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12
ABRAM
Seeing my cousins in Florida was a necessary but exhausting step in gaining confidence that operations are going well down there. Though our business meetings were quick and efficient, we spent the rest of the time partying nonstop. There was a near-endless supply of liquor and drug-fueled conversations that would last well into the night, sometimes nearing five in the morning.
Even though I enjoyed my time with my cousins, as I always do, they’re Russian at heart and have no boundaries when it comes to their partying habits. Having to run a nightclub on my own has taken its toll on me over the years, and I can’t keep up with them like I used to.
To be honest, I mostly just want to get home so that I can see Cambria again. I feel awful not keeping in contact with her or letting her know where I am, but I fear that doing something like that would give her the impression that we’re in a relationship. I don’t need that, not right now.
As I’m driving, I’m notified by my car’s Bluetooth that I have a new message from Cambria, reading “hlep.”
For a stripper, Cambria is always meticulous about sending overly-explanatory, grammatically-correct texts. It’s an idiosyncrasy of hers that I noticed as soon as we started texting. Receiving something like this from her is alarming.
I step on the gas, speeding towards the club at whatever horrors await me. I was already planning on stopping in just to make sure everything was alright, which it appears it may not be. Not at all.
I send out a message to my men nearby to meet me at the club as soon as humanly possible, ready to fight.
It’s such a short time after my dissatisfactory meeting with the cartel. If they were already retaliating against me, they must have been even angrier than I thought they were. I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming.
Leaving like that was a mistake. I might have cost myself everything with this shitty timing.
When I arrive at the club, I can see the black SUVs crowded haphazardly around the back door. Just as I pull in, I’m joined by two of my associates, James and Isaac. Both of them are armed to the teeth, just as I instructed them to be. I’ve made sure that all of my men are trained for incidents like this, and I’m hoping to god that it pays off.
We storm the club, guns drawn, assessing the location of each cartel member before we start firing. There are too many fucking people in here to fire away haphazardly. We could end up killing a lot of people if we aren’t careful. Trying to maintain composure to calculate where to fire is an art that I’ve yet to master.
But whatever I’m capable of will have to be enough.
I put a bullet through the forehead of one of the men who has raided the safe in the back office. He drops everything as his body goes down, and I’m angry that everything he’s stolen will be out in the open until we’ve killed every last cartel member in here. Priorities are priorities, even if we do end up losing a couple thousand.
I hear a couple of pops in the distance, and it looks like Isaac has caught two of them at the same time. At close range, he’s taken off one of their heads, and it’s damn near exploded all over the liquor bottles at the bar. No matter. He needed to die.
So that’s three.
How many are there?
Two more men emerge from behind the stage where they had been hiding like cowards. One fires three rounds, all of them hitting bottles at the bar and shattering the entire lower rack of liquor. It spills all over the place in a waterfall of clear and dark liquid along with the glass of a hundred wasted bottles.
When he misses all three shots, Isaac gets close enough to fire point-blank and blows a huge chunk of the back of his skull into the wall behind him. The bullet would trickles blood at a shockingly slow pace, and the man’s face is contorted into an eternal expression of confusion and anger.
The second man decides to forego firing his weapon altogether and swings it at my head like a bat. He must be out of ammunition, because his swings seem desperate, like a final hail Mary before he calls it quits and allows me to shoot him. Doing what he does for work, I can’t blame him for welcoming suicide.
I decide to do right by him, and I fire two rounds into his head. He collapses alongside his confidante, no fanfare or last words to be remembered by.
Dead in a nightclub shooting, just like so many others that came before him.
For a brief moment, everything is eerily quiet until I hear a girl screaming in one of the VIP rooms. I call James over for backup, and we sprint over together. It takes a few hard kicks, but I’m able to smash the lock on the door and throw it open.
One of the men has captured Mandi, and before I’m able to assess exactly what it was he was planning on doing to her, I fire three times. Twice in the chest, once in the head, just to make sure he actually dies the first time. His blood splatters all over Mandi’s face, and she begins to scream and cry hysterically as we try to calm her.
“I need you to stay here with her, I have to find the others,” I say to James, who nods once in understanding. However he chooses to handle her is his decision, I trust that he’ll make the right choice. I have to. It’s all I can do.
Isaac meets me at the backstage door, and as soon as I open it, I see Fari, the cartel leader that I’d had a falling out with at the meeting.
He seems shocked to see me, and his reaction time fails him as I put a bullet in his chest. I want him to really feel it. Every second that he spends suffering brings me great joy.
Falling to his knees, he frantically reaches for his gun, but I kick it out of his hand, sending it across the floor. The blood pours from his bullet wound, draining his heart with every pump.
I don’t have time to revel in his death. The second I turn from him, I see both Ariella and Cambria on the floor, one slumped over the other. Did Cambria get hurt because she was trying to contact me?
