Page 148 of Bratva Menace

“Ma’am, please, calm down.”

“Stop telling me to fucking calm down! I told you, I want my beef jerky!”

I eyed the customer, mentally telling myself to take three deep breaths. “I understand that. But you have to buy one first. It’s buy one, get one free.”

“And I told you, I don’t want two. I only want the free one!”

The overwhelming urge to roll my eyes hit me, and I only just managed to beat it back. My gaze swung to the teenage manager on shift with me. She wasn’t watching, her eyes plastered to the phone in her hand, smacking her lips loudly as she chewed the gum in her mouth.

I’d been working in this corner convenience store for a few weeks, and it sucked. It was my futile attempt to try and forget what happened. To try and distract myself from the horrible, all-consuming guilt that lived permanently in my brain.

It was a small place. For hours, I stood behind the counter, surrounded on all sides by plexiglass with barely enough room to move, let alone fucking breathe. But that wasn’t the worst part.

Serving customers was the worst part.

Customer service was not my forte, and whoever came up with the phrase, the customer is always right was a fucking bone head. Newsflash, the customer was not always right. In fact, they were rarely fucking right.

Why people thought they knew more about a business than an attendant who actually worked there was beyond me. It drove me literally insane. Not to mention how rude people were to service attendants. Like a simple please and thank you were too fucking hard to utter.

“I understand that, ma’am,” I blew out behind clenched teeth. “But as I said, the promotion is buy one get one free, which means in order to receive the free one, you must first purchase one.”

Was I speaking another language? How fucking hard was that to understand?

“I don’t care what the promotion is!” the woman yelled, sweeping her hand across the counter and throwing a whole bunch of merchandise to the floor. “I want my free beef jerky, and you better give it to me! The customer is always right!”

Andddd there it was.

The fabric of my uniform irritated my skin. Add that to the sound of the desk fan blowing beside me, the hum of the refrigerators, the smack-smack of Becka’s lips as she chewed her gum, and the customer’s irritating, shrill voice, and it all pushed me into a full-blown sensory overload.

I fucking snapped.

I pushed my face right up against the plexiglass, pointing a finger at her. “Listen here, you stupid, shrill little bitch. I’m a heartbeat away from jumping over this counter, smashing your face into the ground, cutting off all your hair, and slitting your goddamn throat, you hear me?”

The woman blinked in shock. “You-you can’t speak to me like that,” she said, flabbergasted.

“I can talk to you however the fuck I want to talk to you. If you want that jerky, show me the fucking money. Otherwise, get the fuck out of here before I kill you and sell your organs on the black market.”

She fled so quickly she left her phone behind. I wasn’t sure if it was my words or my tone. Perhaps both. Maybe she finally realized I was dead fucking serious.

I didn’t know and I didn’t fucking care.

Good-fucking-riddance.

I killed my brother.

I stumbled back, my hand flying to my chest, pain slicing my heart in two.

No. No. Go away. Get the fuck out of my head. Leave me alone.

For nearly three months, I’d been bedridden. Unable to move. Unable to breathe. Unable to cope with the haunting fact that I had killed my own brother, his last words playing like a broken record, over and over again in my head. Never stopping. Never easing. Never giving me a moment of relief.

I will never forgive you.

I will never forgive you.

I will never forgive you.

I killed the one person in the world who loved me. Not only that, but I killed him for someone who left me. Abandoned me. That hurt almost as much.