Chapter 7
Stubborn Fucking White Men
CORMAC
Igroan from the overwhelming pain ricocheting through my skull, "I don't think you're supposed to abduct your boss."
He laughs, "Oh, Jesus, you're all fucked up in the head, aren't you?"
I don't answer, my gaze darting around the room to find the handful of beefy security waiting for me to make a wrong move.
"You're not my fucking boss," he grins. "We're partners. Besties, even."
"Then why the kidnapping routine?"
He looks around us at his security before shooing them away.
Once they've all left, he tilts his head the other way, watching me like a toy a cat's ready to pounce on.
"You've been gone almost a year, man. And suddenly you're here.
Can't be too careful. I figured if I played it up, roughed you up a little, anyone keeping an eye on you would spring into action or some shit. "
"Well, it's not like I've been gone by choice. I've been half dead for months, mostly dead for months before that," I let my head fall onto the chair behind me. "They asked me about you, ya know."
He nods slowly before circling behind his desk and searching it for something.
"Ah, there we go." Pulling out a bottle of very familiar mead, he pours two drinks, handing me one before taking a small sip of the other.
"I figured they'd ask. After the investigators came by with a few questions and got nothing useful out of me, I was a bit worried that it meant they’d be on my doorstep, finding me bloodied and half-dead next. "
"So you knew."
With a beaming grin, he nods again. "You think it's a coincidence you got away with it for so long? You just missed your girl, by the way."
"My girl?" He has to be talking about the woman from the pictures.
Swigging the last of his glass, he confirms my hope, "Yeah, the hot brunette with legs for fucking days? She’s been here a lot lately with a group of friends. Spent an hour downstairs last weekend, too."
Downstairs?
The confused look on my face must give away more than I mean for it to.
"Oh, my god, how much of your brain went through the fucking blender?" he groans in annoyance.
Taking a drink of the honey wine, I shrug. "Last thing I remember clearly at this point is maybe 2020. There’s a few memories here and there since, but nothing concrete.”
“Jesus,” he breathes out heavily. "Well, we’ll just have to ease you back into our world.”
“Our world?”
He nods, relaxing against the desk, “Aside from ya know, the killing, we are very busy men. Did they ask you at all about our companies?”
I shrug. “Not really. All I know is I woke up without any memory of being a scumbag, and everyone around me constantly reminding me that I am. No one asked about my professional life at all.”
His lips pull in an uncomfortable frown, stretching his cheeks like they’re unused to the expression.
“You were never a scumbag,” he says. “You just handled problems a little bit outside of the norm.”
“The norm?” I scoff out a laugh. “I killed people.”
“Only people who deserved it. And we did a lot of good, too! We still do a lot of good,” he insists.
Looking at him with disbelief, I repeat what the court case said about me and what more than one officer accused me of. “We sold and transported drugs.”
His head moves back and forth, weighing his response before spitting it out, “Yes and no. We do those things, but in our own way that leans slightly more ethical.”
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense,” I mutter, my headache returning with a fucking vengeance.
He sighs, “Yeah, it’s complicated. But we kept kids away from the shit by doing what we do. In order to find the worst of the worst, we’ve had to fit in with them.”
Burying my head in my hands, a sob sits at the back of my throat. I’m so confused all the time lately. I’m wandering around in a world I don’t recognize in a body I don’t even recognize. Everything around me is a mess.
And now, I’m learning that I not only kill people and peddle drugs, I also use my drug peddling to find people to kill.
“Look,” Skyler suddenly appears by my side. “Maybe the memories will start to come back.”
Jesus Christ, I hope not.
“What if they don’t?”
He sinks to his haunches, grabbing my drink to refill it before returning to the desk. As he pours, one side of his lips lifts in a smirk I can hear more than I can actually see, “We’ll make new ones.”
I groan in both pain and annoyance.
His chuckle lands like a rock in my stomach. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. I’m Skyler Beltran. You’re Cormac Fomori. We own Balor Industries. You’re the founder and brought me on a couple years later.”
“And then this,” I gesture around us with my free hand, the other digging into my eyes with my thumb and fingers.
“It started with getting Balor into a few bars and liquor stores, the usual stuff,” he explains. “Then when that wasn’t quite lucrative enough, we branched out. Ren Faires, charity functions to get our name out, and eventually, bars owned and operated silently by us. This one is my little kingdom.”
