Total pages in book: 227
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
I walk in and find Brad crouched by the body of Lennox’s new hire. “I’d say he’s fired,” I muse, joining James standing over him. I grimace at the knife sticking out of his neck. “Accurate.”
“Not really,” James says. “Frantic and lucky.”
“Why’d you say that?”
“Because if you’re trained to do the job properly, you’d remove the knife.” He dips and yanks the knife out, and blood splashes from the blade, nearly catching Brad’s jeans.
“Fuck’s sake, James,” he yells, standing and stepping back. “Control your urges.”
Benson retches and turns away, and I smile. Got a better stomach than him too, although mine’s definitely aching after Brad booted me in it.
“There’s more,” Lennox says, his voice muffled from his hand over his mouth.
“More what?” James asks.
“My bedroom.”
James is off, Brad following, both their guns ready to fire. Curious, I follow them up the stairs, poking my head around a few doors on my way. I see Barney spread-eagled on his front, mouth open, dead to the world. Thank God.
I make it to the bedroom. “The fuck?” I breathe, stepping in.
“We have a live one,” Brad chimes, kicking the boot of the man propped in the corner holding his stomach. Bleeding out. Sweating. Brad crouches. “Now, who would you be?”
He dribbles and slurs, his chest pumping fast, his heart trying hard to pump what blood’s left around his body. He wouldn’t be able to talk if he wanted to. I look at the shot gun on the bed. At the footprints on the carpet. The blood everywhere, on the sheets, the floor, the doorframes. It’s a forensics dream. “Who are they, Benson?” I ask, facing him as he hovers in the doorway looking at the mess.
A sharp woosh and a click sounds.
Lennox flinches, and I look back to see Brad rising, unscrewing the silencer from his gun, the unknown man now with a hole in his head too, though arguably not as big as the one in his stomach.
“I owe money,” Lennox breathes, sounding beaten. James sighs, Brad curses. “A lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
He hesitates, and I cock my head in impatience. “Five million.”
I can’t contain my baulk. “What the fuck do you owe five million for?”
He swallows, looking past me. “Can we go downstairs and talk about this?”
Bless him. The dead man’s making him feel sick. “Fine.” I breathe out my irritation and motion with my gun for him to lead the way. Obviously, we don’t go into the kitchen. We go into the lounge. Benson lowers to the couch, head in his hands. James remains by the door. Brad goes to the window.
“Barney’s Mom,” Lennox says. “She wanted custody of Barney. Or money.”
“Well.” I laugh, unstoppably irate. Not with Lennox, weirdly, but with his ex. “She’s put her kid and money in the same sentence of things she’d like one or the other of?”
“Yes, she wants money.” He drops back in the chair. “She already financially raped me in our divorce.”
“Bitch,” I mutter.
“She has a habit.”
“Drugs?”
“Gambling. The guy she’s with now is the same.”
“So they’ve spent all your money and want more, or she’ll take Barney.” She won’t take Barney. She doesn’t want Barney.
“In a nutshell.”
“So you borrowed five million to pay her off.”
“No, I borrowed two.”
Oh. Interest. Late payment fees. It soon adds up. And now the debt collectors are calling. “You didn’t have two million?”
“Not liquid cash, no. It’s tied up in this place and St. Lucia.”
I hum, looking around the lounge. “You should have come to me. I would have given you a better interest rate.”
He laughs, rubbing at his head. “Hindsight, eh?”
“My question is, who did you borrow from?”
Lennox looks up, hesitant, and I just know I’m going to hate the answer.
“Russians,” James says.
He has his phone held up, an image of the dead man upstairs on the screen. “Otto.”
I breathe in my patience. “You borrowed two million from the Russians?” Lennox can’t possibly know our connection to the depraved cunts. “How the fuck did you know where to get two million from fast?”
“I work for a private bank, Danny. It wasn’t hard to find out who to ask in Miami.”
I can’t believe this dickhe— “Wait.” My spine straightens, and I glance at Brad. He has a similar expression on his face as I know I have. Wary interest. As does James. There’s only one Russian big bod in this town. “Are you telling me you looked up a client on the system, got his name and address, and popped by to ask him if you could borrow two million?”
His head in his hands again, he sighs, “No. That client isn’t the kind of client our bank would take legitimate details from.”
“So the bank’s corrupt.”
“It’s owned by an Estonian businessman, Danny.”
“Oh.” Well, that’s a turn out for the books.
“There are certain clients on a certain list that are looked after by certain people.”