Luka
I fucking hate these trap houses. The people I grew up with didn’t believe that a house could have a soul, but they didn’t know what it was like to be in a house that didn’t have one. Trap houses are the definition of a black hole of human misery.
I hate the drugs just as much, but if I felt like I could trust my men to do my job, I wouldn’t have to be here at all. What I do requires a degree of callousness and calculation that none of them are capable of, one way or the other.
After receiving a vague but foreboding text from my man Alexei, I’ve been summoned to this trash heap at damn near two in the morning. Somebody better be dead.
When I open the front door, a tidal wave of smoke washes over me, and I roll my eyes in anticipation of the instant, cloying headache I’ll be dealing with for the better part of a day.
There’s nobody downstairs, which is unusual for these kinds of house calls. Typically, the fights I expect to find happen right in the doorway.
As I walk up the stairs, I can hear nervous, weepy pleading coming from a female voice at the end of the hallway. None of the orders given had anything to do with a woman, so I’m immediately suspicious of my men.
The door to the room is open, and I’m able to see what’s going on inside before any of the men inside see me. It makes me sick to my stomach.
I charge into the room, nearly knocking over the kneeling woman as I sweep past her to confront Alexei. The energy in the room changes immediately, like a bar full of drunks when they realize their team is losing.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I growl at Alexei, leaning in so close to him that I can smell the grease from his unwashed hair.
He recoils, shocked that I would be angry for any reason, and even seems offended that I raised my voice to him despite the fact that he’s my subordinate. He wrinkles his nose, and I’m tempted to slap him.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that. Tell me what you’re doing in here. You have a couple of young women at gunpoint, and you’ve still got your hand on your shrunken little prick,” I shout, my blood pressure rising as I fully assess the situation. There is absolutely nothing these two women could have done to warrant the position they’re in.
“The one on the bed owes us for some product, and the older one won’t pay,” Alexei states, taking his hand off his crotch and pointing it at the woman kneeling on the floor.
He must take me for a fool.
I shake my head, again having to hold back the urge to slap him. “You’re giving drugs to a ” I look at the girl on the bed, trying to figure out how old she is. “To a teenager, and now you expect her to have the money to pay you back? Is she even eighteen? You opened a line of credit to a fucking child, Alexei.”
He shrinks under my anger, finally realizing that this isn’t a joke to me, and he’s in deep shit if he can’t talk his way out of this. “She’s legal,” he says, looking back toward her as though she’d be holding up her ID to back him up. “And we weren’t going to kill her or anything. We just wanted the money.”
“So you thought you’d assault a couple of girls to get it,” I reply, his excuse doing nothing to quell my anger.
“I mean, it’s not like she owed a lot. I figured she’d come up with the money with some encouragement,” he stutters, his eyes growing less and less sure of himself the more I press for information.
“So, what you’re telling me is that you kidnapped a teenager over a debt that isn’t even worth going after? How much does she owe, Alexei?”
“Look, we can just let them go, and it doesn’t have to be a thing,” he continues, looking as though he’s moments away from pleading on his knees for me to spare him.
The others in the room are dead silent, unwilling to speak up in support of Alexei. They probably just don’t want my anger directed at them, but they’re all at fault here. I’ll remember their names. Nobody gets away with this shit on my watch.
The woman on her knees stands up, looking toward me with cautious optimism. “They were going to make me… They were going to make me have sex with them.”
A new surge of anger hits me. I knew that was Alexei’s goal with this whole bullshit situation, but hearing it from the terrified woman’s mouth makes it even worse. I’ll string a man up by his balls and beat him black and blue, but hurting a woman goes against my values.
“How much was the debt,” I ask, turning to Alexie again. He remains silent.
“How much was it, Alexei?!” I scream, the capillaries in my face burning from overexertion.
“Five hundred,” he mumbles, looking down at his feet.
“You kidnapped a teenager and were going to violate a woman over five hundred dollars?!” I roar, unable to hold back any longer. I throw my arm out, slapping Alexei with the back of my hand so hard that his head spins around on his skinny neck.
He falls to the floor but scrambles up quickly, stumbling toward me like he wants to fight.
