Page 51 of Pistol Whipped

I hope Cohen Brady got his shit rocked by that guy.

Me

No such luck

But, he was a convenient distraction. Plus, the press is all over this proposal. Guarantee The Pistols are front page news tomorrow.

Blue won’t like that. He considers every day he’s not in front of a camera a wasted opportunity. Fuck his narcissistic ass. We need this. We need The Pistols to succeed, at least for now. That won’t always be the case, not if everything goes to plan. When the day comes that we don’t, I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. It’s their fault we’re so far in the hole with Vetrov in the first place. On paper, Bruce, Blue and I might be founding partners in Orange County Records, but the money came from Vetrov.

“Our last chance,” according to Viktor, after he dragged us to his mansion and lined us up like schoolboys in his office. He didn’t even have to threaten us with words. I was well aware that those who blew their last chances with Vetrov ended up dumped in the Calder landfill.

It’s our final shot only because The Pistols had to go and fuck me on their third and final album. ‘Crash and Burn’ should have been a hit record and was supposed to be followed by a sold-out tour. One, like Deviant Dreams, was financed by Vetrov. With the understanding that he’d use it as a convenient way to get his product to his worldwide customers for Magic, and various other drugs on his, shall we say, menu.

No tour equalled no sales, and a bunch of very pissed-off international criminals. Then came the whole second attempt with Cohen, and we were even deeper in the shit. So, if my partners and I have to destroy The Pistols a second time to get out of this mess, then that’s exactly what I intend to do.

Interlude 9

Degenerate

Lou Braun – ten years ago

Cohen Brady’s guitar talent might have been what initially caught my eye, but it was Rain Gamble’s fire that held it from the first viral clip I came across online to meeting her in person in that first limo ride to now, two years later. Nothing about that has changed.

She doesn’t realize the effect she has, not on Cohen, nor on the rest of the idiots in their band. She doesn’t realize the effect she has on all men. Not for nothing, but every time she opens her mouth, I have to adjust myself because I dream of driving into her until she screams, until that voice finally gives up. Rain is all contradictions. She might play introverted and shy when she’s off stage, but only a fool would believe that. Behind closed doors, when she thinks it’s just her and those boys, I see the real her. They don’t notice me watching. Youth is stupid, too stupid to notice just how much attention I’m paying. To them. To Rain.

My unbroken foal. What that girl needs is a man to whip her, ride her, and break her in until she’s nothing but a docile little mouse. A mouse with a beautiful voice. And Cohen Brady ain’t gonna be the one to do it.

The idea may have started as a random thought, and maybe something I fantasized about during an odd jerk-off session. Slowly, however, it’s evolved into a bit of an obsession. Even I can admit my fascination with my Ray-Ray is becoming borderline problematic.

The band is in the early stages of writing their third studio album. The second has only just come out, and already it’s blowing up. The first single, West Coast Trash, has more of a pop sound than their first album, and it’s taking them mainstream. If they can repeat the magic this time, they’ll knock Blue and the Graces from the top of the rock charts.

Unfortunately, this first session doesn’t seem to be going well. From the safety of the production booth, I watch through shadowed glass as she and Cohen bicker over song lyrics.

As their manager and someone with big, big plans when it comes to The Pistols, I should step in. Except that if I don’t, eventually Rain will storm out, and I’ll follow her. Capture a precious moment alone with her, the kind of moment I’m starting to crave, to make excuses to get even though she looks at me like I’m the one who’s trash, and not the man responsible for pulling her out of poverty. She should be grateful. She should think the sun shines out of my goddamned ass, and yet there’s nothing but disdain written on her features every time I get close to her.

Wiping that look off her face. Breaking her in. Getting the gratitude I’m owed, whether willingly or by force, has become somewhat of an obsession. It’s not a good look considering The Preaching Pistols will be the band that makes me filthy fucking rich. Mess with that, and I’ll be shooting myself in the goddamn foot. Still, I need Rain Gamble out of my head, and there’s only one sure-fire way I can think of to get what I crave so badly. And I know just the men to help me with that.

End Interlude

Chapter 26

Smooth Criminal

Bruce Cooper

The club is finally closed. My bar manager is the only other person remaining in the building, and he’s busy inventorying booze downstairs. My other beauties, as I call the pretty girls and boys hired to keep my patrons happy, have gone home. They won’t clock back in for another twelve hours, and I relish the quiet of their absence. I’ve always been a night owl. Three a.m. is as good, if not better, for business, at least when you’re in the businesses I’m in.

The only sounds in my office are the whir of my fan and the scratching of my pencil across the pages of the various ledgers spread out over my desk, of which there are many.

There’s one for each of the clubs and bars that I own. As largely cash businesses, they’re an ideal place to squirrel away funds. Plus, they are surprisingly profitable. For example, there’s this little place in The Neck that looks like a shithole, is a shithole, and yet delivers me a tidy little sum every quarter without fail. Then there’s Blue Grace’s ledger. It’s one of the reasons I write in pencil. It erases.

Blue has a bad habit of taking money he shouldn’t from dangerous people like Franklin-fucking-Barrett, or of letting his dick lead him into trouble that, as his accountant, I need to bail him out of, for a tidy sum. And then of course, there’s the one I dread looking at more than any of the others, Viktor’s ledger. Where I keep track of the non-alcoholic sales that happen inside this particular club. All catalogued against the fucking huge debt that I owe him.

I’m a man of many talents, but numbers and money have always come easily to me. In another life, I probably could’ve been an actual accountant. Too bad, I’m also a man of many vices. It was our common vices that led me to befriend Lou Braun in the first place all those years ago, and those same vices again that led us both into Viktor Vetrov’s path.

Not that I have moral qualms about balancing a drug dealer’s books, or those belonging to a money-laundering rockstar. Morality holds piss-all value if you ask me. Not compared to the value of the almighty dollar. As long as you’re the one in the black, that is. Which I most certainly am not. No matter how many times I do the math, the three of us still owe that Russian a fucking fortune.

I stare down at the ledger before me where the amount I owe Viktor contains wayyyy more zeros than I’d like. My eyes quickly dart to the ledger belonging to this place, my Kitty Kat Club, but I’m squeezing blood from a stone here already and short of turning this place into some kind of trap house—something that would most certainly stand out against the backdrop of Ocean Avenue’s fancy boutiques and hotels—I don’t see any way of boosting sales figures. I lean back in my chair and let my mind wander.