Page 23 of Bourbon Truths
“Ah fuck, this is the best night of my life. Boxer? Fuck, you’re nothing but a piece of trailer trash trying to imitate someone you will never be.”
Trailer trash… my fucking hot-button word. I snapped.
Straightening, I quickly stepped forward, cocked my arm back, and blew it through the man’s stomach. Not even giving him a chance to think, I threw a right uppercut, sending his head reeling upward, and then to finish him off, in rapid succession I connected my left fist to his temple and then did the same with my right.
It happened in a matter of seconds, white-hot rage flowing through me. For the first time since I’d gotten the call from my agent, I actually felt a little at ease. That was until I saw the man fall backward from my attack and land on the floor, motionless.
Oh fuck.
Time stood still as I waited for the dickhead to move, sit up, and shake his head from the brief knockout. I stood above him, practically begging him to move, but he didn’t. Not one twitch, not one breath from his chest.
“Kace, Kace, we have got to fucking move,” Jett said, but all I could do was stare down at the lifeless man in front of me, the provoker, the antagonizer.
“The bartender called the fucking cops. We have to move.”
Nothing. I was completely void.
Everything around me faded but the man lying on the floor. “Is he….” I started to ask, but I couldn’t even say the words. Just thinking them had my stomach rolling.
“Kace, fucking move!” Jett shouted as he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the back door.
The bartender blocked our escape. “I can’t let you leave,” the man said. “And even if you do leave, I will tell them it was Kace Haywood.”
Frustrated, Jett pulled out his wallet and grabbed a wad of hundreds from his billfold and shoved it at the man. “This is to keep your mouth shut until the morning. I will be back with more. The man who did this took off toward Royal Street. If you help us, I will help you. If you open your mouth, I will destroy you. Don’t forget who owns half this city.”
Jett knew when to pull his elite card, and right now, he used it well.
The bartender looked at the cash in his hands, then back at Jett, and nodded. “The man took off toward Royal Street.”
“And what did he look like?” Jett asked.
“Blonde, brown eyes I think, six foot with a beard. He was wearing a green shirt.” The bartender described the complete opposite of my brown hair, blue eyes, and scruffy jaw.
“Very good,” Jett said, patting the bartender on the arm. “I will meet you tomorrow at seven in the morning in front of the steamboat. Don’t be late.”
He stepped aside as sirens sounded in the small streets of the Quarter.
Jett grabbed my arm and dragged me through the back door where a car was waiting for us. He shoved me in the backseat and climbed in behind me.
Once again, Jett had my back. In the midst of staring at the blood on my hands, Jett constructed a cover-up and getaway.
“Go,” Jett said to the driver, who took off immediately, navigating through the one-way streets toward the Garden District where Jett lived.
My mind was numb. I looked down at my fists and realized the impact they really had, the brutal force they possessed.
“He provoked you,” Jett said, trying to ease the tension in the car.
“He’s dead,” I said, looking out the window, saying the words for the first time as realization set in.
“You don’t know that. You probably knocked out the fucker. It was well deserved.”
It wasn’t. No one deserved to be knocked to the floor like that, no matter what kind of dick they were.
“You have to forget about it,” Jett said, but I could tell from the way his voice wavered, he was just as concerned as I was.
What if he really did die? A small part of me prayed I was wrong, prayed Jett was right, prayed I hadn’t just taken a man’s life.
The following morning, I turned on the TV to find a local news station reporting about the bar fight. They’d interviewed the bartender, and he told the story Jett coached him on without even a slight twitch in his eye. Jett had paid the man off that morning, enough so he wouldn’t have to work anymore.
