Chapter 21 Fire Bomb #2
“Please, be careful, I’m begging you. The stakes are higher now, everything has changed.” Nicki rubbed her tummy.
Tyler bent down and kissed it.
“I’m so happy, baby, I can hardly take it,” Tyler whispered into her ear.
Tyler left right after they shared a long, intoxicating kiss.
“Well, well, look who finally decided to join us!” Cedar Leeman shouted in their warehouse as Tommy climbed out of the truck.
“I heard the King wasn’t good enough for you, so here’s the Prince!” Tommy announced, approaching the man chest to chest.
Tyler was not too far behind him.
“Yeah, we want both brothers present and all of the border guards’ info, now!” Cedar demanded.
“You’re going to get the border guard info when we give it to you, asshole!” Tommy shouted, grabbing Cedar by the neck.
“You better remember who you’re dealing with, Dorien, or you’re going to end up—”
“End up like what?” Tommy screamed into his face, tightening his grip.
“Alright, brother, let him go,” Tyler instructed calmly.
Tommy released Cedar, as two more Leemans approached from behind the truck.
“No fighting, boys, not till the end. Hey, we should do a boxing competition, eh? For fun! When this is all over!” Kane Leeman suggested, walking out of the shadows with a cigar and his blazer draped over the back of his shoulders. Movie villain stereotype intact.
“Shut the fuck up,” Tyler said.
“Now, now, that’s no way to talk to friends,” Kane teased in his annoying, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. “We are celebrating tonight!”
“OK, you idiots finished over there, or what?” Tyler shouted to the Leemans packing their two delivery trucks full of their product. “My guys need to inspect it before we go.”
“I think we know how to pack a fucking truck!”
“Not in the way it won’t get stopped at the border, fucker!” Tyler quipped. “Trevor, check one of the trucks, Tico, take the other,” Tyler instructed.
The men hopped into the back of the delivery vehicles. Trevor noticed errors right away.
“OK, lesson is concealment one-oh-one. You boys didn’t learn anything from last time?” Trevor stated sharply.
“What?” one of the Leeman packer boys quipped.
“Look at your backline. It’s wobbly as shit.
Why are these boxes open to the front? They should be the other way around so that border control has a harder time opening them and takes them longer.
Your floor boards aren’t even! One K9 in here and they’ll sniff out all this shit, man, it’s gotta be tighter!
I gotta fix all this shit up, bro!” Trevor shouted.
“Fine, fix it then! Fuck!”
Trevor climbed into the back of the truck, fixing the packing issues, and nonchalantly attaching small black cubes onto every other box.
Each cube had a tiny antenna on it and was attached by a small metal clip.
Trevor discreetly took out more cubes from his baggy hoodie pocket and clipped them on evenly throughout the interior of the truck. His hands shook as he did it.
Tico, in the other truck, was doing the same.
“This one’s good now. You can close it up,” Trevor instructed.
Tommy went to pull the rear door shut but was stopped by Cedar.
“I’ll do it! It’s our fucking truck!” Cedar quipped.
“Yeah, and you’re shit at packing it!” Tommy countered. “You know, maybe we should fucking fight now, I’ll take you on right now, bro!” Tommy offered.
“Let’s go, asshole!”
Tommy and Cedar moved over to the open warehouse floor and started pummelling each other, throwing punches.
Tyler kept a watchful eye, ready to break it up, while also discreetly signalling to Tico and Trevor to keep going with the second truck.
Kane approached the fight and started clapping his hands.
“Finally! Some entertainment! What do you say, Tyler? A friendly wager? Your brother versus my boy?”
“There’s nothing friendly about this wager. But I’ll take that bet. One grand for Tommy to smash your boy’s face.”
“Oof, why so emotional? You’re on!” Kane agreed. Both men skipped the handshake.
Tommy and Cedar kept fighting, grunting as they kept quite the even fight. The rest of the Leeman boys gathered around to cheer.
“Let’s go, Cede!”
Tico planted the last black cube on the back of the truck cab and wiggled his way out of the truck between the stacked boxes.
“This one’s good to go!” he shouted.
Trevor closed it, since everyone else was too busy focused on the match. He then covertly nodded to Tommy.
Cedar’s last punch left Tommy’s nose bloody. He tapped the ground.
Cedar rolled off of him with his fists in the air. “Yeah!” he shouted.
“That’s my boy!” Kane said, and clapped with pride.
Tyler threw Kane a roll of bills in a rubber band, totalling $1,000 before he approached Tommy, pulling him up off the ground.
“It was a good try, brother,” Tyler said quietly.
Tommy wiped his nose angrily against his sleeve.
