that I meant it. “We’re already so deep in this together, I’m surprised you even question it.”
“It’s about your father.”
“That’s okay. You can tell me anything.”
“I saw my mom having sex with one of the staff.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “What?”
The story came spilling out of her then. She told me about how she went for a walk and stumbled in on her mom and the driver, Franklin. I knew who she was talking about; he was relatively new to the compound but a pretty reliable worker.
“She said all this stuff about him,” she continued, “like how he speaks Russian and a bunch of other languages and how nice he is. I think she’s in love with him.”
I cocked my head at her. “You really think so?”
“I don’t know with her, honestly. She’s been in love a million times and it has never once lasted.”
I grinned. “So you’re saying she’s not really in love with Arturo?”
She sighed, exasperated. “I don’t know, Lucas. I really don’t know.”
This was interesting. I had no clue how Arturo would react if he found out about Camille’s indiscretions. He’d likely have the driver killed at the very least, probably divorce Camille, maybe even destroy her career.
Obviously I couldn’t let that happen. I liked having Natalie around and didn’t want to risk any harm coming to her. I knew I should be more loyal to my father, but what did the old fool expect? He had married a notorious reality television star. Did he think she was really going to stay faithful?
Maybe he already knew and didn’t care. Maybe they had some sort of arrangement, though that didn’t seem likely.
“This could be dangerous,” I said.
“I know, Lucas,” she agreed. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be scared,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward me. “I promise I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
She wrapped her arms around me, burying her head in my shoulder. “How can you say that? He’s your father.”
“He’s an old fool,” I said softly, “but he isn’t stupid. He knew what he was buying into with your mother. And I’m growing fond of you.”
