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“Go away,” I grouched.
“You’re pissed at me. I get it. How about I get in the ring, and we settle this the old-fashioned way?”
“You get in the ring, and I might kill you.”
“Jeez. Was she really that bad?” His voice was horrified. “Don’t tell me she’s one of those girls who like to shit in your mouth and stuff.”
That gave me pause, and I spun around to stare at him. “Where the fuck do you get this stuff?”
He shrugged. “I watch a lot of crap on the internet. Too much free time. Now tell me what this girl did to piss you off so much.”
I turned back around and continued to hit the bag with focused precision, targeting areas of high resistance so I could feel it in my knuckles. One punch had the leather straining and ripping at the seam.Fuck, I’m going to destroy this one too. I’d already gone through three punching bags this year, and it was barely spring.
And still, Meech was standing there humming to himself to let me know he wasn’t going anywhere until I told him what he wanted to know.
“It’s not what she did,” I finally said, sighing in resignation. “It’s who she was.”
“And who was she?”
“Kelly’s sister.”
That rendered him silent for several beats before he gasped. “Kelly, as in your ex-wife Kelly?”
I reverted to the punching bag. “The one and only.”
Meech’s shock was in his silence. He didn’t know about Kelly personally—none of the men I worked with did. But he knew enough to know that our relationship ended in disaster.
And death.
“Damn,” was all he said after a minute passed.
I continued with my one-man spar, hoping something would ease inside me.
“Did you know?” he probed.
I turned and quirked a brow at him, and he raised his hand and shook his head sheepishly. “Yeah, sorry, stupid question.”
I still kinda wanted to hit him, but I was past the point of taking my anger out on people. My fists were deadly enough. I could probably kill Meech if I tried. It was why I settled for destroying inanimate objects.
“Small world,” Meech commented again.
“Yeah,” I muttered, except it wasn’t. It wasn’t like I ran into her on the streets of New York. I always knew there was a risk with coming back here, but I didn’t think the town was small enough for me to fear running into Kelly’s sister again. She lived somewhere about an hour’s drive away from here, but still.
This was my fault. I’d fucked up.
I never should have come back. No business opportunity was worth sleeping with my dead wife’s little sister. And enjoying it.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it then,” Meech said, finally happy to have gotten the information he wanted. “I’m going back to New Mexico tomorrow. Casper needs my help training some of the new guys.”
I nodded. Meech was a free bird who went whenever he wanted. Like me, he’d made a shit ton of money in the last few years and now had more time than sense. I tried to invest my money in new businesses to keep the cash flow going, but Meech preferred to blow through his by gambling. His dad was stupidly rich, though, so it worked.
“By the way, Viper has been asking around about you,” he added. “Says he’ll give you millions of dollars to come back and face him.”
The name Viper immediately made me remember a past of bloody nights and a cage that smelled like dank mildew.
I ignored him. I didn’t give a fuck what Viper wanted, and I was past the point where a million dollars moved me.
Especially when I had about a hundred of those in the bank.
