Page 2 of A Chip on Her Shoulder

They weren’t the only ones who could get their hands on transformative drugs. It just cost a little money or having the right ingredients available. I could get the money, and I could go where the rare ingredients grew.

So hellbent on revenge, I barely remembered the conversation leading up to my brother’s transformation into a rather small rodent. I remembered the part about the money, where they wanted me to bring it and when, but the rest remained a blur.

I needed to memorize their scarred faces so I could do what an Esmaranda woman did when she got mad.

I’d get even, and I’d charge interest.

My mother, may her soul rest in peace, had taught me that from the day I’d busted out of maternal prison and escaped her womb.

Picking my brother up by his furry little tail, the lead asshole, who had a rather ugly scar over his nose where someone had failed to slice his skull in half, tossed him my way. I forgot about the gun pointed at me, scrambling to catch my brother so he wouldn’t escape. He squealed and squeaked protests before biting the hell out of my hand.

What an utter asshole. I prevented him from running away and losing all chance of becoming human again, and he bit me? When I refused to let my brother go, he took another chomp out of the fleshy part of my hand connecting my index finger and thumb.

I bled.

The mafia goons laughed, and then they left.

They’d pay for that, too.

Come hell or high water, they’d pay.

As there was no way in hell I could afford my brother’s debts without selling off the shit he’d spent borrowed money to buy, I stuffed the asshole into a shoebox until I could get him into a chipmunk-proof cage. Earning the money back would take a few days, and I’d have to play the game just right.

To get revenge would require I play dumb and act like I didn’t have all the money, but some of it; I’d need to give them enough of it for them to lure me into the cycle. They’d then charge me extra interest to profit on the situation.

I’d gather information, and once I was ready, I would destroy them.

Jonas squeaked and scraped his tiny claws against the cardboard, which warned me I’d have a limited amount of time to get a cage before I would need to find some other container for him.

“You’re a pain in my ass,” I complained, taping the box closed before I transformed my hand enough I could stab holes into the lid with my claws. Jonas squeaked. “Oh, shut up. I didn’t hurt you.”

While my brother was a pain in the ass, I’d never hurt him. Well, permanently. If he ever became human again, I’d be beating common sense into his thick skull so he’d never cut a deal with the mafia ever again.

He deserved a sound beating, one that’d teach him not to be so infernally stupid.

Spewing curses that would’ve had my mother either beating the sin out of me or laughing at my creativity, I grabbed my purse, which contained the spare keys to my brother’s car. I marched for the street, where the source of my brother’s misfortune waited. The mafia could’ve taken the sporty vehicle and gotten more than they’d ordered me to give them without an issue, but no. That would’ve been too easy.

That wouldn’t have sent any messages to anyone. It wouldn’t have forced me to play their game.

Thugs like them, pasty white trash who thrived on suffering, never wanted the easy way out. They liked the hunt.

Well, they picked on the wrong woman. Not only did I get mad, I would get even, and I would bring ruin to their empire in so violent a fashion even the Devil would fear me.

My brother was damned lucky I loved him. “I swear, once you’re back to human, you’re going to be licking my feet and begging for my forgiveness, you furry little shit.”

Jonas squeaked a protest and pawed at the thin walls of his shoebox prison.

“Break out of there, and I might just eat you. You’re dumber than a fucking stump. You’re lucky I’m spending a single penny on you. Tonight, I’m spending at least an hour tearing into you over this bullshit, and you will sit there and take it like a man even though you’re a rodent-brained moron now.” I growled, and when that didn’t satisfy my flaring temper, I hissed. “And the first thing I’m doing is selling this piece of shit car of yours so I can play their game. That’ll teach you, because yes, you asshole, you had to have my name on the title because you’re so shit at money no sane dealership would sell you a car otherwise. I’ll make those goons think they’ve won, and then I’ll show them the true meaning of fear.”

Making the Devil cringe in sympathy would be my gold standard.

As I couldn’t sell his car if I damaged it, I took care with driving to the pet store. Once there, I tucked the shoebox containing my brother under my arm and strolled inside, heading for the rodent section to pick his new home. A bored employee wandered over. “Need something?”

Any other day, the country bumpkin accent might’ve amused me. The kid likely spent more on gas than he earned getting to work if one of his parents didn’t work nearby. A lot of folks with some money and little sense spent two or three hours out of their day driving to jobs that barely paid their bills.

We had an unofficial rule in our household; if we couldn’t make it to work by public transit or within thirty minutes, we moved. If we couldn’t afford the rent, we didn’t take the job.

Since we owned our house, we never moved, and we took jobs close to home to pay the property tax and keep the place from falling down around our ears.