Page 17 of Torched Spades
As if on command, Becca’s back arches, her mouth opening in a soundless moan as her hand pistons inside the lace, something that both angers and relieves me. While I want nothing more than to see her bare cunt, I’m afraid that might push the needle too far. That scrap of lace may be the only thing keeping me from pinning her to that goddamn chair in her office and fucking her until she breaks.
Just as I free my swollen cock, I hear it…
The voices.
The controlled shouts.
The fear.
Tucking my dick back inside, I fasten my pants, and with one final glance at Becca’s writhing body, I cut the feed and pocket my phone.
This had better be worth it.
With measured strides, I follow the voices, careful to stay light on my feet and bathed in shadow. It isn’t long before I find myself near the southwestern corner of the warehouse, a few feet away from the foreman's office. In a familiar scene, three people are standing behind two tall L-shaped pallets. One, I recognize immediately. It’s hard to miss Alice Iverson, a stocky, take-no-shit version of Rosie the Riveter—if Rosie was someone’s chain-smoking, eternally pissed-off grandmother,
Only tonight, the woman known as “The Ballbuster” is backed against a warehouse wall, eyes wide, face pale as chalk, and arms shaking. Two men in black suits stand facing her, their backs to me.
“Please,” Alice begs. “I don’t know where it is. It never came. I-I would’ve told you.”
“You hear this, Dice?” The shorter of the two casually tucks his left hand in his pocket while glancing up at his counterpart. “The bitch doesn’t know where it is.”
His accent is much weaker, but still audible. A hint of a lilt. Barely a brogue.
But definitely Irish.
Dice, the taller one, stiffens. “She better figure it out in the next thirty seconds. She knows the rules, Mac.” This one’s accent is thicker, with the type of clipped bite and deadpan delivery I recognize immediately.
Fuck.Getting involved is a bad idea. My whole existence hinges on me keeping a low profile and my ass out of trouble.
“I swear… I don’t…” The more Alice stutters, the more I feel my mask slipping, turning the Devil’s hour into the Devil’s night. “Just give me a few days to figure it out,” she bargains. “Maybe it got rerouted? I can track—”
“Twenty seconds,” the taller man repeats, closing the distance between them. The moment he grabs her throat and slams her against the concrete, all rationality clicks off like a light switch. The raw skin I’ve lived in the past six weeks becomes coated in something hard, cold, and very familiar.
She claws at Dice’s iron grip, the weathered lines in her face seeming to sink even deeper as she gasps for air. In her struggle, she twists to the man’s left, and flared, panicked eyes collide with steeled, cold ones. Even as she’s fighting for her own life, Alice frantically tries to shake her head while mouthing the same word over and over.
No. No. No.
But it’s too late. Instincts aren’t a dial to be leveled on command. Either they’re on or off. Subdued or running at full throttle.
And right now, I’m pure fucking octane.
“Is there a problem here?”
Both men turn, Dice relinquishing his punishing grip on Alice enough for her to drag in wheezing gulps of oxygen. Out of the corner of my eye, I vaguely notice her stumbling away, but my focus isn’t on her anymore. It’s shifted to the two 9mms aimed at my skull.
The short one Dice called Mac sneers, his overgrown mustache brushing his stained teeth as he waves his gun. “Get the hell out of here, arsehole. This isn’t any of your business.”
Meeting the challenge in his narrowed eyes, I step forward. “You put your hands on my boss. That makes it my business.”
“Johnny, no!” Gritting my teeth at the shrill command, I go against everything I know and break eye contact to find Alice hunched in the corner shaking her head. “It’s not worth it.”
Fuck. Shit. Fuck.
Inside, warning flares are going off like fireworks, but outside, I’m nothing but concrete and steel. I have to be. If I wasn’t involved in this before, I am now.
She just ensured it with one fucking word.
Dice mirrors my stoic glare. He’s younger than his more obnoxious counterpart, but age means nothing when dealing in extortion. Inciting fear by simply existing isn’t a learned skill set. It’s a mindset embedded at birth.