“I should have bet the border guard list,” Kane teased.
“You’ll fucking get it in Vancouver! Fuck!” Tyler shouted. “Let’s fucking go and get it over with already! Get in the trucks!” he announced.
“So angry! What’s with you, Tyler? That pretty girl aint putting out or something?”
“Don’t even fucking think of mentioning her again,” Tyler grumbled.
“Why don’t you relieve some of that pent up stress with our girls in Vancouver. I’ll happily share,” Kane teased. “I should have kept yours longer. Some of my younger boys need the practice.”
Before Tyler could pounce on him, Tommy restrained Tyler from the back.
“It’s not worth it, bro, it’s not worth it,” Tommy whispered to him, dragging him away in a light chokehold.
Tyler clenched his jaw and shook off his fury, focusing on the task at hand. He faced his brother now and poured his frustration into him, as his only respite.
“What’s the matter, Tyler? Why don’t you wanna share? She looked like she could use the experience. Or are you afraid Nicki would want to jump ship after she got a little taste of Leeman men?” Kane added.
Tyler threw himself toward Kane but this time Tico and Vinnie joined in holding him back. Barely. It took all three of them and all their combined might to hold down Tyler’s rage.
He fell onto his knees.
Kane laughed with the other Leeman boys.
“Oh, we would take good care of her, wouldn’t we boys?” Kane asked, turning back.
“Sure would, boss. I call first dibs!” one of them shouted.
“I call second, right after!” another added.
The lava in Tyler’s chest was boiling. His throat was dripping fire.
“Hey, I thought we were gonna run a train on her, boss?” Cedar asked, walking up to Tyler. He looked down at him, defeated on his knees, restrained by his own men.
“The King has fallen. Look at that, boys! And it only took a pretty bitch to do it!” Kane shouted, turning back to his men.
They chuckled.
“Get in the fucking trucks!” Tyler growled through his teeth.
Tommy, Vinnie and Tico released Tyler from their grip.
“Focus, brother,” Tommy whispered.
Truck-1 rolled out with Vinnie driving and two Leemans with him in the cab: one in the middle and one in the passenger seat. Kane insisted that they ride together, to prevent any deviation.
Truck-2 followed, with Tyler driving, and another two Leemans in the cab with him.
A separate SUV joined the convoy with Kane and his closest men behind them.
The Dorien crew had their own SUV with Tommy, Tico, Jake and Trevor inside.
They headed for the Canadian border, three hours out.
Nicki entered the boutique cigar shop with Christina. She waited at the counter for a couple of minutes, tapping her nails on the desk but the boys in the back room didn’t seem to bother to check if there were any customers waiting for assistance.
“Hello, excuse me?” Nicki said in a light tone.
A young man, no older than 21, finally walked out.
“Hi, uh, sorry to bother you, I’m just here to pick up a cigar order, please?” Nicki asked.
“Which one?”
“For Nicki Carter? His Majesty’s Reserve. I called this morning about it.”
“Uh, wow, His Majesty’s Reserve? Uh, let me see if we have that.”
The young man returned to the back room, and took his time.
Nicki and Christina waited another few minutes.
Nicki eyed one other young man, through the doorway in the back, playing a video game on his phone.
The first young man returned to the counter.
“Yeah, we don’t have that here.”
“Really? Because the gentleman I spoke to on the phone said it’ll be ready on Friday for pick up. It’s already paid for so I was hoping—”
“Yeah, it might be here, in the back, but we haven’t gotten to the new shipments yet, and we have to barcode it, and do the whole thing.”
Nicki was trying to decipher if he was serious or not.
“OK, well then I’ll come back later, maybe it will be ready then.”
“OK,” the young man responded, bored.
The ladies walked out of the boutique.
“18 grand for a box of cigars and that’s the lazy treatment they give to their customers?” Nicki asked perplexed.
“I think he wasn’t grown up enough to even know what a cigar is!” Christina joked.
They both laughed.
Nicki warmed up to her new daily companion quickly and enjoyed Christina’s company.
“Hey, do you wanna grab a tea? There’s a great little garden behind here. Sasha, you want a tea?” Nicki yelled back to the giant behind them.
“Sounds good, Miss!” Sasha responded.
“Can I give you a piece of unsolicited advice?” Christina asked Nicki.
“Sure, let’s hear it,” Nicki said, intrigued.
“You’re too nice. Like, don’t get me wrong, you seem quite lovely.
But I think you were too polite in that cigar shop.
Honestly, you should try being a little stricter.
Trust me, I’ve worked with Presidents, with Royals, with businessmen who own half the world.
When they want something, they just take it. And politeness is seen as weakness.”