Seriously?!
Before he reaches me, I draw my pistol and shoot him in the face, blowing his brains all over the yellowed walls. I have no tolerance for those who disobey me, and Alexei stepped so far out of line that I cannot forgive him.
The woman and the girl scream as blood pools on the ground, pumping out from Alexei’s severed neck. I can’t say I blame them. I’ve seen so much gore that it doesn’t even bother me, but I remember my first time quite clearly. I threw up the first time I shot a man. Now, all I feel is a tinge of disappointment that I have to bother looking for someone to replace him.
The girl on the bed faints, toppling on the floor and nearly rolling into the pool of fresh crimson blood.
Vasya, one of the men who was standing silently in the corner, attempts to reach for the girl to pick her up from the floor, but I shoot him my most vicious stare, and he retreats back to his place next to the bed. I don’t want anyone touching these two.
The other woman breaks from her fear-frozen stance and rushes to the girl, picking her up and lightly smacking her face to wake her. “Rachel, wake up. Please, Rachel,” she whines as she slaps her cheeks.
I sigh, turning to address the others. “Get the fuck out of here if you don’t want to end up like Alexei.”
Nobody needs to be told twice. They shuffle out quickly, leaving me with the women.
“I don’t understand why this is happening. I had no idea she was using drugs,” the woman stammers as the girl regains consciousness in her arms. “I can get you the money. I’ll just need time.”
I scoff. “You think a pitiful $500 is something to me? To the assholes out there, that’s rent, but to me, it’s not even a night out at the clubs. I don’t want your money. I want you to keep your friend off drugs she can’t afford so I don’t have to come to this shithole and blow people’s brains out.”
The woman’s expression changes from desperate fear to muted caution, glancing at the body on the floor beside her. “Why are you helping us?” she asks, clearly still reluctant to trust me.
I shrug. “I don’t hurt women. Plus, your friend here is a dumb teenager, and my associate took advantage of her.”
“She’s my sister,” the woman replies, dipping back into a defensive tone. “And I’m sure she was taken advantage of. She’s not the type to get into drugs.”
Denial. It’s common for the families of drug abusers. Nobody wants to believe that their precious angel is popping pills and mingling with crooks like myself.
“Your sister had better watch herself,” I warn, glancing down at the now conscious girl. “The streets will use her and dump her ass on the curb faster than a fifty-cent hooker.”
The girl looks up at me, a tad confused but less defensive than the woman. “Thank you,” she says.
“Don’t talk to him, Rachel,” the woman hisses, jumping to her feet and pulling Rachel up with her. “We need to get you home.”
I chuckle. “Rachel, tell your sister to chill out once in a while.”
Rachel smiles at me, almost starstruck by my presence. I’ve seen it before, but I don’t like it in girls that young. She might really be eighteen, but I don’t risk it until a woman’s brain is fully developed. The last thing I need is some air-headed teenager getting me in trouble.
“I’ll escort you out,” I say, diverting my eyes from Rachel and looking at her scowling sister. “Unless you’d prefer to stay here and help clean up the mess.”
She wrinkles her nose. “No thanks. I’ve had enough of you and your goons tonight.”
Spicy. I like that.
I lead the way, leaving the room and walking downstairs where a few of my men still linger, nervously chewing on cigars and staring at their phone screens. Rachel and her sister follow me from a distance, moving closer when they see the men and almost immediately dashing to the car outside when we leave the house.
I manage to catch the woman’s arm before she can get too far, pulling her in close to me and holding her there for a moment. I note the intoxication, warm scent of her body, and I have the urge to keep her at the house while Rachel goes free.
Instead, I pull a car from my jacket pocket, handing it to the woman as she glares at me silently. “Here, take this and call me if you need anything,” I say.
She snatches it from my hand, then shakes herself from my grip. “Thanks, but I think my sister and I had better stay away from people like you,” she replies dryly, tucking it into her back pocket. She turns and guides her sister down the sidewalk to her beaten old car parked halfway over the curb.
As I watch them speed away, I feel a tinge of regret that I didn’t get the woman’s name. It’s always the fierce ones who are best in bed.