“Your kingdom?” I laugh without humor.
“Yes,” he continues, ignoring my sarcasm.
“We decided a few years back that we needed a direct line to all the low lifes around us. Just picking them off one by one wasn’t getting us anywhere.
So we built our own little city of debauchery, one the masses knew about, and one that guaranteed us a direct line into everyone’s dirty little secrets. ”
“How?”
He looks at his watch, “Ooh, sorry, Fomori, we are out of time for the Mingle reintroduction tour for tonight. I have a bar to run.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
He shrugs, throwing back another large glass of the dark red liquid, wiping it from the corner of his mouth with his elbow. “Go home? Or go scope out the dancefloor. See if Brigit is around.”
“Brigit?” I finally look up at him and see the exact moment his face turns into a too-blank slate, trying to hide a reaction from me.
“Yeah, Brigit Danaan,” he repeats. “That’s her name. She’s a regular. Both upstairs and down. She was just here maybe a week ago?”
“Doing what?” I find it hard to believe someone so kind-looking was involved with anything like what we apparently have been up to.
“What else?” he laughs. “Watching the fights.”
“Fights?”
He groans in annoyance, “Oh, my God, no more questions. I have to go get ready but I swear, we’ll go over more next week sometime. I’ll make a whole fucking powerpoint and everything.”
A PowerPoint of our criminal enterprise?
I find it hard to believe someone would do something so fucking ridiculous.
Without waiting for me to agree, he leaps off his perch on the desk, opening a door behind him. Just before disappearing into the dark hall beyond, he points back the way we came. “Go mingle.”
“That’s stupid,” I laugh. A stupid, cliché thing to call a bar.
He grins, “It is stupid. That’s why it works.”
Then he vanishes, the dark wooden door closing with a harsh thunk behind him.
A heavy breath escapes my nose as I sink into the chair just a little bit further.
I don't want to go out there and fucking mingle.
I want to track down my girl. Brigit.
I need to find her and see what the actual fuck happened.
How long have we been together? Is she a girlfriend? Fiance?
Clearly not a wife, or she would have been up there on the stand as a character witness, right?
Did she look for me when I was bleeding out and ended up in the hospital?
Or was she devastated to find out I was a killer?
He said she was a regular, but does that mean she and I watched the fights together?
Did she know about my crimes before they came to light?
Did she help?
Fuck, why didn't I ask Skyler that?
Would he even know?
The only solid thought in my mind, as it swirls with a thousand questions, is that I have to find her.
If nothing else, she needs to know that I'm okay, right?
Fucking hell, would she even care now that what I am has been broadcast to the whole world?
Would she believe me if I told her I was innocent?
I mean, technically speaking, according to the law, I am innocent.
I went through a whole god damn trial just for them to blow it due to mishandling of evidence and a slew of other procedural fuck ups so I could be innocent.
Even as I think the words, I know they're not true.
Somewhere, buried deep in my stomach, I can feel that I'm responsible for those deaths.
And I don't really feel guilty for them, but maybe I feel guilty for not feeling guilty.
I know that I should feel something about it, but do I?
That's not a question I'm willing to answer right now.
Gathering all my strength, I venture back out into the loud beats and flashing lights, my head throbbing in time to the music.
In what I imagine is the same as every other Friday night, throngs of people stick to my skin as I try to pass them in search of a quiet place to sit and think.
My house is far too chaotic to be a place of peace right now, and I'm not sure a fucking bar is much better, but at least it doesn't smell quite so bad.
I try to keep my head down and not draw attention to myself, but more than once, I catch someone nervously looking at me before pretending they weren't.
I can't help but wonder if this is what the rest of my life will look like, and think maybe it would have been better to spend it behind bars.
At least there, I wouldn't be the one they're afraid of.
Everyone would be on equal footing.
Here, I feel like I'm one wrong look away from either attacking someone or collapsing onto the floor to escape the cacophony around me.
Blaring music, screaming drunkards, bass so consuming I can feel it shaking the floor through my fucking shoes.
Finally getting through the dance floor, I throw myself into the bathroom, falling against the wall inside and burying my head in my hands.
"Hey, you alright?" someone asks, and while I don't want to look up for fear of catching someone at the fucking urinal, I chance it, hoping to be wrong.
I was wrong, but what greets me isn't much better.