Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JACE
The doorbell chimes as I glare at the security screens monitoring the cameras aimed over the piazza.
The screens are discreetly mounted high on the wall, near the ceiling. Most don’t notice them, while it’s my job to surveil them. With the click of a remote, I can toggle through cameras, capturing every angle of Delta’s inside and out.
It’s just me and Vivian here.
We locked the store down hours ago.
I had to message our snipers to stand down. It wasn’t easy. I wouldn’t shed a tear if one played target practice with that scumbag’s ass.
But here he is, pressing the doorbell again.
I hit the buzzer. He hears it, pushing the tall black door open. Softly, it closes behind him as I coldly sneer at him from my stool, wanting to snap his neck.
He juts his weak chin. “Hey, man.”
“Good evening.” I sound like the grim reaper, waiting for him.
“Didn’t know you worked nights.”
Guess this little shit is observant when it comes to his ex-wife. Grant usually covers nights while I walk Vivian home.
“I’m waiting for my dinner delivery. Ordered some wings from some famous place on Shem Creek, and they’re late.”
He reels back, impressed. “From Donald and Dicks?”
“Sounds right.”
“Yeah, my cousin owns it.” Silence. “Try his protein pounder burger bowl. He’s got a new boy kibble menu; it’s fucking fire.”
I’m not fucking impressed.
Boy kibble: it’s a trendy name for dumb fuckers who can’t just call it a bowl of ground beef and rice.
But it reveals his cousin follows social media trends for his business. He’s not such a Luddite anymore. Wonder if he posts? Wonder if you can see his desktop server right behind him when he does?
Mental note: tell Ruby to scour his cousin’s social media.
I dish more seething silence while this fucker bounces like a schoolboy at recess, nodding toward my chest. “So whaddya bench? You look elite. Three hundred? Four hundred pounds?”
“I don’t lift furniture.”
“Nah, man.” He laughs like I’m clueless. “I mean, whaddya lift?”
I grin. “Dead bodies.”
His face falls. Shocked. Scared. I don’t stop grinning like a lion with a bloody carcass in its mouth until he laughs nervously. “Ah, bruh, you’re kidding.”
“No. Kids and women are off-limits. But other animals are fair game.” He shuffles. I smirk at his shoes. “Nice Crocs.”
They’re yellow like his belly, the fucking coward.
It starts to register on his boyish face: we’re not friends.
He won’t stop jutting his narrow chin, as if the whole world has to follow his toy train of thought. This time, he focuses on the empty front parlor. “Where’s everyone?”
Yep, he’s observant. Noted.
“At a funeral.”
“Who died?”
“My ability to give a shit.”
If he suspects for one minute that I care about anything, that I love Vivian and she’s fucking mine, he’ll be on to us.
He gives up, almost pissed off. “My wife upstairs?”
Goddamn, it takes every cell in my body not to pounce and rip his face off with my teeth.
She’ll be my wife, you pathetic—
“Don’t care. My wings will be here in five minutes, and you’ll be leaving in four. We’re closing.”
His ability to swagger up the stairs like he’s got balls is thwarted by his khakis sagging below his cartoon boxers.
I appreciate the prison history of that fashion statement: your pants sag because they confiscated your belt. It’s a reality this privileged man-child has no fucking clue about.
I hit my remote, advancing the cameras until I can watch the one aimed at the door to Vivian’s studio.
And there he is, grabbing his crotch in her doorway.
And there’s my Smokeshow, about to burn his ass for intel.