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I froze as I was getting into my car. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” he said. “According to Lobo, the cops found his body a day ago. They should be on you soon.”
“Fuck,” I said again with a groan. What a fucking inconvenient time for that bastard to die. “What killed him?”
“We don’t know for sure. Looks like he was offed by someone. Shot in the head.”
“Mm...” That man probably had a bunch of enemies, so it might not necessarily trace back to me. But my name would probably come up in the investigation, and I was so fucking tired of my name coming up in bullshit like this.
And this meant I wouldn’t be able to start a new business anytime soon because the bank would never give me a loan with the criminal investigation going on.
“This is a fucking nightmare!”
“Yeah. You should probably get here soon so we can figure out what happened.”
“On my way,” I said before hanging up.
3
EMILY
“Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you.”
The comment came as I was watching Chris’ retreating back. I turned to Chelsea, who observed me with amazement in her eyes.
I was glad she was finally speaking, though. She tended to go mute whenever Chris was in the room, and while I didn’t necessarily blame her as the man had a pretty imposing presence, I wished she would show a little backbone sometimes. The world wasn’t kind to timid people. I knew that firsthand.
“Can’t believe what?” I inquired.
“That you would treat him like that.”
I thought she was referring to the man I flipped, so I shrugged and replied, “Not a big deal. He wasn’t that big, and he was probably more fat than muscle, anyway. All I needed to do was hit his pressure point.”
“No, not that guy,” Chelsea said, waving her hand impatiently. “I already knew you were a judo-flipping badass from the first moment I saw you do it to that guy last week. I knew you could take this one too.”
“Oh. Thank you?” I said, even though I knew she was half trying to make herself feel better for going to hide in the back room.
“Buthim…” She shook her head. “I just don’t know how you do it.”
I furrowed my eyebrows, lost once more.
“I think she means the way you were talking to the boss,” Paul said in an amused tone, shaking his head. He was another cashier, but he went to the gym religiously and was built like a brickhouse. That was probably why Chelsea had called on him. Paul seemed happy to help.
Jimmy, the other cashier beside Paul, did not seem as willing. He was likely annoyed that his break had been interrupted.
“The way I talk to him?”
“Yeah. No one else around here talks back to him like that. Haven’t you noticed?”
I thought about it and nodded. I figured out early on that the rest of the employees treated him with a kind of feared reverence. Even those who weren’t as terrified of him as Chelsea was, they didn’t talk back to him or really say much except “Yes, sir” and “No, sir.”
Then again, neither of them had the history with Chris that I did.
Although history was not the right word for it.
After all, I only met him once or twice when I was about fourteen, and those encounters were enough to know two things—one, he wasn’t a good man, and two, he wasn’t a man I should ever mess with.
Yet now I didn’t have a choice but to be around him pretty regularly for at least five hours during the week. I thought a man as wealthy and busy like him would not spend as much time in this tiny pawnshop, but he was here pretty much every day to check in on things and stare at me intensely.
