Chapter 1
“You guys have two choices,” I said while stepping toward the pool table with my eyes bereft of emotion. “You can either drop the guns and leave, or you can die.”
“You hear this motherfucker?” the first guy said with a chuckle as he stepped closer to Monica. “Sit your ass down, I won’t warn you again.”
I continued walking, ignoring their Hi-Point pistols.
“I said back up!” He stiffened his arm and raised it higher, aiming it sideways toward my head.
“Better pull the trigger,” I said, stopping at the edge of the pool table. “You won’t get another chance.”
The two men looked at each other with nervous faces and beading sweat while Monica backed away, which meant they were already too late.
I overturned the pool table like it was made of cheap particle board, its felt surface landing directly on top of them as their guns went off, popping the overhanging fluorescent light beside my head.
They crashed to the ground as the seven-hundred pound billiards table flipped over onto them, pinning them to the ground with their heads exposed on one end and their feet out from the other, like the Wicked Witch of the West.
I stepped onto it with my knee forward like the Captain Morgan’s pose, leaning forward as I casually reached into my trench-coat and pulled out a gilded hand cannon that made a Desert Eagle look like a pea-shooter.
There was nothing else like it. The lighting caught on its polished segmented plating, its curved, bulky handle supporting a cylindrical housing that swept forward into a sleek barrel.
My golden gun.
“Agh!” the Slavic gangster cried out. “Help! Get this psycho off me!”
“Shit, Sven, I think my arm’s broken,” his buddy winced.
“Take a good look at my kit,” I stated with casual indifference while aiming my strange weapon at the guy identified as Sven. “Now you see, there are two kinds of gun owners: the kind who use guns to scare people, and the kind who use guns to kill people. Guess which one I am?”
“I shot him, Sven,” his buddy panicked. “I swear I shot him!”
A pump shotgun being racked was the next sound. Cassie had just pulled one from under the bar, aiming it right toward them.
“You boys better get your asses the hell outta here, because I’m surgical with this shit,” Cassie warned.
The clatter of their guns immediately dropping beneath the pool table was the next sound.
“Good call,” I praised my downed opponents, before stepping over the pool table and reaching down for the edge, lifting it effortlessly with one hand as they scrambled to crawl out from under it.
Monica swooped in and grabbed their guns before pistol kicking Sven in the head.
“Eat it, ya bitch!” she shouted as he rolled onto his back with a busted lip, her sass fully unleashed. “You best stay outta my Kool-Aid, you don’t know the flavor!”
She then rushed over to hide behind the bar with Cassie while the remaining patrons stared at me in drunken astonishment.
“What?” I shrugged. “I do a lot of pushups.”
Sven got up with a pained expression as he held onto his chest, while his buddy limped beside him with his wrist having turned more colors than that joke about a nun falling down the stairs.
I let go of the pool table once they were clear, faking some strain in my face as I did so.
“This guy’s a freak,” he said to Sven. “I’m tellin’ you I shot him! I bet he’s one of them!”
“Better get that looked at,” I advised, nodding to their injuries before tilting my head toward the door with a ‘tsst’ sound from between my teeth. “Now get lost before I paint the wall with your balls.”
They started scrambling toward the exit, smacking against it before hurriedly finding purchase on the latch and running away.
Silence ensued. All eyes were on me.
“Sorry about that, I know I’m not supposed to bring a gun in here,” I said as I re-holstered my weapon while looking at the bouncer. “You might wanna look into another line of work, buddy.”
The bouncer just nodded quickly with unblinking eyes, looked at Cassie and said, “I quit.”
He was gone after that. Meanwhile, Monica was looking at me like I was a mythological creature.
“Holy shit… you fucked them up!” she said. “What if they’d shot you?”
“I’d have been very displeased,” I retorted as I returned to the bar. “You alright?”
“For now I am,” Monica replied, tucking the Hi-Points into the panties beneath her sweatpants. “Those guys don’t take Ls well.”
“Here’s for the mess,” I said while taking out my money clip to pull out a few bills, set them on the counter and slid it toward Cassie. “If you’re still serious about coming to my place, I can swing by tomorrow.”
“Um…” Cassie shared a look with Monica, then nodded. “Actually, let’s go right now. Everybody out, we’re closed!”
A drunken man passed out on the corner of the bar lifted his head with a string of drool and a loud snore before whining. “Aww…”
One by one, the place cleared out, some faster than others, with a couple still bewildered by my uncommon show of physical strength.
Once we had the place to ourselves, Cassie shoved the shotgun onto the bar and rushed into the back room and came out with an ivory luggage case on rolling wheels.
She was already packed.
“You brought your clothes, here?” I asked in surprise.
“So, I may have fibbed about how long I had left at the hotel,” Cassie said with an innocent shrink of her head toward her shoulders, then looked at Monica. “You gonna be okay?”
Monica looked at me while still facing Cassie, her hips angled toward the bar with her elbow flared toward me. “I’ll have to post up someplace else. Those dudes are from the set up the street and I’m known around here.”
“And by known you mean…?”
“I came up in this neighborhood. Everybody knows my face—and ass.”
I sighed loudly and held my head low, chuckling as I shook it before looking up. “Lemme guess, you need a place to chill for the night?”
“Would you, sweetie? I really appreciate it.”
I rolled my eyes with a smile and looked at Cassie. “And your cat?”
“Choked on the goldfish,” Cassie quipped before shaking her head with a giggle. “Just kidding. We can pick him up from my old place later. Um, can I talk to you for a sec? Just a sec.”
I reached into my pocket and grabbed my jingling set of keys and tossed it to Monica. “The gunmetal SUV out back. Don’t bother trying to drive off, it’s tracked.”
Monica took on a semi-offended tone like I was being silly. “Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m not going anywhere with your ride—not after the asswhoopin’ you just gave.”
Then she grabbed Cassie’s case and rolled it off into the back stock room, where the rear exit was.
“Daddy?” I mouthed with a look of bemusement.
“It means she respects you, which doesn’t happen often,” Cassie replied with crossed arms, watching Monica disappear through the back before spinning her head around and looking scandalized at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” I asked while stepping around the bar to get behind it.
“I’ve never seen strength like yours.”
“It wasn’t that heavy.”
“It was bolted to the floor.”
“Was it?” I turned to look at the mess, then sighed in exasperation when I noticed the uprooted steel securing bolts sticking out of the metal flanges on the bottom of the table’s legs.
And the floor was solid concrete, now featuring little crater divots where the retainers used to be.
“Nobody’s that strong, and that crazy gun has to cost more than this building,” Cassie probed, holding eye contact with me with eyebrows imploring. “And…”
She reached for my left shoulder and stuck her finger into a newly made hole in my trench-coat, prodding it lightly before a flattened bullet fell to the floor from inside my shirt, rolling like a coin before toppling over between my boots.
“Shit…” I uttered.
“Are you one of them, Jax?”
My face dropped all expression as I held her gaze, knowing that the jig was up. I might have been able to bullshit my way with others, but we were too familiar.
And more than that, she was a witness.
“No,” I responded darkly. “I’m much worse…”