Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Echo
The warehouse we own in The Mission District is dark when I arrive. To anyone passing by, it would look completely abandoned, but that’s precisely the point.
River texted an hour ago letting me know that Mikey, one of our low-level dealers, tried to skim product off one of our shipments. He thought he was smart enough to hide it. He wasn’t.
I find him in the back room, tied to a chair, and bleeding from his swollen left eye.
“He’s all yours.” Briggs says, stepping aside.
I give him a smirk as I roll up my sleeves and crack my neck.
Inflicting pain is what I’m good at, what I fucking excel at. I don’t hesitate. I don’t second-guess. And I have zero confusion about what my role is in this domain. This is the one part of my job where I thrive.
Mikey’s eyes widen when he sees me, recognition clicking automatically. He knows who I am and what I do for this family. He should be scared. He should be petrified.
“I’m going to ask you some questions.” I say, circling him slowly. “You’re going to answer them. If you lie, I’ll know. If you stall, I’ll know. And if you waste my fucking time—” I pause, letting the sentence hang. “Then I’ll make it hurt more. Understand?”
He nods frantically.
“First question, who helped you?”
Panic morphs the lines of his face, and his eyes widen in disbelief.
In this organization, stealing from us is a death sentence, and every single person on our payroll knows it. Mikey is no fucking leader, so someone else had to have convinced him this shit was worth dying for.
“N-no one. Just me. I swear—”
Lie.
The amount of product missing alone would’ve required more than one person to move. Not to mention, we never let anyone near the shipments alone. Someone had to help him, or at the very least turn a blind eye.
I smash my fist into the side of face with lethal precision, relishing in the feel of my knuckles breaking skin.
“Try again.” I hiss, glaring at him.
“Fuck!” He wails, choking on the blood gushing through his teeth. “I-It was just me. I—”
I smash my fist into his face again, harder this time, and his head whips to the side unnaturally.
Blood sprays from his mouth and splatters on the concrete floor.
Mikey looks up at me pathetically, probably expecting me to feel a semblance of sympathy for him, but I don’t feel anything other than the calculated ruthlessness I was trained to feel.
That's the thing people don't understand about me. This part, the part where I'm in a room like this with a purpose and a clear set of instructions, is the only place where everything gets quiet. I’m useful here. I’m good at this. And being good at something is the closest thing to peace I’ve ever known.
Bambi’s voice cuts through my focus.
What the hell are you doing?
I blink and shake my head.
Mikey is talking now. Saying something, but I don’t catch it.
“What?” I snap.
“I said there were two others.” He gasps, half whine, half cry. “Arty a—and Jon. Arty helped me move product, while Jon stood watch.”
“Where is it now?”
“SafetyStorage off I-5 in Downey. Unit 47.”
I pull out my phone to text River the location. It takes me a few tries because my hands are shaking.
Why the fuck are my hands shaking?
I stare at them like they’ve betrayed me. They don’t shake. They never fucking shake. Not in rooms like this. Not when I'm doing the one thing I've always been certain of.
“How much did you take?” I ask, refocusing.
“Fifty. Maybe sixty. I don’t know—”
“Sixty kilos of cocaine and you thought no one would notice?”
“I was gonna put it back! I just needed time—”
Before he can finish, my fists are colliding with his face in rapid succession. My knuckles split under the pressure, but I don’t let up. I need the release just as much as he needs the message.
I hit him once, twice, three times, then lose count somewhere around the seventh hit.
Bambi’s voice infiltrates my brain again.
I never asked you to protect me!
“Echo.” Briggs calls from somewhere behind me, but I don’t turn around.
“Answer the question, motherfucker.” I shout.
The man’s crying now, but I don’t let up. I can’t. I need to finish this. I need to stay focused. But all I can see is Bambi’s face.
“Echo.” Briggs calls again. Firmer this time.
I turn and glare at him.
“What?”
“You didn’t ask him a question.”
I look back at the man. His teeth are all shattered, and his face is a bloody mess, but he’s still breathing, barely.
Fuck.
“I need a minute,” I mutter, heading for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I said I need a fucking minute.”
“We’re not done—”
“I am. You finish it.”
I’m outside before Briggs can respond.
The air outside is cold, but it does nothing to distract me from the mess in my head. I take a seat on the curb and pull out my phone, and open the tracker. Bambi is home. She has been for the last forty minutes. She’s safe.
I close the app. Then I open it again and close it one more time.
What the fuck am I doing?
I lean against the wall and press the heels of my palms into my eyes. The worst part isn’t that I lost focus. The worst part is that I know exactly why I did.
In every room that’s ever mattered to me, I’ve had a role. A function. Something I was designed for that made my presence make sense. In my world, I’m the weapon.
But out there, in the real world with Bambi, I don’t know what the fuck I am anymore. She made it clear she doesn’t want my help, but I don’t know what to be if I can’t be of service. Protecting others is the only thing I’ve ever been good at.
The door opens behind me, and Briggs takes a seat on the curb beside me. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one up, and hands it to me before pulling out another and lighting his own.
“He got loose.” He says calmly, blowing out a puff of smoke.
I flick off the ash and snap my head towards him. “What?”
“Mikey. You accidentally loosened his restraints. He got free and tried to make a run for it. I caught him. Barely, but—” He pauses, studying my face. “Where the fuck is your head at?”
On her. On the way she looked at me like I disgusted her.
“This isn’t you.” Briggs continues. “You don’t make mistakes. You don’t lose focus. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” He says, lifting his head to look at the night sky. “We’ve been best friends since we were kids, asshole. I can tell something’s going on with you.”
I meet his eyes. “It’s handled.”
“Clearly, it’s not.”
He’s right. I know he’s right.
“I’ll take care of it,” I say, taking another inhale.
“How?”
I don’t give him an answer. Partly because I don’t want him getting more involved in this than he already is, and partly because I don’t have one for him.
“Is this about a girl?”
When I don’t answer right away, he exhales sharply and shakes his head. “Jesus, Echo. You’re smarter than this.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it.”
He takes one last puff of his cigarette, stubs it out on the sidewalk, then stands to his full height. “I’ll finish up here. You go home and get your head straight.”
I stay outside for another few minutes, staring at the sky and thinking about what to do next. Then I pull out my phone and open her tracker one last time.
Still home. Still safe.
When it comes to securing her safety, I know exactly what to do. Break hands. Remove threats. End problems. That part is easy. Getting her to accept me? To admit what this really is? That’s something else entirely.
Every instinct I have is telling me to keep pressing. To close the distance. To back her into a corner until she can’t pretend this isn’t happening. And it’s getting harder to fight against those urges.
She got in my head tonight, and because of that, I lost control and nearly fucked everything up. I can’t keep obsessing over her like this, and I’m sick of being at her mercy.
Bambi wants me to stop? Fine. I will.
I’ll step back. I’ll go quiet. And we’ll see how long she keeps wanting to stay “friends” when I’m not there to blur the lines for her anymore.