Page 8 of Mile High Ex's Dad
I ignore him.
The man’s pulse jumps frantically beneath my hand. I can feel it in the damp heat of his skin, in the terror vibrating through him. He smells like sweat, alley water, and bad decisions.
“I gave you a chance to explain,” I continue. “Then I gave you a chance to pay. Then I gave you a chance to walk away with your hands intact.” I lean closer. “You chose this.”
He sobs.
I’m not moved.
Rain runs down my face, over my mouth, down the column of my throat. My shirt clings harder to my skin, outlining every line of me. The alley light catches the gleam of my watch, the shape of my shoulders, the flex of my forearm where I hold him in place like it costs me nothing.
It doesn’t.
That is the truth of it.
This costs me nothing. The chase was the most interesting part of my evening so far, and even that barely qualified as effort.
My phone vibrates in the inside pocket of my discarded jacket, somewhere behind us. One of the men must hear it too, because Yuri glances back toward where we came from.
“Take him,” I say.
At once, they move in.
I release the bastard and step back as my men seize him, forcing him to his knees in the filthy water. He starts pleading again, louder this time, his voice cracking on every other word. I look down at him with cool disinterest.
Men imagine monsters as wild things. Feral. Uncontrolled. Foaming at the mouth.
They never expect the real ones to be composed.
I roll my shoulders once, working out the lingering tension, and tip my head back to let the rain hit my face. My shirt is ruined. My trousers are splashed dark to the knee. My hair, normally combed back with precision, has fallen loose enough that a damp strand brushes my forehead. In another life, I might look disreputable.
In this one, I look like exactly what I am. A man too old to be called beautiful and too striking to be called anything else.
Yuri retrieves my jacket and holds it out. I take it, slide one arm in, then the other, and the fabric settles over me like a throne reclaimed.
“Bring the car around,” I tell him.
He nods and steps away.
I glance once more at the man kneeling in the rain, broken and shaking between my soldiers, then turn toward the mouth of the alley. The city glows beyond it in smeared gold and red, headlights bleeding through the weather, rain slicking every surface into something treacherous and bright. My pulse is steady again. My breathing has long since settled. I’m already thinking ahead, already stripping this evening down to its next useful parts.
My son’s wedding. A change of shirt. A drink, perhaps.
Calls to return. A list of names I may yet decide to bury.
Then the night cracks open.
The sound is wrong at first, and for one disorienting second, I don’t understand it.
Then my legs go out from under me.
I hit the pavement with a heavy thud, one hand barely catching me before my shoulder smashes into the ground. Pain tears hot and bright across my side, fast enough to steal the breath from my lungs. Rainwater splashes up cold against my face. The alley tilts sickeningly, brick and shadow and neon breaking apart into jagged pieces.
Gunshot.
The realization comes a beat late. Someone has taken a shot at me.
Voices erupt all at once.
