Like God was with this bitch.
She was lying there, very dead, but outside looking dead, she looked forty but probably was barely in her twenties, proof positive that religion shit wasn’t true.
That necklace wouldn’t bring much, but Chew needed all he could get. It wasn’t safe to find a fence, not with all those fucking cops sniffing around, Chaos up in everyone’s shit to find him, Valenzuela all over his ass. But just in case shit went south (though no way it’d go south, he had it all covered—but he wasn’t stupid, plan for all eventualities), he had to have whatever stash he could get.
He snapped the chain, pocketed it, checked her ears.
Cheap hoops. A bunch of studs up the lobe. Nothing worth anything.
Her wrists and fingers, the same.
He left her lying on the floor with her head in the pool of blood that had formed after he’d smashed it into the edge of the nightstand.
He moved to the bed.
He gathered the sheets and pillows and took them to the bathroom. He tossed them to the floor and nabbed the small cake of soap by the basin, threw it in the bath, plugged it and set it to running with hot water.
He moved back to the room and his jacket, reached in, yanked out the plastic packet of anti-bacterial wipes and went over the room. Anything he touched. Even her body. Anything he didn’t touch. He went through the whole packet of wipes.
Done with that, back to the bathroom. He flushed the wipes. Made sure they went down, as did the condom he’d flushed earlier before he’d dressed. Turned off the water to the tub and shoved the sheets and pillows in, being thorough, not leaving until they were saturated.
Back to the room, he swung on his jacket, tugged down the baseball hat and didn’t take off the gloves until the door latched behind him.
Head down, he moved along the outside walkway of the motel to the sidewalk, down three blocks and around the corner to his car.
Well, not his. It was someone else’s.
But now it was his.
He reached under the dash, sparked the wires and the car started running.
It sucked he had to do this shit.
But the guy he wanted to partner with had assessed the situation, followed the brother Snapper, looked into Benito’s operations and shared that a hit on Snapper would cost a quarter of a mil, and retrieving the bones from Benito an extra one hundred large.
A quarter of a mil.
Chew could not believe that garbage.
When Crank had taken the hit out on Black, it only cost ten grand.
It had been years, but inflation wasn’t that fucked up.
Then again, that guy who did Black was a moron. Chaos had found him in a fucking blink and then no one saw him again.
Apparently, Chew’s partner didn’t want that to happen to him.
You could make a pretty guaranteed getaway, you had a quarter of a million dollars.
The problem was, Chew didn’t have a quarter of a million dollars.
Back in the day, he didn’t have an old lady so he didn’t have a lot of expenses.
Now, if he’d had Millie, he wouldn’t have treated her like High had. Put her ass in some row house and let her keep working and going to school.
He’d have put her in a mansion.
Showered her with diamonds.
But since he didn’t have Millie, or anyone, his overhead was low. Consequently, he’d been able to hold on to a lot of his take from the days when Crank was in charge and they were raking in the cake from guns and whores and transports.
Not to mention, Chew took a little extra on the side from the whores, and not just his normal freebies.
He’d been able to conserve over the years, Harrietta working, living off what she brought in, Cammy getting into the act when he sent her in with Benito.
Man, he missed that girl.
She’d do just about anything to stop Chew from landing the beatdown on her shit-for-brains mother.
Nope.
That was wrong.
She’d do anything.
And she did.
Good kid.
But he had some dough left over. Not much.
Not three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
He pulled out into the road to find another locale, pick up another hooker, and take care of more business. He had enough time before the sun started to come up, and since he’d already shot his wad, there wouldn’t be any delay. He could hit maybe two, three more. Four, if he was fast.
Eight hundred dollars a pop wasn’t going to get him where he needed to be as quick as he wanted to get there.
But this wasn’t about finding that three-fifty.
This was about the fact he had expenses.
A man had to eat.
And he had other irons in the fire.
Digger was gonna pay huge.
Man’d sell even his bike to get around what Chew had on him, and Chew was gonna take it to that.
And all the whores he was gonna plug were Valenzuela’s.
So . . .
Bonus.
He had only one night to pull this shit though. No one would find the bodies for hours. But tomorrow, they’d be all over his ass.
Or, more all over his ass.
But once he had those bones . . .
Yeah.
Once he had those bones, Chaos would fund his retirement.
Beach.
In Mexico or Panama or Costa Rica, or some shit where he’d be able to stretch his dollar a long way and live like a king. Get himself some brown-skinned pussy to suck his cock.
Maybe two of them.
It was all gonna work.
Put the hurt on Chaos in so many ways, stitching a black slash across their patches for a brother brought low—the quiet one, the solid one, the one everyone liked, everyone got along with, everyone respected—and living the rest of their lives knowing it was their money, money they earned clean and fucking legit, that set Chew up.
Chew parked, pulled another packet of anti-bacterial wipes and set of rubber gloves out of his glove box, and he did it smiling.
Because when all this shit went down . . .
It was gonna be epic.
Knight
Six o’clock the following morning . . .
Knight Sebring’s phone rang, and his arms automatically tightened around his woman, Anya, where she was draped on his chest before he let her go with one to reach to his nightstand to get his phone.
He looked at the screen, took the call and put the phone to his ear.
“Rhash,” he greeted quietly.
Anya stirred.
He further tightened the arm he still had around her.
“Need you to come into the office, Knight,” Rhash said.
Knight’s body grew taut.
Anya’s head came up.
“Why?” he asked.
“Office, man,” Rhash replied.
Dammit.
“Right. Soon,” Knight said, disconnected and looked to his woman. “I gotta go into the office, baby.”
“Hmm . . .” she murmured, staring sleepily at him, but still doing it closely.
Fuck, she was beautiful.
Stunning.
He pulled her up his chest, kissed her while rolling her to her back, and when he was done, he moved down to her belly and kissed her over the soft satin there.
She’d carried his two girls in that womb.
She’d given him her love.
She’d given him their babies.
She’d given him everything.
So she was everything to him.
Anya and their girls.
He slid back up and touched his mouth to hers.
When he pulled away, her beautiful face was soft, and she whispered, “Come home and make breakfast?”
It was Saturday.
He worked nights.
Anya had her own salon, working Monday through Friday. Her other girls took weekend duty, she spent weekends with her daughters.
Their girls were now both in school.
So actually, weekends were theirs.
He had no idea what Rhash was going to tell him.
He still said, “Absolutely.”
She smiled, lifted up and then they were kissing again.
He ended it but only so he could get whatever this shit was done and get back to his babies.
Knight rolled away, made sure the covers were over Anya and hit the bathroom.
In fifteen minutes he was dressed and had swung back by the bed for another lip touch.
He moved out of their room, down the hall, around the corner to the girls’ room.
He ducked in, looking at them sleeping in their bunkbeds in a room so girlie, if it hadn’t been him who had given them that, he might feel his cock shrink just being in its proximity.
There was a filmy canopy enveloping the bunkbeds. A thick cascading fall of silk flowers was the backdrop. And the room was full of fur, feathers, poofs, tassels, ruffles and crystals.
Knight did not give that first fuck he spoiled Kat and Kasha (and Anya).
He was going to do it to his dying breath.
He ducked out of their room and left their apartment, remembering what had happened when he’d suggested that they move from what had been his bachelor pad—even if it was a nice one, twenty-five hundred square feet, sunken living room, elegant master, study, TV room, fantastic kitchen, big balcony, views of the city—to a home so his daughters could have their own rooms.
The reaction from his babies to that suggestion had been volatile (particularly Kasha, their youngest, loudest and most stubborn—Kasha was his princess, his serene Kat was his little queen).