Page 10 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

CHAPTER FOUR

Alex

“What’s this about again?” Fin asked. He was driving, way too fast in my opinion, down a side street in the suburbs of Atlanta.

“I’m calling in a favor,” I said. “I shouldn’t have to explain.”

“Fuck you don’t,” Bert said. “You don’t call or talk to us for three years and you expect us not to ask questions when you finally pick up the phone?”

“He calls me,” Lee said.

Bert shifted in the passenger seat and glared at him.

“Well, he does.” Lee inched back against his seat. Out of the four of us, Bert’s the one it’s smart to fear. He spent two years in prison for nearly killing a man. The guy deserved it, but courts and cops don’t care about those sorts of details. When we were kids, Bert was the gentle one, the empathetic one. Prison changed all that.

“He calls you because you check in on his dad and his sister.” Bert twisted farther in his seat, so he could get a good look at me. “They still not talking to you?”

“They never stopped talking to me,” I said. “They’re just too proud to tell me if things get bad. Lee tells me.”

Bert nodded and spun back to face the windshield as Fin parked on the street in front of a massive, three-story house in a quiet and pricey part of the suburbs. It was almost two in the morning, but street lights illuminated the neighborhood to almost day-time brightness.

“Tell us now,” Fin said. “Or I’m out. People who live in these sorts of houses have the power to bury guys like us.”

I rarely shared much of my life with the guys, mostly because I felt guilty. Guilty that I’d gotten out and they still lived in the rough, crumbling neighborhood we grew up in. Guilty that they worked minimum wage jobs and lived paycheck to paycheck, while I’d spent more than what they made in a week taking a potential new hire out to dinner the night before.

They knew hardly anything about me anymore, but they’d shown up, no questions asked, when I called them and told them I needed help. They deserved to know. “The prick who lives here hassled my girl at a club. When she stood up for herself, he punched her.”

Bert spun back around in his seat, his scowl clear in the streetlight. “Where the fuck were you?”

I sighed. “She hasn’t quite accepted that she’s my girl, yet.”

Bert nodded and spun back around.

“Cops take him in?” Fin asked.

“Yeah, but the guy’s a trust fund brat and his daddy made the charges go away like magic. Asshole didn’t even spend one night in jail.”

“Fucking rich prick,” Fin said.

Bert said nothing, but I could see his hands fist in his lap.

“Your girl okay?” Lee asked.

“No,” I said. “But she won’t admit it. Says she’s fine. Says it was no big deal.”

“Tough girl,” Lee said.

“Yeah, she is.”

“Alright,” Fin said. “I’m in. Let’s destroy this motherfucker.”

And that was the other reason I hadn’t wanted to tell the guys what we were doing there. Guys like Standford Jennings the fifth, guys who got everything my friends had never had along with a license to be complete wastes of humanity, made them madder than just about anything else.

Only thing that made them angrier was a guy physically hurting a woman.

“We’re not going to destroy him,” I said. “There will be no cutting of brake lines or setting his house on fire. We’re just going to prank him really good. A guy like this, a good pranking will feel like death.”

None of them pretended shock at my suggestion that they’d want to do actual harm to the guy.

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